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Ned Kelly did not say Tell 'em I died! But well he might have -- and many people believe he did. Graham Seal's classic study of the Ned Kelly legend shows that, in a sense, facts are unimportant. Many generations of Australians have needed to believe in Ned Kelly, and have tailored his legend to fit their needs. The recent upsurge in Ned Kelly is the latest phase in a tradition that has taken Ned from bush Robin Hood and folk hero to media obsession and national icon, projected to the world as part of the 2000 Sydney Olympics celebrations. Regardless of the facts, the bushranger who murdered policemen and robbed banks remains Australia's best-loved villain -- or hero?
The Kelly clan had hoped for a better lot in Australia than in Ireland. In the new colony, however, they found themselves once again destined to lives of poverty, rejection and powerlessness. With their dream of dignity, freedom and land denied them, some succumbed, others rebelled. Since his death in the old Melbourne Gaol on 11 November 1880, Ned Kelly has become a part of the land and its memories. In this evocative, imaginative recreation of the Kelly story, John Molony unravels the tangled skein of a life over which legend has cast a spell.
Love him or loathe him, Ned Kelly has been at the heart of Australian culture and identity since he and his Gang were tracked down in bushland by the Victorian police and came out fighting, dressed in bulletproof iron armour made from farmers’ ploughs. Historians still disagree over virtually every aspect of the eldest Kelly boy’s brushes with the law. Did he or did he not shoot Constable Fitzpatrick at their family home? Was he a lawless thug or a noble Robin Hood, a remorseless killer or a crusader against oppression and discrimination? Was he even a political revolutionary, an Australian republican channelling the spirit of Eureka? Peter FitzSimons, bestselling chronicler of many of t...
As he flees the police, Ned Kelly scribbles his narrative in semiliterate but magically descriptive prose. To his pursuers he is a thief and a murderer. To his own people he’s a hero for opposing the English. Ned, who saw his first prison cell at fifteen, has become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over towns and defying authority. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist. There are no sentences like these in all Australian literature and yet they could only have grown from our soil.
When the Kelly Gang rode to Jerilderie in January 1879 they heard people singing songs praising their exploits. Since then historians, novelists, film directors, journalists and commentators have regularly debated the events in Northeast Victoria in the late 1870s. THE NED KELLY ENCYCLOPAEDIA brings together over 800 articles covering people, places and themes connected with Ned Kelly and the Kelly Outbreak 1878-80. The biographical entries provide detailed information on the early life of all the major people involved with the Kelly Gang, along with descriptions of their family life and what direction their careers took after the execution of Ned Kelly. Most of this information has never appeared in one volume before. This synthesis of previously published and new information and interpretations for all the major events in Ned Kelly's life illuminates many hitherto unresearched elements of the Kelly story.
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Part of the award-winning Young Adult non-fiction series, The Drum. “Everyone looks on me like a black snake.” – Letter from Ned Kelly to Sergeant Babington, July 1870. Ned Kelly was a thief, a bank robber and a murderer. He was in trouble with the law from the age of 12. He stole hundreds of horses and cattle. He robbed two banks. He killed three men. Yet, when Ned was sentenced to death, thousands of people rallied to save his life. He stood up to the authorities and fought for what he believed in. He defended the rights of people who had no power. Was he a villain? Or a hero? What do you think?
Ned Kelly was hanged at the Old Melbourne Gaol on 11 November 1880, and his body buried in the graveyard there. Many stories emerged about his skull being separated and used as a paperweight or trophy, and it was finally put on display at the museum of the Old Melbourne Gaol — until it was stolen in 1978. It wasn’t only Ned Kelly’s skull that went missing. After the closure of the Old Melbourne Gaol in 1929, the remains of deceased prisoners were exhumed and reinterred in mass graves at Pentridge Prison. The exact location of these graves was unknown until 2002, when the bones of prisoners were uncovered at the Pentridge site during redevelopment. This triggered a larger excavation tha...
Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Other, grade: 2,0, University of Leipzig (Institut für Anglistik), course: The Australian Dream, language: English, abstract: Edward “Ned” Kelly, the head of the Kelly Gang, is a very diversely discussed person. Even nowadays, opinions differ here. Was he a cruel murderer or just a victim of society? Kelly is often compared to Robin Hood who presumably lived in the 13th century in England, Great Britain. It seems as if every culture has its very own antithetically valuated hero. The Australian bushranger Ned Kelly stands in one line with characters like Jesse James (1847-1882, born in Missouri, USA) and Ernesto “Che” Guevera (1928-1967, born in Rosario, Argentina). This paper will deal with Ned Kelly’s biography and today’s perception of him, especially regarding current fiction. In this context, I’ll have a look at Peter Carey’s book (published in 2000) and two of the many film versions about Kelly starring Mick Jagger and Heath Ledger in order to compare different perspectives of the bushranger.