Shortly after the police murders at Stringybark Creek, legislation was passed that made the Kelly gang outlaws, meaning they had no legal protections, and could be shot and killed on sight by anyone. Rewards were posted in ever increasing amounts for the supply of information that would lead to their capture, but nobody ever attempted […]
As recounted in the previous post, the Kelly Gang of four armed men bailed up two policemen at their Camp beside Stringybark Creek, killed the one who was armed almost immediately – Lonigan – spared the life of the unarmed one – McIntyre – and then laid in wait for the other two policemen in […]
Immediately after the Fitzpatrick ‘incident’ Dan and Ned Kelly went into hiding in the Wombat Ranges, taking over an abandoned mining claim, reinforcing an existing hut to make it bullet proof and, as a visitor to the site noted some months later using all the trees around it for target practice. Bullets fired into them […]
Here’s a question that the Kelly sympathisers have never wanted to answer: If their claim is true that Ned Kelly was innocent and had not assaulted Fitzpatrick on April 15th 1878, why, immediately after ‘nothing happened’ did he and Dan Kelly go into hiding at a reinforced hut in the Wombat ranges and spend so […]
Early in 1877 Superintendent Nicolson visited Ellen Kelly and her children in their shack on 11 Mile Creek, near Greta. This was the year that Ned Kelly claimed he was living the indulgent life of a ‘rambling gambler’ but Nicholson reported that his mother and siblings ‘appeared to be living in poverty and squalor’. It […]
In 1871 an incident occurred in Ned Kellys life that’s most often cited as a proof of the Kellys claim that the police persecuted and harassed them – but it only appears that way if vital facts are left out. This event began when Ned Kelly was arrested and charged with stealing a horse that […]
In Part One I presented an overview of our current knowledge of the early years of Ned Kellys life. The important message from Part one was that Red Kellys family was known as a poor but law abiding family, and they were not troubled in any way by police from the time […]
One good thing that Justin Kurzel’s crazy fantasy movie about the Kelly Gang might have done is make people ask what the genuinely true story really is. And it’s a good question because there are so many versions of the story out there, all claiming to be definitive, so anyone could be forgiven for being […]
This post is about the claim Adam Ford made on the History Channels Lawless documentary in 2018 that he had located ‘for the first time ever’ the actual site at Stringybark Creek where three police were murdered by the Kelly Gang in 1878. Last week, in the first part of this two part essay, I […]
The argument that Ned Kelly should be remembered as an Australian hero and an icon, rather than as a thief and police murderer, is based on the idea that what he did was a principled stand taken in defence of his family against harassment and persecution by corrupt police. It was a theme he mentioned […]