The Updated CSI@SBC Report : $50 wasted!

Five years ago, in 2012 , a team of four amateur historians issued a report describing how they tried to work out exactly where the Kelly gang murdered the Policemen at Stringybark Creek. The Report was called “CSI@SBC”, but the central arguments of their case were fatally flawed, as I showed in my review of the report HERE. 

The CSI team have recently released an updated version of this original Report. This is how they announced it on a Members Only Internet forum a few weeks ago:

An updated report (ISBN: 978-0-9873615-2-3) will be released August 20. This report has further information reviewed and evaluated since the release of the CSI team's 2012 report.
This updated report includes:
* determining the location of the body of Sergeant Kennedy in relation to the police camp site determined by the team.
* an analysis of the shooting of Constable Lonigan.
* The location of the remains of a hut near to the police camp site - described in paragraphs 5.13, and 7.17 of the 2012 report, to which the team ascribes the strong possibility that this is the shingle hut referred to by Ned has now been examined by Heritage Victoria representatives this year.
* Photographs taken by the team since that examination are included in this update report.
* The serendipitous finding of a Spencer rifle bullet to the south of the police camp site determined by the team is also discussed and its location analysed relative to the police camp site.

Since the release of the 2012 report the team has not engaged in debate with those who post their comments and often uninformed views in various sites on the internet.
The Team has allowed the appropriate authorities to undertake an examination of the team's work and the claim of having determined the correct location for the site of the police camp at Stringybark Creek.

The team's conclusions and recommendations made in the original report are as valid today as they were in 2012.

There are a number of thing about this announcement that are worth commenting on. Firstly their refusal to engage in debate ‘with those who post their comments and often uninformed views in various sites on the internet’ confirms what I’ve said before about these people, that they are pseudo-scientists. A hallmark of real scientists is that they welcome and participate in discussions about the validity or otherwise of their findings.  But my open critiques of their work went unchallenged – are they too afraid to defend them? Their silence speaks volumes.

Secondly, what happened to Lonigan and Kennedy are interesting but how and where they died has nothing to do with the aim of the CSI teams research which was supposed to be to ‘determine the true location of the camp site at Stringybark Creek’ (changed from ‘establish the authentic location’ in the 2012 Report). As I showed in my critiques of the first version of this Report, it already contains a lot of irrelevant material that has nothing to do with the stated aim of the investigation. I called it 'padding'. So the question has to be asked : what is the point of adding even more  irrelevant material to the Report?  Are they trying to promote themselves as authorities on everything to do with SBC, and thereby gain some sorely needed legitimacy for their original Report? Do they think that by bulking up the Report it looks more impressive because it has more pages? I think its time these amateurs explained what the purpose of all this padding is.

Thirdly, I thought it curious that they announced that what the CSI team believes is the remains of a hut “has now been examined by Heritage Victoria representatives this year” but they don’t say what Heritage Victoria concluded about it. This statement is repeated in the Report itself, accompanying some photos of 'two rock piles' and photos of an area 'cleared by Heritage Victoria' . Elsewhere they say somewhat cryptically that ‘The Team has allowed the appropriate authorities to undertake an examination of the team's work and the claim of having determined the correct location for the site of the police camp at Stringybark Creek’ but again, don’t say what these un-named ‘appropriate authorities’ concluded.  As for saying they 'allowed' these authorities to undertake an examination of their site - what the hell are they talking about? Its not THEIR site, they don't own Stringybark Creek, and they don't have any control over any part of it. They're delusional to think they 'allowed' anyone to examine their site, as if they could have refused them permission to do so if they had wanted to. Its all very silly, this cloak-and-dagger, secret-squirrel kind of stuff, exposing a near  paranoid desire to play their cards close to their chest, to hint at things rather than state them directly. Its clear however they want to create an impression that they ‘allowed’ the appropriate authorities to visit and examine their site, and by not saying anything else hope that people will draw the conclusion that in some way their site was legitimated by this visit. 

I decided to write to Heritage Victoria to see what they had to say about their visit and examination of the CSI site. This is what I wrote:

Dear Sir

I have before me a publication titled "CSI@SBC : Update July 2017"

It’s a privately published document that purports to have identified the site of the Police camp at Stringybark Creek in the Toombullup Ranges, the place were Ned Kelly murdered three policemen in 1878.

The authors state on page  94 "In 2017 the site of the remains of a hut described in paragraphs 5.13 and 7.17 of this Report has now been examined by Heritage Victoria representatives" I’ve not been able to find any reference to this site visit anywhere on your Web pages, but would like to know some detail about which of your representatives made the site visit and examination, and what their conclusions were. I expect a Report of some kind would be made of this inspection, so if it was available, I would be most interested in receiving a copy

Many thanks for our assistance

Their reply stunned me, and exposes the CSI teams claims to be false:

Good morning Dee,

There has been no formal inspection of this site undertaken by this office.
We have briefly visited the Stringybark Creek Site approximately twice this year, but did not undertake any archaeological survey. Both visits were opportunistic as we were in the area to visit other heritage properties.

This year there were some limited archaeological investigation within the area of registration.
The excavation was not undertaken by Heritage Victoria staff members. A report on the findings of this excavation will be made publically available when it is submitted. This report is not yet due and I am not aware of what the conclusions are, as the analysis is still ongoing.
I am happy to distribute a copy to you when it is submitted to us.

We did visit the site briefly during the excavation, but again this was not a formal inspection.

Kind regards,

(name withheld) 
Archaeologist.

Shall I spell it out? The CSI teams claim that their site ‘has now been examined by Heritage Victoria” is at best a deliberate misrepresentation of the truth, at worst an outright lie. It didn’t happen. Two ‘brief’ ‘opportunistic’ visits are a very far cry from the impression the CSI Team are trying to create with their tricky use of words. This is a disgraceful way to behave. Their credibility has sunk to a new desperate low.

The 'limited archaeological investigation' mentioned by Heritage Victoria in their letter to me, I suspect was something carried out by Adam Ford as part of the forthcoming "Lawless" documentary which lists him as the production teams archaeologist. We will all find out later this month when the episode about Ned Kelly goes to air on Foxtel. However if the Documentary mentions the CSI rock pile at all, except to say theres no possibility it marks the site of the Police camp I will be stunned. For one thing, in 1878 the fireplaces were so close to the campsite they can be seen in the 1878 Burman photos of the site, yet the CSI stones are over a hundred yards away from the CSI teams nominated campsite. At Bill Denhelds two huts site, the substantial remains of fireplaces and huts are  exactly where you would expect to find them - within a few yards of the place where the police pitched their tent, a place they said was 'near'  a ruined hut. A few yards is 'near' - over a hundred yards away, through the bush is NOT 'near'. This claim sits alongside the many other ridiculous claims made by the CSI team, such as that two irregular and dissimilar blobs on tree trunks seen in photos taken many years apart are the same blob, and that the professional photographer Burman, in recreating the scene for his photos got it all  completely wrong. The fact he had been advised by Monk, who saw the dead bodies and was told directly by McIntyre exactly what happened and where makes this possibility, that Burman completely messed up, exceedingly unlikely. A case that rests on so many ridiculously unlikely propositions is no case at all.  And now they are trying to boost it by misrepresenting Heritage Victoria. 

Somehow I doubt that even NOW the CSI team will condescend to engage in debate ‘with those who post their comments and often uninformed views in various sites on the internet’  but with Heritage Victoria’s  confirmation that their claim is nonsense, they owe everyone a very comprehensive explanation.