The Fabrication of Kelly History

Watching and reviewing  'The Last Outlaw' TV miniseries from 1980 was an amazing eye-opener for me. I had often seen the glowing references to it in the Kelly Online world, and I recall reading somewhere that so desperate were Kelly sympathisers  to get their hands on it that they started a Petition to try to get Channel Seven to release it on DVD!  In any event, when I finally got round to viewing it myself I had reasonably high expectations for it.

Having now watched the entire thing, reflecting on it I realised there were three things that I learned that surprised me. Firstly I was surprised at how unbalanced it was. TLO presents a very heavily pro-Kelly story that relies on a highly selective use of the historical record. 

Secondly, it was  more than surprise - in fact it was shock - to recognise the brazen way the producers camouflaged the bias in their production and created an impression it was neutral and objective. This was done by such tactics as claiming that “All …events …are drawn directly from fact” and elsewhere, in the publicity material by making a huge deal of the lengths undertaken to make the sets and props true to the time. Naturally on learning this one would assume they would also go to the same lengths to get the story lines and dialog as accurate and true as possible, but as we know, they didn’t.  There was also the fallacious “argument from authority”  wherein the deserved good reputation of Ian Jones as producer and moviemaker added weight and credibility to the veracity of this, his latest production. These tactics had the intended effect I am sure of encouraging viewers to believe the Miniseries was objectively factual and true to history as it happened. In that sense one would have to say the series proved to be an enormous success, and Ian Jones must have been tremendously satisfied to have got away with it so completely and for so long. But essentially what he did was pull the wool over our eyes! TLO gave a massive  Australia wide boost to the Kelly legend, and made the myth so real that the uninformed Australian public swallowed it hook, line and sinker. They had been well and truly conned.

The third revelation that resulted from watching TLO was to realise that modern Kelly sympathisers actually know very little of the facts about the Kelly story. What they are familiar with is the Mythology, the made up version of Ned Kellys life and times as shown in works like Australian Son and the hagiography of people like Kenneally, Clune and Molony. Consequently, because it accorded with their version of the story, they regarded TLO as accurate. “Iron Outlaw” described it as “the most accurate and lavishly presented telling of the Kelly story to date"- which says nothing for all the others. But if they really knew the facts, and properly understood the story,  Ian Jones wouldn’t have been able to pull the wool over everyones eyes and have them calling the Miniseries “accurate”, or heap praise on it or sign petitions for its release on DVD.  If they  knew and understood the story they  might do more than react to this Blog with personal abuse and instead try to defend it but they never do. Most of them  I think simply don’t know enough. Instead they cite my awful grammar and punctuation, or the occasional strident tone of the debate to excuse themselves and run away.  If they knew and understood the story, and hadn’t swallowed Jones fabrication hook line and sinker they might not rush off to “Like” a Facebook  Page containing a doomed, now abandoned campaign against ‘The Kelly Gang Unmasked’, a book which brilliantly and clinically exposes the untruths paraded as history in the Kelly myth. If they knew and understood the debate we wouldn’t have now been waiting 123 days for one of them to explain why Neds account of the murder of Lonigan is believable. 

To see what I mean about having the wool pulled over their eyes read the thread named ‘The Last Outlaw’ on the Ned Kelly Forum. You will find almost no actual discussion about content; they accept it as given.  Instead the very limited discussion is mostly about actors and actresses, but with only 11 comments in total there’s really nothing worth reading there: just uncritical agreement about it being “accurate” and no critique. They’re just not up to it.

The popular press is not much better. This is what was said about  The Last Outlaw in The Australian Woman’s Weekly in October 1980, 35 years ago,  just before it went to air:

“Those people who claim that Ned Kelly was nothing more than a roughneck, thief and murderer are going to have a rough time trying to successfully argue their case in the months to come.

The Last Outlaw, the Seven Networks eight hour miniseries about the Kellys is going to convince the vast majority of Australians that there’s a lot of substance to the legend of Ned Kelly as Australia’s bushranger hero.

Ian Jones and Bronwyn Binns who wrote and produced the handsome finely detailed drama, present a persuasive case for a Kelly as a decent hardworking lad who was persecuted goaded and irrevocably driven beyond the Law by an unfairly hostile Police force backed by a repressive establishment”

This article was titled “The Last Outlaw: a loving look at Ned Kelly” indicating that the journalist who wrote it was likely yet another who had been bewitched by Ian Jones.  He let slip that he only actually watched two hours of the series, something he would no doubt have been heavily criticised for by Kelly Sympathisers if his Review had been unfavourable  but as it wasnt, his inadequate assessment was let through. What a disgrace!

Unfortunately to this day the standard of reporting on most Kelly related topics is not much better, Peter Fitzsimons massive regurgitation of the story in his 2013 book being a case in point. He also had the wool pulled over his eyes and he openly admitted that he avoided ‘The Kelly Gang Unmasked’ because – surprise surprise - Ian Jones didn’t like it! I reckon a decent Journalist with an enquiring mind instead of a desire just to add to his CV would have found Jones' dislike a red flag to something interesting but Fitzsimons was more interested in sucking up. Its really quite remarkable the degree to which Ian Jones has managed to dominate the Kelly scene for the last 40 years, and make his narrative the dominant one, and I am sure the success of TLO had a lot to do with it.

So, I suppose its no wonder some Australians still believe the legend of Ned Kelly was an historical reality. I wonder what would have happened to the Kelly Legend if that lazy excuse for a  journalist had bothered to watch ALL of TLO in 1980 and watch it critically, and ask the searching questions of Jones about why he omitted all the unpalatable stuff, played up the sentimental and inserted stuff for which there is not the least evidence? Perhaps if he had, Ned Kellys place in the Public mind might be more in keeping with his actual status as a criminal. But the journalist didnt  bother with the hard stuff - if he had maybe today we wouldn’t have the ugly spectacle of a Police killer, bank robber and thief being promoted  as some sort of icon. The Woman's Weekly writer at least might be let off as an ignorant Journalist, but what of the  self proclaimed experts, the Kelly Buffs who fell for it as well, and even now don’t seem to have noticed the deep problems with TLO?  Whats their excuse? About the best they could do I think would be to plead ignorance.

The end of The Last Outlaw

John Jarratt in Wolf Creek : was he closer to the real Ned in this role than when he played him in TLO?

Ive now watched the rest of The Last Outlaw, Episodes 3 and 4, which detail what happened after the Police murders at SBC, shown at the end of Episode 2, and ending of course with Neds hanging. Seen purely as entertainment, I would give it a pass mark as Soap Opera, which according to one definition I found is "A drama, typically performed as a serial on daytime television or radio,characterized by stock characters and situations, sentimentality, and melodrama" Its also typified by characters who are one dimensional goodies – the Kellys and their allies – or baddies – the Police and the Squatters.  So we have a jolly scene of the Outlaws returning home for  a happy Xmas reunion, romantic interludes among the Eucalypts between Kate Lloyd and Ned, hostages dancing merrily at the Ann Jones Inn and beautiful shots of horses and riders galloping exuberantly across the picturesque countryside. On the other hand Police are portrayed as universally unattractive and devious;  one couldn’t create a more evil  and less believable Police Commissioner than Standish – but real people are not like that even if they are corrupt or incompetent.

Also typical of Soap is camerawork that lingers long on extreme close-ups of faces that fill the entire screen, and background music that tells us what we are supposed to be feeling – sadness or empathy for the Kellys, contempt and disdain, and a sense of something malevolent for the Traps, amusement  and delight at the antics of the gang when taking women and children hostage and robbing Banks.

But as I have already pointed out, what we are being shown is not the truth but the Mythology of Ned Kelly, a private version of history  created by Ian Jones who has said he believed if Ned was not a villain he was almost an “un-beatified saint”.  Its obvious Jones prefers the latter possibility and tries hard to prove it. As Ive already noted Jones suggests from the beginning that the ideas that took Ned down the pathway to criminality were never his own : George King introduced him to horse stealing and sowed the seeds of resentment towards the Squatters and the Police, and in Episode 4 Tom Lloyd is the one who erodes Neds faith in Aaron Sherritt and encourages his murder. 

Neds own ideas are expressed in statements like “Not a word about us calling it quits if they would free our mother” and “ We’ve tried to get Justice and to lead our own lives”. These are made up bits of dialog, but for obvious reasons Jones never has Ned uttering any of the words he actually used in the Jerilderie Letter, hate-filled bloodthirsty language of torture and vicious threats of cruel punishments and death to anyone who would dare oppose him or in any way help the Police.  Such talk would ruin Jones carefully crafted image so he ignores it. Jones actually claimed in a Radio interview that much of this rhetoric is from Joe Byrne, once again attempting to keep Neds image squeaky clean at the expense of someone else in the story.

Where in this miniseries is the “wholesale and retail” stock theft that was such a large part of Neds adult life, the forging of Sales documents, the slaughter of horses to conceal evidence, the gambling, and the hooning about town with the Greta Mob?  Where are the fights and disputes that occurred between  various members of the Quinn and Kelly clans? Where are the other lovers that Mrs Kelly took after Red died?  Nothing is  mentioned about the sly-grogging and other dubious activities said to be taking place around the Kelly homestead. All trace of the intimidation and terrorising of hostages at the Bank robberies and at Glenrowan is wiped from the record. These unattractive “Facts” about Ned Kelly, like his language in the Jerilderie Letter are not drawn on by Ian Jones because they disturb his myth. Instead he has the preposterous image of Ned bouncing a child on his knee in the middle of a hostage crisis, and shows him cheerfully clearing the table and emptying a bath for the pregnant Mrs Devine – but no re-enactments of him warning the Policeman that harm might come to his wife and children unless he does exactly as he’s told, or vision of Ned shoving the barrel of a loaded revolver down the throat of an old man who dared challenge him! Why are these facts ignored? And why, when there are NO facts to draw from at all does he create a scene where a meeting takes place to draw up a Charter for the Republic of North East Victoria? Why? Because Jones is selling a myth, his private fantasy about Ned Kelly, and being a skillful movie maker, I have to say he does a damn good job.

As entertainment its well done and it works - I confess I had a lump in my own throat as Ellen embraced Ned in his cell the night before his execution, and a tear in my eye when he was hanged and all the sympathisers wept and wailed at the Prison Gate. Less well informed people watching this  series uncritically would easily be persuaded it could be the truth, not least because of the disingenuous claim at the beginning of each episode that “All events…are drawn directly from fact” Moreover, in publicity supporting the Miniseries, much is made of the desire of the Producers to make the sets and the props and  even the minor detail as accurate as possible. I noted that when Ned fired a test shot into the armor, it was into the inside of the breast plate – a trivial but true detail. I read that the Police uniforms were exact replicas, with five buttons rather than the four found on the uniforms of Police from NSW. All this attention to detail, to the physical setting adds further to the feeling that this is really what happened.

The truth is Ian Jones  did such a brilliant job that everyone was convinced. I am amazed that nowhere on the internet can I find a single critical word about this series – it seems to have been universally acclaimed and yet where were the Kelly buffs and the actual historians who could have challenged this skewed version of history, added some notes of caution, pointed out how the unpalatable parts of the Kelly story were left untold, how “facts” were invented, or ignored or misrepresented? Perhaps, because Ian Jones was already an acclaimed and respected producer nobody even thought to question his approach, or the Story he wanted to tell? So he got away with it for 35 years - but not any more.

So, in answer to Comments made to the previous TLO Posts of mine, yes, I am critical of Mr Jones. In particular I am critical of his failure to recognise his own loss of objectivity regarding the history of the Outbreak and the life of Ned Kelly and as a result claim to be presenting an objective account when in reality he provides a very partisan view carefully created out of whichever selected facts suited his purpose.  The truth is that Mr Jones has had an enormous impact on one of the great Australian stories, and is in no small way directly responsible for the misapprehension by many of us that Ned Kelly was a hero worthy of inclusion in the history books alongside other great Australians like Burke and Wills, or John Monash or Leichardt, Batman and Lalor. He was not. 

In my opinion, The Last Outlaw is really best regarded as Ian Jones fantasy of how he wished Ned Kellys life would have been. If it had been like that, as Ian Jones presented it,  then Neds  status as Icon and Hero might be reasonable. Instead what Ian Jones has given us is not historical truth but a great and clever rendition of the Kelly Myth. Believe it or not!

TLO Part Two : the Vilification of George King

The “poverty stricken" Kellys and George King

I described Part one of this 4 part 1980 TV Miniseries on the life of Ned Kelly as “choloform on film” because it was so slow and it portrayed Ned Kelly to be a gormless goody–goody, an obvious misrepresentation of the truth of who he really was, even in his younger days. Part Two covers the events of 1875 to 1878, the period from the days when Ned was supposedly going straight, through to the “Fitzpatrick Incident” and ends with the police Killings at Stringybark Creek. Thankfully, as entertainment, the second episode is much more interesting, but as with the first Episode it is far from being reliable as historical truth. Nevertheless I can start to see why Bill says TLO was “the viewing highlight of the week” back in 1980!

In this episode Ned at last starts to come to life, the first signs of passion appearing when at the races he angrily confronts Mr Whitty, a wealthy land-owner . Ned demands an apology from him for claiming that Ned stole a bull,  something Ned says “I never done”.  Whitty refuses to apologise and dismisses the Kellys as “thieves larrikins and a blight on the district”. This dialog is of course entirely fictional, and framed to suit Ian Jones purpose of portraying squatters as arrogant bullies and the selectors as innocent and hard done by. As readers of this Blog will know, James Whitty was  not at all the ogre that Ian Jones and the Kelly myth need him to be to sustain their “poor Ned” sob story, (read here) but a man who had worked his way up from nothing, gave a lot back to the community and  had good cause to regard the Kellys as a blight. Ned Kelly was intensely envious of  Whittys success and carried a deep personal grudge against him. In the Jerilderie Letter  Ned  complained that it was  Whittys fault that he became a criminal, but in the Last Outlaw this decision is prompted by the subtle corrupting influence of George King.

The Last Outlaw portrays the Police as schemers and corrupt, and none more so than Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick, the Policeman Kelly sympathisers so love to hate.  By contrast the Kellys  and their friends and acquaintances  are unfailingly presented as decent  honest caring country folk, and as victims  - it all gets rather emotive and sickly sentimental, but I suppose thats what TV audiences want. To my surprise, even though Ned Kelly claimed in the Jerilderie Letter not to have been at home when the “Fitzpatrick Incident” took place, this pivotal event in the Kelly story is re-enacted with Ned making an appearance. Virtually every Kelly scholar would agree with this depiction, because virtually every Kelly scholar accepts that Neds claim not to have been there was a lie – but THIS fact about Ned Kelly, that he was a known liar is never revealed in The Last Outlaw…or remarked upon anywhere else in the Kelly world for that matter.

It becomes very clear in episode Two that what we are watching is not history but the mythology about Ned Kelly that Ian Jones wants us to believe was history. He portrays Ned as a naïve and trusting country boy with a strong commitment to family values and a sense of right and wrong, an impressionable  impetuous young man who is easily influenced by those around him: at one point, after Ellen had been arrested Ned decided to give himself up but is dissuaded from doing so by Dan; on another occasion, getting all worked up about his mother again he wants to  rush out and take the Police on directly but this time Thomas Lloyd stops him.

But in Ian Jones mind the greatest influence on innocent Ned comes from the shady and smooth talking Machiavellian figure of George King. He is shown altering horse brands and painting their feet, smoking and drinking and lounging about in Bars and gambling dens, planting subversive ideas  into Neds unwitting head and craftily molding Neds innocent character to his own ends. King introduces Ned to the idea of taking action against his perceived enemies, introduces him to horse stealing, and even to the idea of a Republic, but in the end he proves to be a coward and liar who abandons Ellen when things become difficult. But by then, in Ian Jones narrative, the damage has been done - Ned has been converted from a naive trusting farmer into an angry and scheming  activist and budding gang leader. King is not portrayed as someone inspiring Ned to great moral deeds but a manipulator who uses Neds concern for his family and his growing resentment towards Police and Squatters to motivate him towards seeking revenge.

King is described by Ned in the Jerilderie Letter as being a great horse thief, but given the unreliability of this letter, indeed the lies contained within it, there is a legitimate question mark over Neds claim. In fact, as I understand it, almost nothing is known about George King, other than his name. I would be very pleased if anyone can point me in the direction of some facts about George  Kings life, but I haven’t come across any of significance. Its possible that Ned was using King as a convenient scape goat, someone to shift blame onto because by the time he made these allegations George had mysteriously disappeared and was not around to defend himself. Ned was free to say whatever he liked about George. It’s been suggested he may have been killed, he may have fled the district or even the country but why and how he vanished is a complete unknown. In spite of this great mystery Jones doesn’t hesitate to make George King central to the making of Ned Kelly and of the Outbreak. 

Episode two ends with the Police killings at Stringybark Creek.  This time it seems to suit Ian Jones to follow rather than dismiss Neds account, and the invented dialog recycles the now discredited ideas that the Police purchased specially made body straps to bring corpses out of the bush, that they  were disguised in plain clothes and were heavily armed, and had the intention to shoot first and ask questions later. Lonigan’s death is enacted as Ned Kelly claimed in the Jerilderie Letter, with Lonigan being killed by a single shot as he lifted his head from behind a log to take aim at Ned. As readers of this Blog know, that account is clearly another of Neds lies, as it is contradicted by the forensic facts about the Policeman’s demise, and neither does it square with McIntyres recollection of what happened. (read here) In fact  Lonigan was shot four times,  and though he ran for the log he had no time to get to it, let alone to draw his gun and aim at Ned. 

In conclusion, I return to Ian Jones  claim that in this miniseries “All…events..are drawn directly from fact”. However as I have pointed out, in many places such as in the case of George King, in the absence of facts Ian Jones invents them, but who would know? In the case of the death of Lonigan, the known forensic facts are ignored. But who would know? The claim by Ian Jones that ALL events are drawn directly from fact creates an impression that as far as possible the series is accurate and reliable as historical truth, and imparts an authority to the series that it otherwise wouldn’t have - indeed that is the point of making that claim, but as we have seen it is utterly illegitimate - the claim  is simply not true - so should I call it a lie?

Kelly Fanatics are on the Nose even in Beechworth

A couple of weeks  ago the  Beechworth  Historical Re-enactment Group announced they were looking for a new “Ned”. The person who grew a big bushy beard and played this central role in the recent Ned Kelly Weekend had decided he didn't want to do it again, so they were advertising for a new volunteer to step forward. 

And then to my complete surprise, after their AGM last Monday they announced, as in a death notice that  - “with much sadness” -  they’ve abandoned plans to hold the Ned Kelly Weekend in 2016. This ends  a 13 year-long run of the annual event, and though they say they are just having a break for a year,  its pretty obvious they are fed up with doing Ned Kelly re-enactments and want to get on and do other stuff. 

“Its time too get get back to our roots and reenact all aspects of the 1880’s and not just the Kelly story which has dominated our group for the past few years”

This is really quite a significant change and shows that interest in Ned Kelly Mythology is shrinking even in Kelly country. One presumes the visitor numbers are down - because if the thing was booming everyone would be happy - and clearly theirs having a real struggle finding anyone interested enough in the Kelly myth to  donate the time and effort to help them run the NKW.

On the NKF and IronOutlaw Facebook pages comments on the decision reveal that there have been “shitfights” going on among the organisers and wanna-be organisers, and a feeling that in recent years the whole thing has been a bit lacklustre. This is what the Ned Kelly Forum key master wrote about it : 

“yes people this is the politics of our Ned Kelly world at its worst. This is a disgrace and those individuals who were a part in doing this ought to be ashamed of themselves and all will be made public very soon"

I hope he is feeling ashamed of his own role in this - last year  the NKF offended the NKW organisers by putting on a show of their own on the same weekend and just up the road, so they could take advantage of the hard work the NKW people had done in organising their event and attracting the crowds. This year it was announced on the IO Faceboook page that they were all “back in love” having somehow patched up the relationship between the two groups but I suspect its all gone sour again. Given what I have seen of the way Kelly Fanatics behave towards people who have different opinions to their own, I am not surprised the NKW people have decided to abandon the whole thing. They are probably trying to rid themselves of kelly bullies who tried to dominate their organisation and compel it to present Kelly as a hero and a saint. 

So this is a step in the right direction, a step away from re-enacting myth and pretending its history, perhaps towards a more honest presentation of Kelly country history in the future, one that acknowledges other views of Ned Kelly.  Ive noted that the Ned Kelly Vault pointedly states at the very top of its Facebook page “We are not a shrine we are a museum” 

It will be interesting to see if the NKF Keymaster makes good on his claim that “all will be made public very soon”. - in other words he wants to air all the dirty linen. In my experience the loud mouths on NKF are all talk and no action.

I wish the Beechworth Historical re-enactment Group all the best for the future and congratulate them on this bold move, putting the Kelly fanatics in their place.

The tide has clearly turned and is now running out on Kelly Mythology.


APOLOGY TO NKF : the announcement about being “back in Love” was made on the IronOutlaw Facebook Page, not the NKF Facebook Page as I originally mistakenly wrote. I was informed of this in an anonymous comment which I won’t publish but I apologise to the NKF for this error. I do note however that the person they described as “matchmaker” was a prominent NKF Member, the self described “Neducator” whose talk created all the acrimony when the NKF promoted it in competition with the NKW. 

And, incidentally I couldnt help noticing tonight that the NKF Key Master has quietly deleted from yesterdays  Post his claim that “all will be made Public very soon”  This was what I predicted yesterday from the kelly loud mouths - all talk and no action. I wonder who told him to pull his head in?

The Last Outlaw : Part One

Described on the DVD box as “The Classic Australian Miniseries”, The Last Outlaw, is yet another Kelly creation of Ian Jones, and yet another self-proclaimed “True Story”.  Produced to celebrate the centenary of Ned Kelly’s death, this four part made-for-TV mini-series was said at the time, 1980, to be "the most ambitious and costly series yet mounted by Australian television” Much was made at the time of the effort that was expended in making everything about the series as historically accurate as possible. It won awards.

I have at last found the time to watch it. The four episodes last an hour and a half each, and in this Post I will review the first episode, which covers five years of the life of Ned Kelly, from 1869 to 1874.

The first thing one notices is that it has a very 80’s TV kind of look to it. It may well have been cutting edge when produced but its now very dated – for example the action is awfully drawn out and slow, something I doubt would be acceptable to modern TV audiences. The scenes are often quite theatrical, such as those  around the Kelly kitchen table, where the camera observes from one end of the table where one chair conveniently remains unoccupied so the view of the others isn’t obscured – its as if the screenplay was designed for a stage Play.

In any event, apart from Harry Power, the characters in Part One are terribly wooden. Harry Power however is colourfully played, and is the only one who seems to have real personality. However his exploits are portrayed as a sort of game, and are accompanied by jolly music which wrongly makes highway robbery seem to be something jovial  when of course  for the victims they're frightening and traumatic. By contrast John Jarratt portrays Ned Kelly as a pale and naïve, too-well behaved dullard, devoted to his mother in a supine and sentimental way who has almost nothing to say for himself. Wild Wright on the other hand is an unbelievable caricature of a ruffian, and the fight between him and Ned Kelly drags on and on with tedious repetition of the fake punches, the aghast spectators and close ups of bloody faces with fake blood on them, and Ned and Wild alternately dragging themselves up out of the dust to then floor the other. 

In so far as historical accuracy is concerned, I got the impression that the costumes and street scenes and the external appearance of the Kelly houses were indeed true to the original. However, as poverty stricken selectors I thought the Kellys were all much too clean and too well dressed, and the interior shots of their bark hut made it look very middle class, not at all squalid as it was actually described as, at the time by Nicolson.  More importantly though, its very apparent right from the beginning that in the telling of the story, what is told is very much the view of Ian Jones, a man who is an avowed Kelly Sympathiser. Thus, Kelly is portrayed as mild mannered and polite, almost devoid of personality or passion – an overdone saccharine kind of Saint. In keeping with that image Ned is shown meekly, almost reluctantly holding the reins of horses while Power robs people on the highway, and then when they are shot at, Ned cowers in a kind of mute catatonia.  Jones sets out as true what we now know as the myth that Ned was in innocent possession of the horse borrowed by Wild Wright, and later, the naïve Ned Kelly is talked into becoming a horse thief by George King, a possibility it would seem that had never once entered the pure mind of Ned himself. Shame on George for corrupting the saintly Ned!!

However, in addition to the sins of commission, there are even greater sins of omission in this episode, things the average viewer would not realize were missing, and as a result, anyone other than a Kellyphile would unknowingly derive a highly skewed and inaccurate understanding of Ned Kellys life story. Significantly, Ian Jones begins the story AFTER Neds lucky acquittal on a charge of assaulting a Chinaman in 1869, and he only mentions the McCormick incident in passing even though it resulted in Ned serving time for assault and indecent behavior.  The prior history of growing up in an atmosphere of resentment and suspicion of the English and of authority, of Reds decline into alcoholism, of multiple episodes of family violence and trouble with the law – all this is ignored, yet these were all hugely influential in shaping the life and attitudes and behaviors of the growing Ned Kelly, and knowledge of them crucial to a proper understanding of his story. The decision to commence the story telling after these significant negative events in Ned Kellys young life can only be seen as a deliberately chosen tactic designed to bolster the myth of  Ned Kellys innocence and render less explicable the Police interest in the Kellys, and make it look more like sinister and unjustified persecution. This is unforgiveable dishonesty in my opinion, deliberate myth-making disguised and presented as historical re-enactment by Ian Jones who inserted at the beginning of the Epsiode “All Characters events names dates and places in this series are drawn directly from fact.” Indeed, but the ones that are drawn are only the ones that suit Mr Jones. The facts that don’t support Ian Jones version of the truth are conveniently ignored. But who in the general population would know?

Actually my first thought after watching this first episode was to remember what Mark Twain called the Book of Mormon : “Chloroform in Print”  I was amazed to watch the incredible richness and complexity of the life and times and personality of  Ned Kelly reduced to this boring and sanctimonious misrepresentation. Quite apart from being seriously misinformed about the real Ned Kelly, I  think modern audiences would find this episode quite dull: “Chloroform in film” .

NKF Members 100 Day Epic Fail

The prominent Ned Kelly Forum member and Kelly sympathiser who decided in June to attack the Death of the Legend Blog Post and Comments about the killing of Constable Lonigan must be cursing himself for rushing away and shooting his mouth off on his Facebook Page. I bet he wishes he had never committed to print his half baked theories and silly diagrams about what happened, and then attacked and rubbished me for pointing out the huge fatal flaws in his theory. I bet he wishes he hadn’t tried to wriggle out of the mess he made by going back and re-naming his comment “Part One : McIntyres Version ”,  because by doing that he obligated himself to produce Part Two, which he implied would be HIS explanation. 

He must be regretting all this because as the days weeks and now months have gone by, and he has failed to come up with the promised Part Two, his credibility as some sort of Kelly “Expert” is eroding to zero, and his original Comment and his abusive responses to my demands for him to make good on his promise are being seen more and more clearly as bluster and bullying and a smoke screen that hides......nothing! He hasn’t got a clue about how to get out of the mess he made for himself and so he is staying mute. 

I am not surprised that he hasn’t responded to my latest Post on his Page, and I am not surprised that he has posted nothing at all about anything since July. 

Its now 100 days since he made these remarks, but I am not going to forget or forgive his abuse of me and this Blog, of his boasting about how he destroyed my earlier Forums, of his ignorant attacks on anything and anyone who disagrees with him - and I am not going to stop demanding he make good on his promise to come up with Part Two. As long as he continues to fail to  keep his word, I will continue to remind him and everyone else.

Ned Kellys Skull : Science rebuts Kelly “Experts"

 

The Baxter Skull and Tooth

Its been more than a month since the annual Ned Kelly Weekend at Beechworth. On the Kelly websites and Facebook pages only a scattering of comments can be found, all declaring it a great success, but I had hoped by now to have read someone’s report of the  events that were staged. In particular I was hoping to hear something about the lecture given by Dr Craig Cormick , because it was the only original and credible event  on the programme – I read that it was sold out – but nothing else. Maybe someone who reads this Blog went to it, and can send in a Report. 

I have previously written that the behavior of some Kelly Sympathizers resembles that of Religious fanatics. One such similarity is the often curious relationship that believers have to rational argument and Scientific truth preferring their mythology when it clashes with what science has revealed. An amazing example is the Mormon rejection of  the entire well established prehistory of North America in favour of what their religious texts say. 

The Baxter Skull long ago labelled on the side as “E Kelly"

In a similar way, Bradley Webb the creator of the largest and oldest Kelly resource on the internet, Iron Outlaw, apparently still clings to his view that the skull of Ned Kelly was on public display in the old Melbourne Gaol until it was replaced in the early 1960’s by a skull from India. This replacement skull, the skull of a person Webb says was “some poor Indians” was the one famously stolen by Tom Baxter, believing it to be Ned Kellys in 1979. It was finally returned and analysed by the Victoria Institute of Forensic Medicine, as reported by Craig Cormick in his book, and found with absolute certainty to NOT be the skull of “some poor Indians” as claimed by Brad Webb. Sadly it was not Ned Kellys skull either!

Bradly Webb made his claims about these skulls on his personal website in 2011, and in February this year, after reading Cormicks book I posted a comment on Webbs article about the skull pointing out that he was wrong. This was his reply: 

NCS Publishing27 February 2015 at 14:48

To dear old crusty Bill Denheld - bill@denheldid.com - (or his semi-literate daughter who posts on his behalf), I know you like to hide behind the 'Dee' facade but maybe it's time you pulled your head out of your arse and realised what you actually know about the Ned Kelly story can be written down on the back of a postage stamp...

I’m pleased I kept a copy of this because if you go there now, these vile and misinformed comments have been deleted,  but still there is no acknowledgement that the content of the Post is misleading and wrong.  Science has proved Bradley Webb wrong but he clings to his belief like a willfully blind religious fanatic.  I do note however that last month on Iron Outlaw a link was posted to a talk about the skull by  Craig Cormick on the ABC , which could perhaps mean that Webb has finally admitted his error, though is too embarrassed to openly admit it, or  decent enough to apologise to me or Bill and his family for such an outrageous reaction. Such is the caliber of some of the leading lights of the Kelly world!

In any case Cormicks story is a fascinating example of the power of science and forensic medicine to uncover the truth, and would have made his lecture a fascinating one I expect, quite apart from the opportunity to meet the author and to gather additional snippets of information about the case.

Its worth recounting it here, for anyone who hasn’t read Cormicks book :

In brief, a skeleton – minus the skull -  was exhumed from the grounds of Pentridge prison and identified as belonging to Ned Kelly by using DNA analysis. The DNA extracted from the bones was mitochondrial DNA and it was compared with mitochondrial DNA from a man called Leigh Olver, a direct maternal descendant of Ned Kelly’s sister Ellen. It was believed that the skull wasn’t with the rest of the skeleton because it had been souvenired when all the skeletons buried at the Melbourne Gaol, including Neds, were dug up and reburied at Pentridge in 1929.

The skull stolen from the Gaol in 1979 and still in the possession of Tom Baxter was thought to be Neds but no DNA could be extracted from it, so other methods had to be used to try to identify it. Old photographs taken of the skull before it was stolen, and an even earlier plaster cast of the skull confirmed Baxter’s skull was indeed the one that had been on display in the Gaol, and held earlier in the Australian Institute of Anatomy in Canberra. There had been no switching of skulls as claimed by Bradley Webb.

The next thing that needed to be done was prove that this was indeed the skull taken from the Kelly grave when it was dug up in 1929, so public appeals were made asking for any family knowledge, traditions, photos or artefacts of any kind that could possibly help. Remarkably, a descendant of  someone who was at the exhumation turned up with a 1929 photograph of his grandfather actually holding the skull, and he also brought with him a single tooth that his grandfather had allegedly taken from the skull before handing it on! The tooth had remained in the family who understood it to have been one of Ned Kellys!

It must have been an electric kind of “eureka” moment when the scientists took the tooth and found it was a perfect fit for one of the empty sockets in the Baxter skull, thus establishing with absolute certainty that the Baxter skull was indeed the one exhumed at the old Melbourne Gaol in 1929. It certainly wasn’t “some poor Indians” as asserted by Bradley Webb in 2011. It would also have been pretty exciting when the scientists managed to extract DNA from the tooth, but sadly it proved the skull had never been Ned Kellys! So where is it?

Theres a thread on the Ned Kelly Forum from 2012 about the Skull.  

The NKF Member who rubbished Cormick on Facebook earlier this year but then later deleted his comments, asserted in 2012 that he and Mr Webb knew “without a doubt who has Neds head” He wrote that he has “no doubt that the Melbourne University are knowingly in possession of Neds skull” As is typical with these self appointed experts who dismiss actual scientists, Jager felt no need to back up his  assertions with anything as trivial as “evidence”, or “ facts" or even his reasoning for claiming he knew where the skull was, and the thread ended limply. These are of course sensational allegations and would if true be headline news on every TV channel and News report. But there has been no further NKF interest in the topic for three years! So here we have another loud mouth claim, like the one about explaining Lonigans wounds  that turned out to be nothing but hot air and self promotion. 

So we are left with the ongoing mystery of what happened to Ned Kellys skull. It would seem that it was never buried, but kept as a ghoulish souvenir, and may still be “out there” somewhere, but perhaps no longer identified as Neds, because since 1929 his was believed to be the one at the old Melbourne Gaol, the one known now as the Baxter skull.

Ned Kelly's Devotion To His Mother: Another Myth

Ned Kelly, according to the Mythology, was devoted to his family and particularly his mother. He is reported to have said of his father “Red” Kelly that, “a finer man never put his feet in two shoes” – a commendably loyal, but wildly inaccurate sentiment from a son who lost his father to alcoholism at the age of 11. Ned was said to have then become the dominant male in the household, forced into assuming responsibilities beyond his years, a not too uncommon arrangement in families even today. But his mother seemed to have no trouble forming new relationships with adult males, such as the Englishman Bill Frost (when Ned was 13 or 14) and then with the mysterious American George King. So one wonders just how much truth there is in this image of Ned being a de facto head of the house. In any event, though modern sympathisers like to gush and sentimentalise Ned’s role in the household, there was nothing especially remarkable about it.

I was prompted to think a little more about Ned Kelly’s devotion to his mother and his family after my last post, wherein I quoted Nicolson’s famous line about endeavouring to convict “whenever they commit any paltry crime”.

Immediately before this statement, Nicolson describes visiting the Kelly household as:

“... an old wooden hut with a large bark roof. The dwelling was divided into five apartments by partitions of blanketing, rugs etc. There were no men in the house, only children and two girls of about 14 years of age said to be her daughters. They all appeared to be existing in poverty and squalor.”

Now this was in 1877, when Ned was 22 and at the end of several years in which he was supposed to have been going straight, working at a sawmill (among other places). But now he was engaged in what was evidently a very lucrative trade – his self-declared “wholesale and retail horse and cattle dealing”.

He had been part of the so called “Greta Mob”, who were known for their “flashness”, their fine horses, their larrikin behaviour and their trendy clothing. Indeed, Ned Kelly was always reported to be wearing tailor made boots and fine clothes. In A New View of Ned Kelly, Ian Jones wrote, “He dressed well – he was proud of his personal appearance”.

Contrast Ned Kelly's glamorous well-dressed life in 1877 with that of his mother and sisters – he was living it up, not at home doing the much needed hard yards on his mother's  selection. But rather travelling the countryside with mates, stealing horses and cattle and dressing (and no doubt eating and drinking) well, while his mother and sisters were living in squalor in an old hut on a selection that only Ellen was working on.

In fact, because insufficient work was being done to improve the selection, according to Dr. Doug Morrissey, Ellen Kelly came close to losing it that year, prompting Ned to finally do something by building a better place for her in the summer of 1877-78. But this act was not performed out of devotion to his mother, rather her desperation. Ian Jones wrote that in early 1878, after the house was built, “With Ned indulging his habit for gambling, he and Joe enjoyed a few footloose months of vagabonding – across the Riverina, up to the Murrumbidgee Valley and Wagga Wagga, where one of Joe's uncles had settled, and then on to the Darling”.

With a mother and sisters living in poverty and squalor, this is hardly the behaviour of a devoted elder son. So whilst Ned Kelly may have claimed to be dedicated to his mother and family, as with many of his claims, his actions provide little evidence of these intentions. Actions speak much louder than words – another myth bites the dust!