The Kelly myths continue to shrink into the distant past. In no particular order, here are what I think were the main events in the Kelly Calendar for 2017, a year which was a universally rotten one for Kelly sympathisers, as the Kelly lies and legends were rolled back relentlessly, and the only comeback by […]
Were the Charges against the Kellys “trumped up”?
Its recently been alleged on various Facebook pages, in support of the Kellys and the Lloyds and the Quinns, that many of the charges police laid against them in the lead up to and after the Kelly outbreak were ‘trumped-up’. “Trumped-up”, according to the dictionary means “deliberately based on false information so that someone will […]
Book Review : “An Introduction to Ned Kelly” by Jack Peterson
In the Preface to the 2014 CSIRO publication “Ned Kelly Under the Microscope”, the Editor Craig Cormick asks “Do we really need another Ned Kelly book?” Cormick is a Kelly sympathiser and apologist who believes Kelly made a heroic stand against injustice, but he nevertheless managed to assemble a very worthwhile contribution to the bloated […]
Please help solve a modern Kelly Mystery
This is the front page of the promotional booklet that was released with the 1906 movie That scrappy item in the photo, a ragged, stained and worn original, is not just an old piece of Kellyana, or even just a curious relic from Australia’s past, but an internationally significant and rare item that was issued […]
Anatomy of a Kelly Myth : Kelly shot George Metcalf not the Police.
Many of the myths that make up the Kelly legend are untruths that everyone has heard of, like the one about Fitzpatrick being the cause of the Outbreak, or the one about Ned Kelly’s Republic of North East Victoria, or the one that reckons holding Hostages at the Glenrowan Inn while waiting for two […]
Misguided Homage to a Killer
On November 11th1880, the convicted murderer Edward ‘Ned’ Kelly was executed for the killing of Constable Thomas Lonigan at Stringybark Creek. He killed two other policemen on the same day, and later orchestrated the murder of Aaron Sheritt, a former friend, as a prelude to what he hoped would be the mass murder of nearly […]
A week from Hell for Kelly fanciers and the CSI Team
Even though the Lawless documentary was a disappointment to many of the people who have more than just a passing interest and knowledge of Ned Kelly and the Kelly outbreak, the greatest disappointments will have been felt by the Kelly fanciers, and by the small bunch of diehards who thought the CSI Team had located […]
Ned Kelly Documentary : the Good the Bad and the Ugly
I think that everyone with more than a passing interest in the Kelly story will have been watching Foxtel’s History Channel last Tuesday night at 8.30 pm to see the heavily promoted first episode of their new series, Lawless: the real bushrangers. This one was about Ned Kelly. In the promos, Kelly followers were all […]
The CSI Team gets Lonigans murder all wrong too..
In last weeks post I discussed the announcement made by the CSI team that they were releasing an updated version of their 2012 Report which purported to have identified the site at which Ned Kelly murdered three policemen in October 1878. In their announcement they claimed their site “has now been examined by Heritage Victoria” and in […]
The Updated CSI@SBC Report : $50 wasted!
Five years ago, in 2012 , a team of four amateur historians issued a report describing how they tried to work out exactly where the Kelly gang murdered the Policemen at Stringybark Creek. The Report was called “CSI@SBC”, but the central arguments of their case were fatally flawed, as I showed in my review of […]