Until quite recently, on the anniversary of the Siege, Kelly sympathisers gathered annually at Glenrowan to toast their hero Ned Kelly. They all believed his last stand on June 28th 1880 was an attempt to establish the republic of North East Victoria, a heroic final defiant act of a brave but imperfect idealist fighting on […]
In Discussion
The Kelly Armour was worse than useless.
There was really only one thing that the Kelly gang did that was truly original: other Australian criminals had already committed more brutal crimes than the Kelly gang ever did, already murdered more police, already held up whole towns and shouted hostages drinks, already robbed more banks and written letters to explain themselves – […]
ISNT IT TIME GLENROWAN REMOVED THE GIANT STATUE THAT CELEBRATES POLICE MURDERER NED KELLY?
In 1992 when Ned Kelly was generally considered to have been a hero, a giant statue of him was erected in Glenrowan where it has remained as a big tourist drawcard to the region. At its base is a plaque with the following inscription: Ned Kelly – Hanged a murderer in Melbourne, November […]
Book Review: ‘The Kelly Hunters’ by Grantlee Kieza
I begin this review of the latest book written by Grantlee Kieza, ‘The Kelly Hunters’ with the last words he wrote in it, the final thought Kieza wanted to leave with his readers about Ned Kelly : a quotation from the report of the Royal Commission of enquiry into ‘the circumstances of the Kelly Outbreak’ […]
Book Review of ‘Nabbing Ned Kelly : the extraordinary story of the men who brought Australia’s most notorious outlaw to justice’ by David Dufty
Its an often-overlooked fact that for at least two thirds of the 140 years since his death Ned Kelly was widely regarded as a violent criminal and not much more. The claim that he was something more was only developed in the last 50 years or so by a variety of ‘pro-Ned’ authors, a narrative […]
Nabbing Ned : The Armour was Joe Byrnes idea not Ned Kellys!
I have to say it’s so refreshing to have in ‘Nabbing Ned’ author David Dufty a new voice, some new ideas and some new challenges for Kelly enthusiasts to think and talk about. In reality, for a while now we have been going over the same ground, and it’s getting a bit boring, so its […]
THE NEW BOOK ‘NABBING NED’ ASKS: ARE WE SURE JOE BYRNE WROTE THE JERILDERIE LETTER?
I started reading my Kindle copy of this book at 0530 today. A full review of this just-released work about the Outbreak is in preparation, but in the meantime, here’s something from the book to start the discussion off. Last week, well before publication date, an article in the Age newspaper about the book […]
The Kelly Book I would write (Part Four)
Part Three ended with a discussion of the so-called ‘Fitzpatrick incident’, an incident that followed an attempt to arrest Dan Kelly on a charge of horse stealing. It resulted in Mrs Kelly being sent to Gaol for three years, convicted of ‘wounding with intent to prevent lawful apprehension’, and two of her sons going into […]
CORRECTION : Dean Mayes great-great-grandfather never put a foot wrong, his judgements were always perfect and nobody should dare question them.
I should probably thank the great-great-grandson of SC Joseph Ladd Mayes for greatly increasing the number of people who read the Blog post I wrote last year entitled “Should SC Mayes have been sacked?” (CLICK HERE to read it) It was a question that most certainly needed to be asked, and I am certain many of […]
The Kelly Book I would write (Part Three)
In the first two parts of this series about the story I would tell if I was ever to write the definitive work on the Kelly Outbreak, I wrote an outline of what happened up to around 1877 when Ned Kelly was 22. I described how when his father was alive Ned Kelly and his […]