NEWS VAULT
General News (Archives)
Despite numerous films, histories
and novels, the myth of the Kelly Gang still has steam, with the trade
in memorabilia continuing unabated, often illegally, according to the
guardians of Australia's archives. In NSW, State Records has just retrieved
three telegrams and a letter relating to the hunt for the Kelly gang and
the murder of Aaron Sherritt. They had been offered for auction and had
a catalogue value of between $5000 and $10,000.
Alan Ventress of State
Records said it had paid $3600 to secure the documents."Probably
on the open market the value would have been around $10,000 but these
are government documents which cannot be sold on the open market. "We
give some compensation out of good will. But the message we want to get
over is that no matter what jurisdiction they appear in, these documents
are not for sale; they are government records and the trade in them is
illegal." All four items "clearly have been hanging on
someone's wall", he said.
They show police forces in
NSW and Victoria reacting with panic to the gang's depredations The alarm
was sufficient enough to raise the reward for their capture to the equivalent
of $2 million in today's money, a sum raised by both governments and "certain
banks operating in the colony". "Kelly's gang supposed
to have crossed Murrumbidgee riding four bay horses leading two pack horses,"
reads one telegram. "Have informed all stations north."
Another, from Beechworth police
dated June 27, 1880, reports that the "watch party stuck up by
Kelly gang at six o'clock Saturday night. Aaron [Sherritt] shot dead in
the hut he occupied by Joe Byrne . . . "
Mr Ventress said the richest
collection of Kelly material was held in Victoria's Public Record Office
and was available on its website. "We've got the NSW side of the
story - the correspondence between the colonial secretaries of NSW and
Victoria and the police as the gang went backwards and forwards across
the border." He added: "Anything to do with Kelly is
a constant source of fascination . . . and I think people of the time
realised it would become significant, which is why so many of them souvenired
documents like these, which had probably been held in local police stations."
22/05/03 'Ned' Movie reviewed
by Alexa Moses from the Sydney Morning Herald
Source: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/21/1053196640497.html (updated
26th)
Written and directed by Abe
Forsythe, Rated MA
Abe Forsythe is an admirable
man. The actor from television's Always Greener has a self-starter attitude
and it's easy to applaud the two years he spent writing, directing and
starring in Ned. It's natural to praise the punt he's taken on his sense
of humour and to extol the virtues of a young person gutsy enough to make
his own feature film on a low budget. It's no trouble bowing down to the
man's moxie. But Australian reviewers tackling Australian cinema often
want to be apologists for the industry, and so it was with heavy heart
that I found Ned, the spoof of Ned Kelly's life, more loathsome and less
funny than 1993's Reckless Kelly.
Forsythe plays the bumbling Ned, son of a rubber farmer (Jeremy Sims).
Ned wants to be a travelling magician and, after a row with dad, leaves
the house on his miniature horse, taking the letterbox with him. He auditions
for the Kelly gang and joins them in their robberies of Glenrowan's only
bank. Along the way, the gang tussles with the odiously genteel Governor
Sinclair (Felix Williamson), who drinks Earl Grey tea and keeps a hamster
for unmentionable leisure activities.
The romp is replete with fart gags, bestiality jokes, bodily fluids and
tired gay innuendo. To be fair, there are a few funny moments - the best
includes Nudge from Hey Dad - but they're as abundant as Simon Crean groupies.
The script needed a damn good editing. Someone should have told Forsythe
that repeating a joke doesn't make it funnier. Someone should have explained
the concept of character to him. And, while they were there, they should
have told him about story, because the film hangs together like a series
of sketches. Forsythe's characters wander around camp while waiting for
the showdown in Glenrowan. Isn't there something interesting for them
to do?
One glimmer in the darkness is Williamson's performance as Governor Sinclair.
He makes the most of some shocking lines. But Forsythe's Ned is so slack-jawed
he is painful to watch and it's a blessed relief when the outlaw is sent
to be hanged.
At its worst, Ned is filled with gay jokes that are particularly repulsive
because they are of the nudge-nudge-wink-wink variety. They involve transsexuals
who speak in flutey voices, camp cowboys in chaps and men flicking each
other coquettishly with towels. They're not even as funny as Benny Hill.
Good comedy has something to say. That's true regardless of whether it's
absurdist like Monty Python, biting like The Chaser, or bleakly funny
like The Office.
Ned does not provoke thought and, more criminally for a comedy, it produces
little laughter.
A chance finding of production
stills from a 1934 film about Ned Kelly will preserve the image of the
dashing actor Hay Simpson as the stand-and-deliver counter-hero. The National
Screen and Sound Archive has received more than 60 production stills from
the film, When the Kellys Rode, discovered under the floorboards
of a house in Sydney.
Mr Simpson's niece, Margaret Titterton, found the photographs during
renovations to her Vaucluse house. Mrs Titterton has given the stills,
along with news clippings about the release of the film, to the National
Screen and Sound Archive, which will preserve them along with the original
nitrate film.
According to Screen Sound Australia, the film, directed and written by
Harry Southwell, was released in 1934, but not in NSW until 1948 because
the police department in that state had reinstated a ban on all bushranging
films.
Hay Simpson's Ned Kelly was to be his only starring film role. In 1937,
he was working on his second film, Mystery Island, shot near Lord Howe
Island. After a month of production, Simpson and another member of the
cast attempted to return to Sydney in a skiff and disappeared, lost at
sea.
30/04/03 'Ned Kelly: villain
or hero?' (John Kilner, The Age Education Unit)
Source: The
Age newspaper, education section
Ned Kelly was an outlaw and
a convicted police killer. Why does he loom so large in Australian history?
1. What makes Ned Kelly newsworthy?
Ned Kelly has hardly left the news. His life has inspired
newspaper articles, biographies, plays, films, poems and novels. The latest
effort is a movie starring Heath Ledger. In 2001, Peter Carey won a Booker
prize for his novel The True History of the Kelly Gang.
Ned Kelly's story has many amazing elements. It can been seen as one of
a poor boy of great skill, devoted to his family, wronged by the police
and the legal system and - following a tragic series of events - executed
at the age of 25.
But there are sharply differing views: the Ned Kelly story rests on different
interpretations of ``facts".
Some feel it is a strongly Australian story with Kelly as the archetypal
Australian challenging authority.
There are also broader questions raised by his life. Was he a freedom
fighter? Was he attempting to spark an uprising? When do people have the
right to resist the law?
2. Turning
fact into fiction
According to some
he was a murderer and a cattle thief elevated to hero status by a public
looking for a hero. He was a police killer. He used the innocent for his
own ends, taking hostages in shoot-outs. Four townspeople were killed
in the Glenrowan shootout when he was captured.
The story of Ned Kelly has become a source of myth, and sometimes the
narrative leaves out important facts. The stories and films that focus
on his life build on the myth. In his book, Peter Carey imagines a daughter
Kelly never had; the film featuring Heath Ledger invents a romantic interest.
Other interpretations use facts to paint a different picture. One view
suggests there was sympathy for Kelly at the time of his trial and execution:
a petition for clemency gained 32,000 signatures in Melbourne from a population
of 300,000.
Some commentators say that we need to consider the Kelly story in a broader
context. They claim that Ned Kelly was a victim of his circumstances.
He lived in a society of inequality between rich and poor, country and
city, Irish Catholics and English Protestants. In the Jerilderie Letter,
Ned Kelly described himself as a defender of the oppressed and a ``widow's
son outlawed".
3. Ned
Kelly as an enduring cultural symbol
The story of Ned
Kelly has inspired artists, writers, filmmakers and musicians. The first
book on the Kelly gang, Outlaws of the Wombat Ranges, was printed in 1879.
A radio play in 1942 was a hit. There was a ballet in the 1950s. Perhaps
some of the best-known images are in the series of Ned Kelly abstract
paintings by artist Sidney Nolan. Kelly was even portrayed in the 2000
Olympics ceremony in Sydney.
Why? Clare Williamson, the curator of the exhibition Kelly Culture: Reconstructing
Ned Kelly, at the State Library of Victoria, feels the appeal was the
subversiveness that Kelly stood for. ``The thing with Kelly is you have
the man and you have the mask. And the mask . . . gives you the freedom
to re-create." (The Age, February 27, 2003.)
4.
Recent headlines
``The many histories
of the Kelly Gang" The Age, March 29, 2003.
``Ned's legacy" The Age, February 27, 2003.
`New Ned Kelly find leaves theory on shootings up the creek" The
Age, February 10, 2003.
``The bush bandit rides again" The Age, January 29, 2003.
5.
What The Age said about Kelly in 1880
``Precisely those
who plead that Kelly was the creature of circumstances, and that we are
all moulded by our surroundings, ought to understand that society is bound
to put the brand of failure upon crime. Other men as ignorant and as weak
as Kelly must learn from him that it is wise to refrain from bloodshed;
that the State is stronger than any one citizen; and that no fictitious
romance, no maudlin sympathy will avail against the common sense of the
governing majority."
Editorial Opinion, The Age, November 13, 1880.
6. What
people say
``The evidence of
his life leads inexorably to one conclusion: Ned Kelly is Australia's
first yob."
Christopher Bantick, The Age, October 24, 2001.
``The `terrorist
hostages' held at the Glenrowan Hotel in fact danced and sang. The fact
that thousands of Victorians signed a petition to oppose the execution
of Ned demonstrates this point. A stronger parallel can be made between
Kelly and Peter Lalor, a generation earlier. Lalor's Eureka rebels took
up arms, fought troopers and opposed the Crown in a desperate attempt
to get a fair go. Ned Kelly deserves his rightful place in Australian
folklore and history."
David Crawford, The Age, October 30, 2001.
``If my life teaches
the public that men are made mad by bad treatment, and if the police are
taught that they may not exasperate to madness men they persecute and
ill treat, my life will not be entirely thrown away."
Interview with Ned Kelly in Beechworth Prison, The Age, August 9, 1880.
7. Your
view
What's your opinion?
What do you think of the Ned Kelly legend? Is the story of Ned Kelly portrayed
in the latest movie more myth than fact? Why does the story of Ned Kelly
have such great appeal? Did society turn Kelly into a criminal? What does
he mean to you? Submit your view online www.education.theage.com.au or
email edunit@theage.fairfax.com.au
8.
Web links
Ned Online nedonline.imagineering.net.au
For more see bailup's link
page
9. Curriculum
links
CSF II Studies of Society
& Environment: History 4.2, 6.2, 6.6
13/04/03
'Firestorm reveals Kelly link' (Adrian Tame)
Source: Sunday Herald Sun
The bushfires that raged through
Victoria's Alpine region have uncovered a 120-year-old clue to the history
of the Kelly gang.
Historians Brian and Margaret Cornish have discovered what appears
to be a secret tunnel close to the site of the cottage of Kelly gang member,
and later victim, Aaron Sherritt. The Cornishes believe the tunnel was
intended as an escape route by Sherritt when he fell foul of the gang
after they suspected him of becoming a police informer. About 1880, Sherritt,
then aged 25, moved into an abandoned miner's hut In the Woolshed Valley
near Beechworth with his pregnant bride, Ellen, 16.
Brian Cornish said Sherritt had ridden with the Kelly gang, and was a
close friend of gang member Joe Byrne. By the time he moved into the hut,
the gang suspected him of becoming an informer. "So he would have
needed a bolt hole. But it wasn't a very successful one, because on the
eve of the Glenrowan siege he was shot at the doorway of the hut by Byrne
and Dan Kelly," said Mr Cornish. He said four policemen were
hiding in the hut at the time, but failed to act to save Sherritt's life.
They were later disciplined.
He said the site of the Sherritt hut in the Woolshed Valley had been worked
out from contemporary descriptions. Mr Cornish and his wife visited the
site in late January after the bushfires had swept through from Eldorado,
near Beechworth, to see what damage, if any, had been done. Instead they
found the 18m-long tunnel, starting at the bottom of a short mineshaft
close to the hut site. They found evidence of the tunnel earlier, but
dense undergrowth had prevented a full examination. "I was able
to crawl 9m into the tunnel, taking photographs, measurements and compass
readings, and found a small inner chamber large enough for one or two
men. There was another shelf cut out, which could have been a sleeping
platform," he said. After passing under a road the tunnel opens
into a channel and joins a Chinese water race running along the valley.
This discovery is likely to reawaken public interest in the Kelly gang,
already sparked by the release of the box office hit Ned Kelly, starring
Heath Ledger.
30/03/03 'Truth takes back
seat in new Aussie 'western' (Derek Ballantine)
Sunday Herald Sun
Well,
Derek has been bandying his versions of Kelly 'facts' (using the term
loosely) around yet again (perhaps at the behest of his editor Mr Howe?).
Fortunately Bailup has been saved from having to address the numerous
errors in the 'article' as Brad from ironoutlaw has done a top job already.
Instead of reluctantly directing you to the original piece, we can now
happily direct you to Brad's retort, which is far more accurate and educational
(not to mention entertaining). Go to Ironoutlaw
SoapBox.
From the outset,
there were two versions of the Kelly story. One was carried in the newspapers
and magazines of the day. While this was not always laudatory of the government
or police, implicit in the press’s view were certain assumptions
about the law that placed the Kellys firmly outside it, usually casting
them as low thieves and murderers. The other version, in which the gang
were heroes, was carried in song.
The controversy around Ned never went away for long. The film, The Story
of the Kelly Gang, was shot in 1906 and is usually described as Australia’s
first feature film. In an essay on the genre of bushranger films that
it spawned, Melbourne writer William Routt quotes film exhibitor T.J.West
announcing in March 1911 that "for the country’s good, West’s
will not, in the future, show Australian bushranging films". In Routt’s
view, West’s stand marked the beginning of the end for the genre.
But Ned kept re-appearing. During World War I, Sir John Monash, Australia’s
most distinguished general, gained kudos among his troops from the story
that, as a 14-year-old boy, he had been in Jerilderie the day it was stuck
up by the Kelly gang. In journalistic terms, the major contribution of
this period, little noticed at the time but now much prized by collectors,
was the publication of The Inner History of the Kelly Gang in 1929.
Written with passionate
eloquence by J.J.Kenneally, a teacher who had grown up in that
part of north-eastern Victoria still sometimes called Kelly country, the
book juxtaposed police statements at the time of the Kelly break-out,
and during the events leading up to it, with the findings of the 1881
Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Victorian Police. It is a fact that
many of the policemen involved in the saga were subsequently demoted and
pensioned off or, in the case of Constable Fitzpatrick, with whom the
outbreak can be said to have started, dismissed from the force on the
grounds that he "could not be trusted out of sight". Kenneally’s
book used previously unpublished information given to the author by Tom
Lloyd, the so-called fifth member of the gang, and finished, volcanically,
with a review by Ned’s sole surviving brother, Jim, then aged 70.
Jim Kelly’s review is one long bellow of rage at the injustice visited
upon his family by the police. No less intense is his dislike for "mercenary
writers" and imposters seeking to profit from retellings of the story.
Particularly offended by a novel of the day titled The Girl Who Helped
Ned Kelly, Jim declared: "My brother Ned was so devoted to his mother
he had no ‘girl’."
In the course of
World War II, a writer named Max Brown thought he discerned an
Australian character that was distinct and original. When he traced
the character back to its archetype, he arrived at the figure of Ned.
The foreword to his book, first published in 1948 as Australian Son,
remains one of the most perceptive essays written on the Kelly phenomenon.
Afire with idealism for the project, he had journeyed to north-eastern
Victoria to immerse himself in the detail of the story. Three months
later, by his own account "bitterly disappointed", he realised,
"The hands of the dead had reached out to keep the silence. Already
I knew there were gaps in the Kelly history I could not mend, as well
as major issues concerning which accounts were opposed. Time, class
interest and perversity had done their job, I realised, finally, that
the truth I once regarded as absolute was largely relative."
Ned could not be
known then, and he certainly cannot be known now. That is one source of
his eerie power. At every vital turn in the saga there are at least two
versions of what occurred. What remains vivid, however, are his symbols.
In what was then, and is again now, a largely derivative culture, Ned’s
was a bold native imagining and, while his story is deeply rooted in place,
it asks universal questions. Was Ned a rebel or was he an outlaw? Was
he a freedom fighter or - as was alleged in this newspaper shortly after
September 11 - was he a terrorist?
Around the same time
as Brown went looking for the real Ned and found himself grasping at shadows,
a great artist with an eagle eye for Australian culture (and who happened
to have read The Inner History of the Kelly Gang) was putting a similar
perception to Brown’s to a spectacularly different end. No film or
novel can match the power of Sidney Nolan’s Kelly paintings
because, ultimately, any attempt at telling the Kelly story must settle
on a certain version of the facts. Nolan understood the power of Ned’s
ambiguity. We never meet his Ned face to face: he is the masked figure
on the edge of the Australian psyche. But Nolan’s Kelly paintings
were also wholly original landscapes that made no attempt to please the
eye in any conventional way. Nolan’s Australia was bright and bare
and hard; we may not feel we belonged in such a place, but the figure
in the steel mask somehow did.
Around the same time,
in north-western Australia, the Yarralin people were telling a story that
said that Captain Cook took Ned back to England where his throat was cut.
As recorded in Deborah Bird Rose’s Dingo Makes Us Human, the story
continues: "They bury him. Leave him. Sun go down, little bit dark
now, he left this world. BOOOOOMMMMM! Go longa top. This world shaking.
All the white men been shaking. They all been frightened." Ned had
entered the Dreamtime.
Ned’s critics, as intransigent today as ever, usually give vent to
their feeling by describing him as a murderer and a cattle thief. In so
far as this is meant to imply he was nothing but a common criminal, they
are wrong. Ned took on the state. He plotted to abduct the Governor of
Victoria, the Marquis of Normandy, and offer him in exchange for his imprisoned
mother. The tactics the gang employed at Glenrowan were similar to those
employed by the Boers 15 years later in South Africa and Ian Jones, commonly
regarded as the leading Kelly historian of our day, is in no doubt that
Glenrowan was intended to spark an uprising aimed at establishing a republic
in north-east Victoria.
In 1974, Englishman
Tony Richardson made a version of the story starring Mick Jagger
as Ned. It’s a better film than its reputation would have you believe
(one derisive story has is it that an aluminium helmet had to be made
for Jagger as he was unable to keep the steel one aloft). Richardson understood
that songs were basic to the Kelly tradition, even if he employed an American,
Waylon Jennings, to sing them. Essentially, in Richardson’s view,
the Kelly gang is Jumping Jack Flash and three young mates galloping through
the bush, planning one big concert before it’s over.
More recently, there
have been two major novels. It is from the first of these, Robert
Drewe’s Our Sunshine, that the latest film has supposedly
been made but what that means is hard to say. The novel’s appeal
is the zest and flair of its language and Drewe’s Ned bears little
resemblance to actor Heath Ledger’s finely judged portrayal
of a sober young man poised between thought and action. Drewe’s Ned
is a late-20th-century character viewing an improbable fate descend upon
him with irony and humour. The author even has a circus present during
the gang’s final climactic hours in the Glenrown Hotel. The most
interesting character in Drewe’s book is Aaron Sherritt, the man
who believes in nothing and trusts his smile and dancing feet can get
him through anything.
The later novel, Peter Carey’s The True History of the Kelly
Gang, has been rightly praised for the brilliant language the author has
constructed from the manifesto written by Ned and/or Joe Byrne, known
as the Jerilderie letter. Or is it any wonder that Carey’s book won
acceptance in America. Carey’s Ned is Huckleberry Finn with no river
to escape on, a man confronted at every turn by an impossible history
who finally stands and rises to his full height, a pistol in each hand.
In contrast to Drewe’s book, Carey’s Aaron Sherritt is an admirable
character, a man prepared to risk his life to save his one true mate,
Joe Byrne. Given Ned’s benigness, the character who differs most
in Carey’s version from earlier retellings is Joe Byrne. Usually
depicted as a bush Keats, half in love with easeful death, Carey’s
Joe is an opium-addicted killer.
Drewe’s Ned has a wholly improbable fling with an English squatter’s
wife. Carey goes one long step further, his book being written by Ned
for his daughter by his de facto wife. The effect is to domesticate Ned
and re-awaken the words of that incendiary literary critic, Jim Kelly:
"My brother Ned was so devoted to his mother he had no ‘girl’."
Ned became the man of the house at 13. Imagine Oedipus finding his mother
not married to the King but oppressed by the Crown and you sense the wildness
behind the final words of the Jerilderie letter: "I am a widow’s
son outlawed and my orders must (underlined) be obeyed".
The effect of the
two most recent films is to portray the Kelly myth as a case of the English
versus the Irish. In each film, the Kellys, and those around them, speak
with Irish accents. I am not persuaded they did. (There are people who
would know. Jim Kelly lived until 1948. Ten years ago at Greta, I met
a woman who had known him as a child.) In the new film, Irishness is also
projected as a single identity but the subtext of the Kelly story is that
the Irish in colonial Australia came in two colours, Orange and Green.
Ulster Protestants were then prominent in the Victoria Police while the
leading Irish Protestant in Victorian society was Sir Redmond Barry, the
judge who sent Ned’s mother Ellen Kelly to prison and two years later
engaged in a famous verbal joust with Ned while sentencing him to be hanged.
(Ned said he would see Sir Redmond in the place to which he was going;
12 days after Ned was hanged, Sir Redmond died of a poisoned carbuncle
on his neck.)
Ned’s father was described by J.J.Kenneally as a true Irish patriot,
but contemporary historians are not so sure. There’s a suggestion
that when Red Kelly arrived as a convict in Van Diemen’s Land, he
had the reputation of being a police informer - that is, a compromised
man. Afterwards, in Melbourne, he met 18-year-old Ellen Quinn whose history
was quite unlike his own. The Quinns were not convicts, they were not
broken by the system. They were Irish Catholics from Ulster; there is
reason to believe Ned Kelly would be better called Ned Quinn.
What the films
miss are the Australianess of the story. Ned was born the year of the
Eureka Stockade. His early years, the ones when his accent would have
formed, were spent in that central corridor of Victoria that was awash
with traffic to and from the goldfields. A spirit of optimism and revolt
was in the air. No less than James Dean or the Beatles, Ned was of a
generation. Ned said he and his friends would ride bold, fearless and
free through the land. When the police moved against the Greta mob,
it was specifically to take "the flashness out of them".
There was less than a fortnight between Ned being sentenced to death
and executed, but in that period a petition for clemecy circulated in
Melbourne, which then had a population of about 300,000, obtained 32,000
signatures. Ned’s appeal had already transcended ethnicity and
religion. An Australian legend was being born.
THE
KELLY CULTURE - FILMS
1906 The Story Of The Kelly Gang
1920 The Kelly Gang
1923 When The Kellys Were Out
1934 When The Kellys Rode
1951 The Glenrowan Affair
1960 Stringybark Massacre
1960 Ned Kelly
1970 Ned Kelly
1993 Reckless Kelly
2003 Ned Kelly
Complete list
ARTICLES
John Kinsella on Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang
Julian Burnside QC on the trial of Ned Kelly
NED
KELLY'S WRITING
Jerilderie Letter
Euroa Letter
EXHIBITIONS
Sidney Nolan’s Kelly series
Ned Kelly's armour
BOOKS:
NON FICTION
The Fatal Friendship by Ian Jones.
Ned Kelly: Australian Son by Max Brown.
Ned Kelly: A Short Life by Ian Jones.
Ned Kelly: The Authentic Illustrated History by Keith McMenomy.
I Am Ned Kelly by John Molony.
Ned Kelly: After a Century of Acrimony by John Meredith and Bill Scott.
The Inner History of the Kelly Gang by J J Kenneally.
Kelly Country Sketchbook by Brian Carroll & Jack Montgomery.
Kelly Country: A Photographic Journey by Brendon Kelson & John McQuilton.
Ned Kelly by Frank Clune.
The Kelly Hunters by Frank Clune.
Saint Ned by Keith Dunstan.
Ned Kelly: The Larrikin Years by Graham Jones.
Tell ’em I Died Game by Graham Seal.
Ned Kelly: Man and Myth by Colin Cave.
Ned Kelly by George Farwell.
Ned and the Others by Dagmar Balcarek & Gary Dean.
The Last of the Bushrangers by Francis Augustus Hare.
The Kelly Gang by Nancy Keesing.
Complete list
FICTION
Whistle Man by Brian Ridden.
Black Snake: The Daring of Ned Kelly by Carole Wilkinson.
True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey.
Ned Kelly and the City of Bees by Thomas Keneally.
Kelly Country by A Bertram Chandler.
Our Sunshine by Robert Drewe.
Several descendants of one
of south-west Victoria's pioneering police officers yesterday gathered
at the Camperdown cemetery for a remembrance service. Mounted Constable
James Murdoch Arthur was born in Port Fairy and spent many years as officer-in-charge
of police stations in Cobden and Camperdown, where he was buried in 1924.
The service, also attended by many senior police officers, was held to
honour Constable Arthur and to commemorate 150 years of Victoria Police.Constable
Arthur's great, great nephew Arthur Clarke attended the service with cousins
Fred Don, of Geelong, and Heather Rands, of Camperdown.Mr Clarke said
his 99-year-old mother, who was unable to attend, could remember meeting
Constable Arthur in Camperdown when she was three years old with her sister,
Mr Don and Mrs Rand's mother, then five. "Our grandfather had never
seen the cells so Constable Arthur showed him the cells and then he asked
the girls if they wanted to go in," Mr Clarke said. "They said
yes so he put them in and slammed the door on them. "My grandfather
said they wailed and when he let them out, he said, `There you are. That's
what it's like in prison, so don't get into prison'." Mr Don and
Mr Clarke yesterday travelled to Camperdown after Mrs Rands told them
of the ceremony.
Mr Don said the family had always heard of a relative who had been
at the siege of Ned Kelly. "That was Constable Arthur. He
was supposed to have shot Ned Kelly in the wrist and was there at the
scene and that's about all we knew," Mr Don said. "It has always
been a bit of an intrigue to us." Assistant Commissioner Leigh
Gassner, in charge of the south-west, told the crowd Victoria Police had
grown into a vibrant organisation since it was formed on January 8, 1853.
He said it was important to reflect on the work of the state's pioneering
police.
The latest movie about our
most famous bushranger has sparked fresh argument about whether Kelly's
accent was fair dinkum. Philip Derriman reports.
While the actor Heath Ledger
has made it clear he has no regrets about giving Ned Kelly an Irish accent
in the movie which has its world premiere in Melbourne tonight, the matter
may yet prove to be the film's most serious historical issue. Did Kelly
really speak that way? It's a touchy question. By making Australia's No.1
folk hero sound like an Irishman, has the movie stripped him of much of
his Australian identity?
Expert opinion is divided.
The theory that Kelly spoke with an Irish accent is supported by two Kelly
biographers, but opposing them are leading linguists who argue it is inconceivable
that someone who was born and raised in Australia in the mid-19th century,
and mixed as widely as Kelly did, would have spoken with anything but
an Australian accent.
So what is the historical
truth? Contrary to the movie's production notes which suggest that Kelly
lived in a time "too early for an [Australian] accent to have settled",
linguists say an Australian accent was long established by the time Kelly
was born in 1854.
David Blair, a Macquarie
University linguist who has made a special study of the Australian accent's
development, found that native-born Australians were speaking with their
own accent by 1830. "We have a lot of printed evidence around the
1830s and earlier which says quite categorically that children born here
didn't speak with any trace of dialects from Britain and Ireland,"
he says. Blair believes that Kelly's speech may, at most, have included
a few Irishisms picked up from his Irish parents, but basically he would
have spoken with the Australian accent common to all Australians of his
generation. "It's conceivable but would be highly unusual that he
had odd remnants of an Irish accent," Blair says. "It's not
conceivable that he spoke with a brogue."
The opposing view is that
Kelly grew up within an enclosed, mainly Irish community in north-eastern
Victoria and he spoke the way people around him spoke. This view is advanced
by Ian Jones, author of Ned Kelly: A Short Life and a recognised
authority on the Kelly gang, who has evidence to support it. One is the
testimony of a local man, Tom Lloyd, whose father knew Kelly well. Lloyd
told Jones that, according to his father, Kelly spoke with a "clear,
ringing brogue". He remembered his father also saying that Kelly
spoke "like a priest", again implying he had an Irish accent.
Jones also cites an English travel writer who visited north-eastern Victoria
around 1870 and reported that local boys and girls had "voices singularly
low and soft - their speech is characterised by a brogue decidedly Irish
in its tone but softer and smoother than any brogue found in Ireland."
There are other clues, Jones says. Kelly is reported on at least one occasion
to have said "ye" instead of "you", and certain phrases
and spellings in a letter he composed with a fellow gang member suggest
an Irish accent.
Another Kelly biographer,
John Molony, leans to the view that kelly spoke with an Irish-influenced
accent although not a full-on brogue. While admitting there is no clear
documentary evidence on the subject, he believes Kelly's heavy exposure
to Irish speech in his formative years must have shaped his own speech
thereafter.
The linguists disagree. Bruce
Moore, of the Australian National Dictionary Centre at the ANU, whose
own research points to an Australian accent as far back as the 1820s,
says there have been only rare cases of dialects being preserved within
enclosed immigrant communities - such as in the South Island of New Zealand,
where recordings made in the early 1900s show older, locally born people
speaking with a Scottish accent. But Moore does not believe that Kelly
grew up in a community anything like that. On the contrary: from his early
boyhood (he spent most of his brief schooling at an Anglican school) he
would have mixed with children of various British backgrounds. "When
you look at all the reliable 19th-century evidence, it all says that the
distinctive feature of the children of migrants is that they speak with
an accent which is unmarked by dialects. I would have expected Ned Kelly
to speak with an Australian accent, which we know was well established
by then."
In 1978, after Mick Jagger
had given Kelly an Irish accent in an earlier movie, a great-niece of
the Kellys, who still lived near Glenrowan, was asked about Ned's brother
Jim, who lived there until 1946. She said that "Uncle Jim",
just five years younger than Ned, had spoken with a broad Australian accent:
"It beats me why that Mick Jagger gave Ned an Irish brogue."
9/03/03 Kelly's hero movie
reopens old wounds in Australia (Mark Chipperfield) Source: www.news.scotsman.com
The words "Such is life"
were the last to leave his lips as he hanged from the gallows. Now, more
than 120 years after Ned Kelly’s death, it is the precise nature
of the outlaw’s life that is once again polarising opinion in his
native country. The imminent release of a new film about the legendary
Australian bushranger has sparked a bitter debate about the real nature
of a man variously regarded as a national hero and a psychopathic criminal
by his fellow countrymen. The £11m film, Ned Kelly, which is due
to be released in Australia later this month, paints a romantic picture.
In it, Kelly, played by the Hollywood heartthrob Heath Ledger, is a courageous
freedom fighter who stands up for the rights of Irish settlers against
their British colonial oppressors.
Christopher Bantick,
a Melbourne historian, condemned the portrayal as a total distortion of
history. "Ned Kelly was a psychopathic killer," he said. "Kelly
was an overbearing bully who used violence to impose his will. And instead
of defending poor tenant farmers, Kelly and his gang subjected them to
a reign of terror." Bantick has already infuriated the pro-Kelly
lobby by comparing their quixotic hero to Osama bin Laden and the terrorists
who planted the Bali bombs last October.
However, these charges are
bitterly disputed by Ian Jones, a fellow Melbourne historian whose
work on Ned Kelly inspired Peter Carey’s Booker Prize-winning novel
The True History of the Kelly Gang, now an international bestseller. "The
stuff about him being a terrorist is rubbish," he said. "Anyone
who knows the real history and the facts can see this was not true."
Peter Carey, who claims his
novel is almost entirely fictional, compares Kelly to a "kid from
the projects [the American public housing estates]" - but one with
a flair for words. "He was a member of the criminal underclass,"
he said. "It was a cruel, hard life; the police victimised them,
but they weren’t angels either."
Certain facts are not in dispute.
Edward Kelly, who was born in 1854, was of Irish stock. His father had
been transported from Ireland after being convicted of stealing pigs.
Kelly led a gang of outlaws that included his younger brother. The outlaws,
who fashioned body armour and crude helmets from stolen ploughshares,
roamed the outback for years, stealing horses, robbing banks and killing
policemen. Kelly was captured in 1880 and convicted of the murder of three
policemen. Aged 25, he was hanged at Old Melbourne Gaol.
Regardless of its merits or
shortcomings, the new film, made by British company Working Title Films
and co-starring Geoffrey Rush and Naomi Watts, has generated Kelly fever
in Australia. Apart from re-runs of earlier Kelly films, including the
1970 version starring Mick Jagger, Melbourne is staging two exhibitions
devoted to the dead bushranger. Nowhere is the debate more keenly felt
than in "Kelly Country" - a sparsely populated farming area
near the Great Dividing Range in Victoria - where the passing of the years
has done little to quell old hatreds."In this part of Victoria, you
grow up with Ned Kelly. I’m a Kelly man through and through,"
said one local. "But there’s plenty who are not for Kelly and
will never forgive him." Glenrowan, a tiny hamlet where the Kelly
Gang staged its infamous last stand, celebrates the ironclad outlaw with
a giant concrete statue, with Ned defiantly brandishing a rifle at passing
motorists. The nearby gift shop sells Ned Kelly T-shirts, tea towels,
beer coasters and pots of Kelly jam. Bantick explains: "If you are
connected with the Kennedys [the family of one of the policemen Kelly
murdered] you cannot open a business in Kelly Country because people will
not go to that business."
For the residents of Mansfield,
some 50 miles down the road, Kelly remains a figure of infamy, an Irish
ne’er-do-well who murdered three policemen stationed in the town
in cold blood and well deserved the hangman’s noose. An imposing
statue in the main street, paid for by public subscription by the people
of Victoria, commemorates the heroic sacrifice of the officers cut down
in the line of duty. Even though 125 years have passed since the killings,
well-wishers still leave coins and flowers around its base. Ian Geer,
Mansfield Shire Council’s tourism and economic development officer,
says that the memories of Lonigan, Scanlon and Kennedy - the three policemen
- are still cherished by the local townspeople. "They are mindful
that three policemen left here to do their duty and were murdered,"
he said.
Whether the new cinematic
versions of Ned Kelly’s life and crimes will inspire a more sober
assessment of Australia’s most infamous bushranger remains to be
seen, but few people are counting on it. "Unfortunately Australia
still has a massive insecurity complex about its convict past, which is
why we idolise people like Ned Kelly. Personally, I think it’s time
we got over it," said Bantick.
Pro Kelly lobby? (Our thanks to Brian MacDonald
for drawing our attention to this article.)
Note: re: the paragraph that claims that "certain facts are not in
dispute" - In fact Ned Kelly's birth date is and always has been
in dispute, (as no record of Ned's birth date has yet been found). Ned
was convicted of killing only one policeman - not three, and it is somewhat
misleading to say the gang "roamed
the outback for years, stealing horses, robbing banks and killing policemen".
18/02/03 ABC Radio interview
with Ian Jones
Ian Jones was interviewed
by Jon Faine on ABC radio to promote the release of his book
The Fatal Friendship and the new Kelly
Exhibition.
There was also some chat about the usual Ned Kelly topics and opinions,
such as Ned the legend verses Ned the man, the Mick Jagger movie and the
new Heath Ledger movie, Peter Carey's novel, Ken Oldis and his part in
the sorting out of Ned's armour, Ned's trial re-enactment.
Ian called Bill Denheld's recent claim that the site of Stringybark
Creek has been incorrectly identified to date "codswallop".
NB. Bill has an extensive document, along
with physical evidence, to support his claims; anyone wishing to review
his findings for themselves can contact him via email bill@denheldid.com
or read the recent Age newspaper article below (10/02/03). See
Bill's response to Ian's comments in Feedback
section.
More info from Bill re Stringybark site can be found on
his site denheldid.com/twohuts
Two piles of stones in a remote
forest, a couple of drainage channels and some post holes could provide
the latest twist in the story of Australia's most celebrated bushranger,
Ned Kelly. In discovering these relics, Melbourne writer and Kelly researcher
Bill Denheld is claiming that the accepted site of the Kelly gang's
shootout with police on October 26, 1878, is wrong.
 Last
September Mr Denheld came across the stones piled in the shape of two
fireplaces. They were nearly half a kilometre from the reserve and monument
supposedly marking the site of the police shoot-out at Stringybark Creek,
north-east of Mansfield. Since then he has found other artefacts that
could date to the period, including an iron pot lid and the remains of
a metal flask used for holding gunpowder. (Pictured
right: The gunpowder flask discovered by Bill Denheld. Picture: Sandy
Scheltema)
By killing the three
police officers, the four-member gang were declared outlaws. Their exploits
while on the run for the next 20 months wrote them into Australian folklore,
ultimately leading to the siege of Glenrowan with Kelly's capture and
the death of the other gang members.
The significance of the fireplaces is that they suggest the location of
two miners' huts, known through contemporary accounts to be just across
the narrow creek from the site of a police camp where constables Michael
Scanlon and Thomas Lonigan were shot dead. The third member to die, Sergeant
Michael Kennedy, was pursued and gunned down about 400 metres away.
Mr Denheld made the discovery
when searching the area with Gary Dean, a Kelly expert from Glenrowan.
Their interest in the site had been sparked by the work of another researcher,
Ian Jones, who presented a paper 10 years ago suggesting that the
area across the creek from where Mr Denheld found the fireplaces was the
real site of the shootings. "At the time he was unable to provide
physical evidence to support his theory," Mr Denheld said.
A signposted fenced
area further down the creek proclaims the shoot-out site. A plaque was
erected there 18 months ago by the descendants of Sergeant Kennedy. Mr
Denheld said yesterday that the location of the site was lost after a
large peppermint gum known as the Kelly tree was cut down by loggers in
1908. In searching for the correct site he had used a photograph taken
as forensic evidence a week after the massacre by a Melbourne photographer
named Burman. Mr Denheld claims the larger hearth indicated the site of
a hut referred to by Kelly in his famous Jerilderie letter. In this letter,
Kelly describes the shootings as having taken place at a location he describes
as "the shingle hut". These huts would have been constructed
about 15 years earlier by a group of gold miners who worked the area.
Mr Denheld said the shingle hut would have been more elaborate than the
normal bark huts built by miners and he points to drainage channels and
post holes that can still be seen. "It tends to indicate that
whoever built this hut took a certain amount of care."
26/01/03
Hero and Villain, Why the legacy of a murderous horse thief named Ned
Kelly lives on (Derek Ballantine)
According to SundayHerald Sun
Worthy
of general note are the considerable factual errors throughout this piece,
particular when considering the expectation most of us have that journalists
present facts accurately. However more obvious and notable was the unqualified
bias of the article against Ned Kelly. It was full of little more than
personal, one-sided opinions. The result was an article with an almost
propaganda like quality. Leaving Bailup to wonder aloud 'what ever happened
to journalistic integrity?'
Here are some quotes from the article, followed by more thoughts from
Bailup:
"He murdered
two policemen before they could go for their guns and a third, wounded
and out of ammunition, was shot dead as he begged to be spared for the
sake of his wife and children. So we made him a hero…"
"The remarkable Kelly Culture Exhibition opening at the State Library
on February 28 marks a new chapter in a never- ending tale of a criminal
family. It brings together papers and artefacts and images of a poor colonial
boy who became an Australian legend… miserable life on the wrong
side of the law."
"We will not make heroes of Bandali Debs and Jason Roberts, convicted
this year of the 1998 murders of (two) detectives…so why do so many
Australians have such a charitable opinion of police?killer Kelly?"
"'I have a dark view of the whole cult of Ned Kelly,' psychologist
Ronald Conway says bluntly. …It is about time we found a new hero…
It is time it lay down and died,' Conway says of the romantic version
of the legend."
"If it is possible to argue justification for Kelly's crimes, in
the light of the harshness of his era,
then it is also easy to find parallels with modern examples of criminal
barbarity for which there is no justification. In the trial, of Debs and
Roberts… Substitute the names and dates and you have Kelly and his
gang."
"The author of the History of Australian Bushranging, Charles
White… wrote … The Kellys lived in an atmosphere of crime and
luxuriated in robbery and violence, he said, the family being "root
and branch morally diseased". Ned was brought up to hate police,
as were Debs and Roberts a century later…"
"… more cold-blooded killer than freedom fighter."
"… Because of Kelly's Irish Catholic heritage in a colony run
largely by Protestants, the cult had religious overtones. Irish immigrants
saw justification in Kelly's crime spree for real and imagined grievances…
The cult that arose in those times, and which, persists even now, had
more to do with the observer's agenda than the truth of Kelly's behaviour."
"US author Bill Bryson, soon to return to Australia for another writing
project, was the bushranger's harshest critic after the research he did
for Downunder, his book on Australia that became an international
bestseller. 'Kelly was a murderous thug who deserved to be hanged and
was,' Bryson concluded."
"In the exhibition, the four suits of armour… Perhaps more fascinating
is the public display of the so?called Jerilderie Letter… It is an
insight into the mind of a killer who thought himself to be morally superior
to the common criminals of his time, for it is a declaration of Independence
for the oppressed. The letter makes him an unusual criminal. But it hardly
means his violence can be excused or even forgiven all these years later."
"Not only did he kill the three policemen in the Wombat Ranges, Kelly
was willing for many more to die at Glenrowan siege. … Who, in the
final analysis, did he kill or threaten or put at risk? Not the rich.
Not the privileged. Just ordinary people, police and civilian volunteers…"
"Ronald Conway's contention that Ned Kelly is a false hero is as
sound as the State Library's new exhibition is compelling for its portrayal
of a legend that never ends."
One is availed by curiosity about why the article's content was in noticeable
contradiction to its apparent purpose, i.e. to promote the State
Library's Kelly Culture exhibition. Why on earth would any
sponsor of an exhibition, chose to give such overtly negative publicity
to the central figure of the exhibition they seek to publicise? While
attempting to promote the exhibition it sponsors, the Sunday Herald Sun
seems to have tried to persuade its readership that Ned Kelly should be
rejected as an Australian icon. The obvious flow on to which, in pragmatic
terms, would be the reduction of interest in the exhibition. One also
wonders just how happy the exhibition organiser's, at the State Library
of Victoria, are with this article from their sponsor. The only thing
we see promoted successfully in this piece is Bill Bryson's next 'writing
project'.
In
trying to understand why the article does little to promote the exhibition,
one reads further searching for a clue to an alternative agenda. A clue
comes in the form of an obscure quote from Bill Bryson, author
of the book Down Under, (a lighthearted impression of Australia
by an American tourist). Given the large number of books on the subject
of Ned Kelly, the choice of Bryson is a strange one.
Bryson
doesn't profess to have any historical knowledge of Victoria in the late
19th century, nor is he, for that matter, an historian, or a sociologist.
Nevertheless Mr Ballantine attempts to make a strong case for Ned
Kelly's apparently evil nature, with the use of a quote from Bryson's
tour book, which he claims is a conclusion Bryson reached after doing
"research". The 'research', according to Bryson's book, was
actually to have spent a few days with a friend, who gave him a very personal
version of Kelly's history. The key to the mystery of this article seems
to lie with the friend's identity. The source of Mr Bryson's 'research'
and the information that lead him to the conclusion that Ned Kelly was
"a murderous thug who deserved to be hanged", was none other
than - Alan Howe, the editor of - the Sunday Herald Sun ! Mr Howe's
low opinion of Ned Kelly is no secret. It appears to the reader as though
the hand of the journalist Mr Ballantine was, in some manner, directed
by his editor.
So
while it is easy to get outraged, or frustrated, by the inaccuracies and
blatant bias in this opinion piece, it may be more productive to remember
just who printed the propaganda-like article and why. Consider too, that
the legend of Ned Kelly has survived far worse than this small article,
and that most Australians who read it will ultimately make up their own
minds. So we believe it is better to simply disregard such sensationalistic
journalism. Studying or arguing each error in the article would give it
more credibility than it deserves.
Mr
Ballantine struggles to understand Kelly's legendary status; perhaps this
is because he has not looked beyond the Stringybark Creek incident. There
is a considerable weight of research to suggest that the Kelly legend
was founded on what he did after he became an outlaw, not for the unfortunate
and regrettable incident that caused him to be outlawed.
24/01/03 Bushfires at Powers
Lookout (Greg Naylor)
According to King Valley Community
Profile Update
Fire broke out about 5.00
pm on Saturday, 18th January, down the Power's Lookout Road. It was attended
by ten tankers coming from as far afield as Bonnie Doon. At a time when
the North East bushfires
are making increasing demands on fire fighting resources, this is an outstanding
turnout.
There was some confusion early on when crews were directed to the Kelly
Tree at Tatong to find no fire in that area. These crews were redirected
to Powers Lookout which possibly accounts for so many units turning out.
Fortunately, the weather conditions were mild and the fire was able to
be contained within a few hectares. Water bombing was also used to drop
water from the sky. By 1.00 am, the fire crews had the fire under control
and proceeded to put it out. Sunday was spent mopping up by the relief
crews on the Whitfield, Edi Upper, Cheshunt and Myrrhee tankers. The cause
of the
fire is to be investigated.
21/01/03
Kelly Exhibition at the State Library
Kelly
Culture - Reconstructing Ned Kelly
Where:
Keith Murdoch Gallery, State Library of Victoria, 328 Swanston Street,
Melbourne.
When: Friday 28 February to Sunday 25 May 2003
Cost: FREE
Hours: Open daily from 10am - 5pm and until 9pm on Wednesday. Closed
public holidays.
Inquiries: 03 8664 7000 or visit www.statelibrary.vic.gov.au
Exhibition sponsors: Principal: AAMI, Supporting: BHP
Billiton, Fujitsu, United International Pictures Media : Network Ten,
Sunday Herald Sun, 3AW
The State Library of Victoria's
free exhibition Kelly Culture: Reconstructing Ned Kelly explores the enduring
presence of Ned Kelly within Australian culture.
Kelly Culture provides a unique insight into the impact of the Ned Kelly
myth on Australian cinema, visual arts, literature, performing arts and
music, as revealed through a rich array of posters, photographs, paintings,
music and a film loop of extracts from the many Kelly movies.
One of Australia's greatest
icons, Ned Kelly's armour is on public
display in its most complete form, along with the other three suits worn
by the Kelly Gang. For the first time, Ned's armour
is displayed with shoulder plates as a result of the State Library of
Victoria's acquisition of one shoulder plate at auction in 2001 and a
generous loan of the other from Museum Victoria. An historic exchange
of armour pieces in 2002 between the State Library and the Victoria Police
also helped to reconstruct Ned Kelly's suit of armour.
The exhibition brings together, also for the first time, the State Library
of Victoria's extensive collection of key original artefacts associated
with Ned Kelly and his Gang, including the Jerilderie
Letter, a death mask and a rifle
that had belonged to Ned Kelly. The exhibition is further enriched with
a broad range of major loans from public and private collections around
Australia, including paintings by Sidney
Nolan and Albert Tucker.
Ned Kelly is constantly being
recreated in contemporary culture, such as in Peter Carey's novel, True
History of the Kelly Gang, in the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000
Olympic Games and in Gregor Jordan's new film, Ned Kelly, starring Heath
Ledger. Kelly Culture reflects Ned Kelly's universal appeal throughout
the decades. Whether he's seen as 'larrikin' Kelly, 'mad-and-bad' Kelly,
'gentleman' Kelly or 'heroic' Kelly, he remains an enduring symbol of
our Australian national identity.
7/01/03
Iron Helmets, Smoking Guns
The making of the Australian bushranger myth
Australian Centre for the
Moving Image (Federation Square, Melbourne) is presenting a collection
of films from Thursday 30 January - Monday 3
February 2003
Including a chance to win two double
passes to the World Premiere of 'Ned Kelly',
staring Heath Ledger, simply fill out an entry form when you purchase
a ticket to any session of Iron Helmets, Smoking Guns (Session
times below)
The most notorious
figure in our historical landscape, the Australian Bushranger has been
smoking up the screen from the silent films of the early 1900s to contemporary
Australian shorts and features.
Iron Helmets, Smoking Guns explores the cultural significance of the bushranger
genre and its role in mythologising the Australian bush bandit. Celluloid
incarnations from doomed hero of the silent era to pop icon of the 21st
century have charted Australia's relationship with this classic anti-hero.
The initial depiction of the bushranger as a victim of an oppressive and
unjust authoritarian regime resulted in a censorship ban in 1912 - an
act that impacted on the anti-authoritarian sensibilities and political
subtext of later bushranger narratives. Throughout the 20th century a
number of local and international films have been produced that continued
to perpetuate the myth of this iconic Australian legend.
5/12/02 'Ned Kelly Rides
again, New interpretations of a dubious hero' (Susan Owens)
According to The Australian Financial Review
Not every Australian can have
a Sidney Nolan painting of Ned Kelly, but next March plenty of people
will be able to indulge their fascination with the Irish outlaw and own
a Margaret Olley, John Firth-Smith, Garry Shead or John Coban Ned Kelly.
Arts for Heritage, a new committee, has recognised that Ned - the subject
of a $31 million film which is projected to set box office records when
it opens in the New Year - has come as close as any figure in Australian
history to achieving true rock-star celebrity status. Now Ned moves closer
and closer to becoming a fully-fledged industry, the heritage committee
has seized on the Kelly mystique.
Looking for a clever way to raise funds for the not-for-profit National
Trust, which is committed to restoring Norman Lindsay's house in the Blue
Mountains west of Sydney and Government House Parramatta, the Arts for
Heritage committee asked 20 artists to depict Kelly for a themed exhibition
and sale of works entitled, Ned Kelly Framed.
Bell Poter Securities has come on board as the first sponsor and will
co-host a dinner and auction at the SH Ervine Gallery (in The Rocks Sydney)
next March, when the works are expected to raise up to $300,00. The date
is exactly 123 years from the day Kelly was hanged at Old Melbourne Gaol,
in March 1880.
Mambo artist Reg Mombassa identifies with Kelly as a contemporary
figure: "My intrigue with Ned is the fact that he was an outsider,
fighting the corrupt police and a harsh repressive government."
Elsa Atkin, executive director of The National Trust (NSW),
says the elements fuelling the Kelly frenzy include "the international
acclaim for Peter Carey's Booker Prize-winning True History of the Kelly
Gang, the outlaw's famed appearance at the Olympic Games, and the film
Ned Kelly, staring Heath Ledger..."(sic)
Mombassa is well acquainted with Kelly: "From his writing,
the real Ned was politically motivated, a larrikin, a hooligan and a thug.
Today he would have been an armed robber, with a shotgun drinking lots
of beer, smoking bongs and listening to rock and roll. He's got some Robin
Hood characteristics too."
Prime Minister Howard's desire for closer ties between business and the
arts and the perceived view that fundraising is bogged down in a rash
of charity dinners, inspired the Arts for Heritage committee to find a
fresh fundraising formula.
"Choosing Ned Kelly, who means different things to different people,
will result in a diverse collection of works from important artists,"
says Atkin. "To some people he is a victim of circumstances,
a national hero, embodying the Australian spirit of egalitarianism, mateship,
love of family and an understanding of the bush combined with a dash of
recklessness and courage."
Note: Ned was not hung in March
of 1880 as stated in this article; he was hung on the 11th of November
1880. He was also Australian born, not Irish.
While raising funds for The National Trust is an important pursuit, perhaps
some of the money raised from art depicting Ned Kelly should be directed
at helping to preserve and save his legacy, such as the restoration of
the Kelly homestead in Beveridge.
28/10/02 'Union buries the
hatchet' (Jason Frenkel)
According to The Herald Sun
Polo shirts, bomber jackets,
a sexual harassment course and a ban on Ned Kelly are part of a
peace plan to stabilise one of Australia's most powerful unions.
The deal, signed this month
by warring factions of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, officially
ends a bitter two year brawl between the union's Victorian branch and
its national office.
It is a victory for national secretary Doug Cameron over the militant
Workers First group, headed by former state secretary Craig Johnston.
Bushranger Ned Kelly's image, which adorned the Workers First logo as
a symbol of its hardline stance, has been banned under the deal. Victorian
officials will instead be given two polo shirts, a bomber jacket, and
a denim shirt by the national office under the peace pact.
For full story go to http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,5371073%255E662,00.html
3/10/02 ironoutlaw.com hacked! (4/10/02 Brad has
fixed the problem!)
Anyone wondering why Brad Webb has changed ironoutlaw's homepage, and
is now being political about Islam? No he hasn't converted - he was hacked
into. Yes thanks, he does know about it and is now retifiying the problem.
In the mean time you can access any other part of ironoutlaw. Try www.ironoutlaw.com/html/feedback.html
instead.
10/09/02 'New light on Ned
Kelly' (Geraldine O'Brien)
According to Fairfax smh.com.au
More than a year and about
$16,000 later, a swag of documents relating to the Glenrowan siege and
the capture of Ned Kelly has been returned to the State Records office
after disappearing from its files.
State Records staff say the case highlights the frustrations of recovering
estrays, items officially belonging to government archives that are lost,
stolen or strayed and appear too often for the archivists' liking in auction
catalogues and second-hand shops.
The Kelly items disappeared
probably before 1935, when they were transferred from the Mitchell Library.
They included telegrams between the offices of the NSW and Victorian colonial
secretaries, which announced the capture of Ned Kelly.
Another gives a vivid update: "Dan Kelly and Hart covered with
shot proof armour have thrown doors of hotel open and have let all civilians
out and are now calling upon the police to come in. Bullets flying in
all directions. The two remaining members of the gang cannot hold out
much longer."
With four other items, including a letter and minute drafted by Sir Henry
Parkes about the reward for the gang's capture, they were offered for
sale by Lawsons auctioneers (now Lawson Menzies) in August last year.
According to Alan Ventress,
associate director, city, of State Records, Lawsons was warned the items
were estrays and should be withdrawn from sale. But the company claimed
it had legal advice the sale could go ahead. After an exchange of correspondence,
the items were withdrawn but Lawsons was reluctant to divulge the name
of the would be vendor, who had been told the documents could fetch up
to $40,000.
By January formal threats of legal action were made. In February solicitors
for Lawsons replied, saying the company did "not wish to be obstructive
in this matter but is most reluctant to hand out personal information
about its customers". It was a lucky break for State Records
when the vendor, incensed at the loss of his windfall, rang Mr Ventress.
"He phoned and called me a bloody mongrel because he was expecting
to get $40,000 from the sale."
"But these had obviously been gone from the archives for some
time and ... we don't want to disadvantage people, so we got two independent
valuations."
The vendor - who told Mr Ventress he had been given the papers by his
father, who was now suffering from Alzheimer's disease - was paid $10,500.
It was, according to State Records staff, galling to have to pay for the
recovery of their own material, including $6000 in legal fees. But Mr
Ventress said his staff did spend "a fair amount of time tracking
things down, and I hope the message will now get out to the second-hand
dealers and the auctioneers".
21/08/02 Melbourne Fringe
Festival 2002
Ned Kelly by Ashley
Davies and Ian Jones
October 7, 8 and 9 at Chapel off Chapel For full
details go to www.ironoutlaw.com
(or phone (03) 9531 4046 or, email Ashley on ashdavies@smartchat.net.au)
8/08/02 'Talking about Treasures,
Ned Kelly - Man of Letters'
Source The Age
This talk examines the Jerilderie
letter, as well as many other letters written by Ned Kelly in an attempt
to argue his case before the Victorian public. Presented by Jock Murphy,
Manuscripts Librarian, State Library of Victoria.
Talking about Treasures offers a unique opportunity for a close view of
treasures from the Library collections, including rare books, maps, manuscripts,
pictures and memorabilia.
When?
Wednesday 14th
August, 2-3pm.
Where? At the State Library. Conference Centre, Entry 3, La Trobe
Street
Cost? $10/$8
Bookings: Phone: (03) 8664 7016
26/07/02 New Kelly website
Mike Lawson webmaster of www.kellyoutbreak
has just launched a new site devoted to Ned's best friend, and trusted
right-hand man, Joseph Byrne.
It can be found at http://www.joeonline.tr.cx
18/07/02 'Old courtroom sets
scene for Ned's success'
According to The Border Mail
Ned Kelly's story is still
generating a lot of interest in the North East with the popular re-enactment
of The Trial of Ned Kelly to be staged again this weekend at Beechworth.
It is the fourth time Ned's trial has been re-enacted by the Beechworth
Theatre Company at the Beechworth Court House and director Mr Ian
Sinclair believes its recipe for success is the historic location.
"The real draw card is the actor gets to stand exactly where Ned
stood and the audience can be a part of the drama as jury members,"
he said.
Performances are on Saturday
and Sunday at 2pm and 8pm. Tickets are available at the door. They cost
$12 for adults and $8 for concession holders.
16/07/02 'Deep concern ...
no bail'
According to The Midland Express
A movable billboard referring
to Ned Kelly which raised a number of complaints, has been linked to a
case before the Kyneton magistrates court on July 11. Magistrate Spillane
turned down the second bail application by a Mr Dale O'Sullivan,
saying in his decision, Mr O'Sullivan's behavior toward Kyneton policeman,
Sgt. Graeme Jenner, was "almost a vendetta and causes me
deep concern".
On March 28, 2002, a placard
on a trailer, beside the Cadella Park property near Woodend, led to public
complaints. It apparently had urged the public to 'declare war on Kyneton
police' and another message said 'Ned Kelly started it, it's not over
yet'. It was believed this referred to the Stringybark Creek murders of
1878. Then on June 4 a similar placard on a trailer outside the Supreme
Court in Melbourne had led to further complaints.
 Transcript:
DECLARE WAR on KYNETON POLICE
Ned Kelly started in 1870
and it's not over yet
Sir Sidney Nolan "continued the rage"
with
his Kelly paintings.
Today fearless civil righters
"continue rage" for police reforms
Join now (phone number) become aware.
11/07/02 Forthcoming book
release...
Hyland House Publishing
will soon be releasing a new Kelly book. The book by Dr Seal, will
be titled 'Tell em I died game', and should be
released in early August.
12/06/02 'Ned's head' (Domain)
According to The Age
An architect designed bush-setting
weekender, 'evokes romantic thoughts of Ned Kelly and his gang of outlaws'.
The designer and builder David Luck, compares the design and form
of the house with Ned Kelly's helmet. He told The Age, "The living
room is like Kelly's head. The other room is like his spine."
It seems there is no limit to what Ned's
armour will inspire!?!
11/05/02 Herald Sun 'Author
Peter Carey up for richest prize' (Shaunagh O'Connor)
Peter Carey could be
$170,000 richer on Monday if he wins the world's most valuable literary
prize. The Melbourne-born author's multi-award winning True History
of the Kelly Gang is up for the prestigious International Impac
Dublin Literary Award, worth 100,000 euros.
Carey, a dual Booker Prize winner now based in New York, is the only Australian
in the shortlist of seven. (Those include The Blind Assassin by
Margaret Atwood and The Years of Laura Diaz by Carlos Fuentes.)
Tourism
17/01/03
Bushranger may hold key to Jerilderie prosperity (Anthony Bunn)
According to The Border Mail
Jerilderie is relying on bushranger
Ned Kelly, who has been dead for 122 years, to help lead the towns recovery
from drought and economic downturn. The town, population 1100, is staging
its first Jerilderie Letter Day on February 6.
The 8000-word letter, which outlines Kellys actions, was dictated by the
bushranger in 1879 and was intended to be published in the Jerilderie
and Urana Gazette. It is now part of the collection of the State Library
of Victoria.
Jerilderie Shire Councils general manager Mr Charles Gentner said
the commemorative day would help trigger a tourist boom based on the Kelly
connection. A highlight of the day will be the signing of an agreement
between the Jerilderie Shire and the Rural City of Wangaratta, which encompasses
Glenrowan, the site of the Kelly Gangs last stand. "In this current
drought situation theres opportunities through this Ned Kelly arrangement
to open up other businesses," Mr Gentner said. Mr Gentner said
a 90-page document, which included a business plan, had been compiled
to ensure the town properly capitalised on its Kelly connection. "We
believe its a whole town, do-or-die situation," he said.
Mr Gentner said the town |had an advantage over Glenrowan because its
buildings from the Kelly era were still standing. However, its estimated
$450,000 would need to be spent to adequately restore the buildings and
create suitable walkways and plaques to accompany them. Mr Gentner said
the agreement with Wangaratta would allow the municipalities to integrate
marketing campaigns and swap artefacts relating to the Kelly era. He said
the Jerilderie Letter Day had been mooted following the success of the
Glenrowan siege commemorative dinner held in June. And with the 125th
anniversary of the letter in 2004, Mr Gentner said this years event would
be a good opportunity to prepare for the milestone. He said by that stage
Kelly fever would have risen to new heights with the release of the movie
starring Heath Ledger and an Irish-Australian film documentary on the
outlaw.
Source: www.bordermail.com.au/newsflow/pageitem?page_id=535245
13/01/03
Kelly cell to unlock tourism (Anthony Bunn)
According to The Border Mail
Parish set to revamp historic
site. A holding cell that once housed infamous bushranger Ned Kelly will
be restored as a tourist attraction at Benalla.
The Federal Government has pledged $16,000 to Benallas Anglican parish
which is responsible for the metal barred cell attached to the towns historic
courthouse dating to 1865. The rectors warden for the parish, Ms Pauline
Messenger, said the money would be spent on restoring the cell to
its 19th century condition. It has been modified for modern use with a
hot water supply and shelves that hold various church records. Ms Messenger
said there had been initial reluctance towards the restoration by some
parishioners concerned about highlighting the Kelly connection. "But
they are now prepared to go along with it," Ms Messenger said.
"It could earn a small amount of revenue which could help maintain
the building." Ms Messenger also said photos and memorabilia
were now being sought to form an exhibition to accompany the opening of
the restored cell, which she hoped would occur later this year.
Kelly had been held in the cell before he appeared at the court on charges
such as robbery, drunk and disorderly and riding a horse on a footpath.
The parish has maintained the courthouse since 1960 and it forms part
of its facility in Arundel St which also includes a church and surveyors
building. "Were very fortunate to have them, but the upkeep of them
is a tremendous drain," Ms Messenger said.
The member for Indi, Ms Sophie Panopoulos, said the Government
had provided the grant after she was first approached by church members
in the middle of last year. "Without doubt it is important for
the people of Benalla and indeed our State, that this historic building
be maintained as the buildings significant social and cultural associations
provide evidence of the history of settlement in Victoria," Ms
Panopoulos said.
Source: www.bordermail.com.au/newsflow/pageitem?page_id=532943
27/11/02 Labor pledges $1.8
million to Glenrowan (Philip Nolan)
According to the Wangaratta Chronicle
A "World class”
heritage precinct at Glenrowan will receive $1.8m in funding...if the
State Labor Government is re-elected on Saturday.
Minister for State and Regional
Development, John Brumby, made the announcement at the Glenrowan Railway
Station yesterday. He said the money would come from the Community Support
Fund and would establish a precinct in recognition of Ned Kelly's famous
last stand at Glenrowan. "The site has got national and international
significance and the trick is to have appropriate infrastructure in place.
This grant is what that is all about.”
22/11/02 'Ned Kelly landmark
to be added to heritage list'
According to ABC News Online
The site of Ned Kelly's legendary
last stand will be added to the Victorian Heritage Register. The site
at Glenrowan where the siege took place will be the 2,000th addition to
the list.
Heritage Council chair Chris Gallagher says Ned Kelly is one of
the most recognised names in Australian history. "I think increasingly
there is a growing interest of people in their local history, particularly
when they know it's made a major contribution on a national scale,"
he said.
Story
http://abc.net.au/news/australia/2002/11/item20021121164850_1.htm
22/11/02 Kelly's sites off
limits (Larissa Dubecki)
According to The Age
The location of the Kelly
Gang's last stand in Glenrowan has been declared a heritage site and will
be protected from development. The area includes the railway line and
platform near where the Kelly gang had planned to derail a train, and
the site of Jones' Glenrowan Inn, where the gang took captives on June
28, 1880. The inn was razed by police during the siege in which gang members
Dan Kelly, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart were trapped and killed. Surviving
landmarks from the siege include the stationmaster's house, which has
been relocated to the north of the site, and the railway platform, which
has been remodelled.
The statement of cultural
heritage significance prepared by Heritage Victoria describes the town
of Glenrowan as central to the Kelly legend. "The members lived
in the district and spent much time there among a population generally
sympathetic to the outlaws," it says. "The siege, the
police cordon, the capture of Ned and the burning of the Glenrowan Inn
are firmly implanted in Australian folklore."
Heritage Council chairwoman Chris Gallagher said: "We will
look to see if there is a story to tell through spent bullets in the soil
and artefacts from the demolished pubs."
The listing means that any major development on the site will need a permit.
For full story go to http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/11/21/1037697805669.html
21/11/02 Trial
Dave White was in Beechworth
on the weekend, for his review of the trial re-enactment take a look here...
6/11/02 Waking Ned Kelly
According to The Free Press Kilmore
The Beveridge Festival
'Waking Ned Kelly' is being held on Saturday 30th November 2002,
at the Beveridge Reserve, from 10am to 4pm.
*Free entry *Kiki the clown *CHA & SES *Ned Kelly and Colonial costume
competitions.
*Food & stalls *Jumping castle and more.
Come and join us for a day of family fun.
For more information, call Lisa on ph. 9745 2031
12/11/02 Trial re-enactment
this weekend...
The Trial of Ned Kelly, will
be re-enacted at the Beechworth Court House over the Celtic Festival
weekend on November 16 and 17.
For more info see below or
for the festival website click here.
24/10/02 'A tale of twists
and turns' (Karen Heinrich) Ned Kelly themed
hedge maze
According to The Age
Hedge mazes first sprouted
in English country gardens more than 400 years ago, yet these three-dimensional,
giant walk-in puzzles have become more popular than ever in the technologically
charged 21st century. And Australians, it seems, are enchanted.
One more was officially added to the list today. In 1992, when Jane
and Hohn Starey inherited Boorara, Jane's parents 400-hectare farm
near Avenel in the Strathbogie Ranges, neither
of them knew quite what to do with it. "We looked into growing
exotic trees, garlic, olives, grapes and keeping alpacas, worms and emus,"
John says. "Then jane read about Ashcrombe Maze on the Mornington
Peninsula, mentioned it to me and my response was, 'What are you talking
about?' …I had no real concept of that hedge mazes were all about."
Inspired by the more than a dozen mazes in the Garden State, Victoria,
the Stareys bought 1368 tiny cypress macracarpa tress, and planted them
in the shape of two boomerangs "to make a gesture towards the Aboriginal
people who were here in quite some numbers in times past", John says.
That was six years ago, when the trees were a few centimeters high. They
have bloomed to almost 1.8 meters. Fisher encouraged the couple to theme
their maze around Ned Kelly, who, with his gang, once rode the rugged
hills and ranges. "We wanted the maze to have something of that,"
Jane says. "We wanted it to have a resonance of those days, to
be much more than just a place where you wander through high hedging,
getting nowhere. We wanted Avenel Maze t be a puzzle, but… much more
involving and more fun solving than traditional mazes."
The theme is fitting, giving that an 11-year-old Ned Kelly saved 7-year-old
Dick Shelton from drowning at Avenel. To show their thanks, the Sheltons
presented Kelly with a green silk sash, which 14 years later he was wearing
beneath his armour when he was gunned down at the Glenrowan siege. And
Kelly's father, Red, is buried in the Avenel Cemetery.
Kelly sculptures are dotted throughout the mazes, made out of plough metal
by local artist Helen Brook. Fisher designed the Police Maze and the Bushranger
Maze, a baffling stepping stone maze, and Ned's Knots, a rope maze that
quickly entangles, and Red's Way, a meandering, kilometer-long labyrinth
path of granite rock. But unlike most mazes, Red's path which, when walked,
is amazingly therapeutic.
The enduring appeal of a hedge
maze, Fisher says, is that they are "immensely sociable, anyone
can join in the fun, and you proceed at your own pace. Mazes are one of
the best things a whole family can do together, two and even three generations
at once."
John says mazes are testaments to human ingenuity and to a love of puzzles
as old as time. "Mazes are like life. You just never know where
your next turn will take you."
Avenel Maze is open 10am to 5pm every Thursday
through to Monday of the year, except Christmas Day and the month of August.
Ph. (03) 5796 2300
23/10/02 'Trial re-enactment'
According to the North East Tourist News (Thanks
to Libby Scullie for use of this article)
One of Australia's greatest
ever court dramas, The Trial of Ned Kelly, will be re-enacted at the Beechworth
Court House over the Celtic Festival weekend on November
16 and 17.
The trial has been staged by the Beechworth Theatre Company each
year and is based on the actual court transcripts of both the committal
hearing at the Beechworth Court House and the full trial held in Melbourne
in 1880.
The production provides a great opportunity to experience history and
learn more about the legend of Ned Kelly.
Matinee performances are held each day but make sure you book early as
there is limited seating available. For some lucky men they also get the
chance of sitting on the jury, but women are excluded as was the custom
at the time.
The festival attracts thousands of visitors each year to Beechworth with
an array of music, dancing, food and markets celebrating the Celtic influence
of the region and this year will also see the return of the colorful parade
of the Celts.
Enquiries: celtic@beechworth.com or cathayoc@netc.net.au
Updated
8/10/02* 23/09/02 Kelly gang may visit
North East
According to The
Border Mail
Historian seeks role for Glenrowan
A Ned Kelly memorabilia exhibition proposed by the Victorian Government
should visit Glenrowan, a North East Kelly historian said yesterday. Mr
Gary Dean, who also operates a Kelly-inspired tourism business
at Glenrowan, said the town was a significant part of the Kelly gang history
and it was appropriate for the exhibition to visit the scene of the final
Kelly siege.
Mr Dean said he was aware of an enormous amount of Kelly-related material
"lying around" but wondered whether some of the owners
of the links to the notorious bushranger would display it. He said owners
would be worried their memorabilia might be reclaimed by the Government,
although this would require the Government declaring it to have been stolen.
But he said a touring exhibition sounded like a great idea.
The Victorian Premier, Mr Steve Bracks, announced yesterday it
was aiming to hold the "biggest single exhibition of Ned Kelly
artefacts and memorabilia" next year. A Government committee,
headed by Arts Minister Ms Mary Delahunty, has been formed to investigate
bringing together artefacts held by various government agencies including
the State Library and Public Record Office. "I have asked the
committee to look at the option of touring the exhibition to regional
Victoria," Mr Bracks said. "This is a story that all
Victorians are interested in and we would like to ensure that everyone
has the opportunity to experience it."
The exhibition could include rare memorabilia, artefacts and documents
from government and non-government sources. Yesterday, a Government spokeswoman
said it was possible the exhibition could become permanent. Mr Dean said
in the event the exhibition became permanent it could be located at Glenrowan.
Interest in Kelly grew following the release of Peter Careys award-winning
novel, The True History of the Kelly Gang, and is expected to increase
further with the release next year of the film
based on Kelly featuring Australian actor, Heath Ledger.
30/08/02 '$10m for Ned town'
(Michelle Rose)
According to The Herald Sun
A $10 million tourism precinct
has been planned for the site where Ned Kelly was captured in June 1880.
The site of the Kelly Gang's
final siege has been recommended for heritage listing. The siege of June
26-28 happened after plans by the Kelly Gang to ambush and derail a police
train at Glenrowan failed. Gang members Dan Kelly, Joe Byrne and Steve
Hart died in the siege.
The Heritage Council will
consider adding the 8ha Glenrowan site to the Victorian Heritage Register.
Included would be the railway platform, the stationmaster's house, and
trees that existed at the time of the siege. Also covered would be the
site of Jones's Glenrowan Inn, where the bushrangers held out, and the
former McConnell's hotel where Kelly sympathisers gathered.
Heritage Council spokeswoman Jane Thomas said it was rare for a whole
precinct to be recommended for inclusion. The site also had significant
archeological potential, she said. It is hoped remnants of the stump where
Ned Kelly was captured, bullets and other buildings, which existed at
the time, might be found underground.
A plan for a tourism heritage
precinct at the site has been developed by the Rural City of Wangaratta,
community group Glenrowan Improvers and Tourism Victoria. The plans include
construction of a hi-tech interactive Ned Kelly visitors' centre. Mayor
Irene Grant said it was hoped the precinct would attract 600,000 visitors
a year.
A final decision on listing
is expected after a Heritage Council committee hearing in October.
www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,4997856%255E2862,00.html
30/07/02
'Ned delivers tourism cash' (Phillip Nolan)
Winter edition of the North East Tourist News (Thanks
to Libby Scullie for use of this article)
The ongoing development of
Glenrowan as a major tourism icon has taken another step forward with
the announcement of a $60,000 Federal Government funding package. The
money will be used to assist in the development of a business plan to
guide the development of the Glenrowan Tourism Precinct.
Sophie Panopoulos (MHR, Indi), announced the grant today under
the Regional Assistance Program, which provides seed funding for projects
which provide "local solutions to local issues". "This
project provides a great opportunity to develop local employment and sustainable
growth which will benefit the whole community," Ms Panopoulos
said.
The news was welcomed by mayor
of the Rural City of Wangaratta, Cr Irene Grant.
"It is very pleasing news, as it will allow us to move the whole
project another step forward. The master plan, completed recently by Chris
Dance and Associates, has identified just what can be done, and now the
business plan will guide us in how we go about it," Cr Grant
said. She said the business plan would focus on costs and priorities and
would enable much fuller scoping of the project. "There is no
doubt that the potential for Glenrowan is enormous. The town currently
attracts over 250,000 visitors per year, and we will be looking to double
that in a fairly short space of time. Obviously that will grow even further
as the master plan takes shape," Cr Grant said, adding that Tourism
Victoria, which is backing the development, has identified the potential
increased visitation level to 750,000 per annum.
She praised the involvement of the Glenrowan community in the project
to date. "They have been very supportive and their input into
the development of the plan has been excellent," Cr Grant said.
The business plan will look
at the viability of key elements of the Glenrowan Heritage Tourism Precinct
and form the basis for attracting both public and private sector investments.
22/05/02
Update on Kelly Tourist Trail
(refer 'Capitalising on Ned Kelly' article)
Further to our report about
Mitchell, Delatite, Strathbogie and Wangaratta councils plan for a joint
Ned Kelly tourist trail, D. White spoke to Bronwyn Mumford from
Mitchell Shire today (22/05/02).
Bronwyn told him that at present the four shires involved are examining
the best way to approach the tourist trail. She said they are looking
into such issues as information brochures and funding.
20/03/02 Source The Free
Press (The Victorian Country Press Association)
'Capitalising on Ned Kelly'
A tourist trail to capitalise
on the life of legendary Bushranger Ned Kell |
