In Discussion

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

There’s a tiny cohort of Kelly fanatics who are completely obsessed with attacking me personally, because they don’t like my opinions about the Kelly story. They once had access to my Facebook pages and Blog but eventually, because they never posted anything other than direct abusive attacks and lies about me, I banned them.  I […]

For me, the big event on the Kelly Calendar last year was the sudden and very sad and unexpected passing of Ian MacFarlane, author of ‘The Kelly Gang Unmasked’. His book, published by Oxford University Press in 2012 will stand as a landmark in the history of Kelly literature, being the first major break with […]

This post is part two of my essay on the Kelly book I would write if I had the time.  What I would like to do is take all the best and latest insights and the research findings of the many authors who have already written books and essays and articles on the story over […]

Twenty years ago “Ned : the Exhibition”  had just opened in Melbourne, and it ran for nine months. It was the year after a flood of Ned Kelly images were broadcast around the world from the Olympic Games opening Ceremony in Sydney, and Ned Kelly had never looked so good. A souvenir booklet was published with […]

Here’s the outcome of another meticulously researched and argued investigation by Dr Stuart Dawson, which like all his others, corrects mistaken claims that have been part of the Kelly mythology for generations. This one is for people with a genuine interest in discovering and understanding the mechanics of colonial outlawry, which rules out most Kelly […]