Ned Kelly wasn’t a Bushranger: he was a Terrorist

"The notion that any political agenda would justify the killing of innocent people like this is something that is beyond the pale.”

So said President Obama last night ( March 22nd 2016) when discussing the terrorist attacks yesterday in Belgium. No-one is posting pictures of the dead, but the ones below of survivors should remind Kelly sympathisers of exactly what it was that Ned Kelly wanted to see in  Glenrowan.

Abu Hamza, convicted terrorist

Ned Kelly, convicted terrorist.

Both these men planned violent acts of protest involving guns, murder and explosives. Both had grievances that seemed real enough to themselves, and perhaps in part might have been legitimate. Both stood up for what they believed in, were prepared to fight for what they thought was right, and both planned to directly confront what they regarded to be corrupt Authority.  One of them planned to attack members of the Armed forces at a Defence Establishment in New South Wales. The other planned to attack and kill Police on a train in Victoria. One of them killed several people and by his actions a  number of others died. The other never actually killed or even hurt anyone - but he was found guilty because he was planning to!  In Australia today though most people regard both of these men as criminals and enemies of society, some regard one of them as a hero and an icon. Could anything be more ridiculous? They are  both the enemies of decent society, two peas in a pod, and both are deserving of our utmost condemnation. 

Ned Kelly planned to use the murder of an innocent man to lure Police into a trap, in which many would die in a train wreck, and survivors would be killed by a gang in armour. He was hanged for an unrelated killing.

Abu Hamza, an Australian citizen, was sentenced to 20 years in an Australian prison because he was planning an attack on an unnamed Sydney “Defence Installation”. He was the first person to be convicted under new provisions of the Criminal Code which made it a crime not only to commit acts of terror but to plan them:

Criminal Code Amendment  (Terrorism) Act 2003
No. 40, 2003  

An Act to amend the Criminal Code Act 1995, and for related purposes…..

  

101.6  Other acts done in preparation for, or planning, terrorist acts

           (1)  A person commits an offence if the person does any act in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act. 

Penalty:  Imprisonment for life. 

             (2)  A person commits an offence under subsection (1) even if the terrorist act does not occur.

terrorist act means an action or threat of action where:

                     (a)  the action falls within subsection (2) and does not fall within subsection (3); and

                     (b)  the action is done or the threat is made with the intention of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause; and

                     (c)  the action is done or the threat is made with the intention of:

                              (i)  coercing, or influencing by intimidation, the government of the Commonwealth or a State, Territory or foreign country, or of part of a State, Territory or foreign country; or

                             (ii)  intimidating the public or a section of the public.

             (2)  Action falls within this subsection if it:

                     (a)  causes serious harm that is physical harm to a person; or

                     (b)  causes serious damage to property; or

                     (c)  causes a person’s death; or

                     (d)  endangers a person’s life, other than the life of the person taking the action; or

                     (e)  creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public; 

or

                     (f)  seriously interferes with, seriously disrupts, or destroys, an electronic system including, but not limited to:

                              (i)  an information system; or

                             (ii)  a telecommunications system; or

                            (iii)  a financial system; or

                            (iv)  a system used for the delivery of essential government services; or

                             (v)  a system used for, or by, an essential public utility; or

                            (vi)  a system used for, or by, a transport system.

Its pretty clear from these definitions that what Ned Kelly planned for Glenrowan, was an act of what is now recognised as ‘Terrorism' : the cold blooded murder of an innocent man to provoke a Police response, ripping up railway tracks,  endangering peoples lives by taking them hostage, being in possession of dynamite, guns ammunition and armour, and planning to wreck a train to kill Police and any survivors. Its no defence to say that back then there was no such word as terrorism - now we know what it was, and we have a name for it. We also have a name for the person planning such outrages against society : Terrorist. The difference between a terrorist and a bushranger, made clear by these definitions, is that the Bushranger is not acting to advance a political agenda or intending in any way to influence the Government at any level. The Bushranger was simply trying to make a living by highway and other forms of robbery.  

Fortunately what actually happened at Glenrowan was a near complete failure of Ned Kellys terrorist plans for the train and the Police. He successfully murdered Aaron Sherritt, the easiest thing in the world for armed thugs against a defenceless victim at his front door in the night - nothing heroic there! - but after that his plan unravelled into utter failure. However  failure doesn’t make the plotter any less a terrorist, or his plans any less an outrage. 

Because of Thomas Curnows bravery the violence and  hate  that occupied Neds mind was never made entirely manifest. However it WAS expressed quite graphically in the Jerilderie Letter. There, blood curdling threats to kill and to torture and to seek revenge are set out in page after page of angry defiant outburst. Its fashionable to laugh these words off as the colourful hyperbole of an Irish larrikin with the gift of the gab, but if Ned Kellys plans for Glenrowan had proceeded as he intended, those words would have accurately described what happened : ‘But if I hear any more of it I will not exactly show them what cold blooded murder is but wholesale and retail slaughter something different to shooting three troopers in self defence and robbing a bank’

Thanks to Curnow, Ned Kellys planned acts of ‘wholesale and retail slaughter' at the site of the intended train wreck never became a reality and it became possible for sympathisers to pretend those plans and those thoughts were never there in the first place. But as was demonstrated with Abu Hamza, who never harmed even a fly, a terrorist is defined by his motivations and by what he plans and prepares to carry out against society, not by how successful he might be in carrying them out. And so it is with Ned Kelly - his intent, and his preparations and plans by themselves define him as a terrorist.  We should no more accept as mitigation the idea that Kelly was a poor selector fighting for a republic and therefore was not a terrorist than we would accept a claim by Abu Hamza that he was a freedom fighter.  Ian Jones was absolutely correct to describe Neds plans for Glenrowan as ‘mad’ - and by this I am sure he didnt mean just a little bit silly but close to ‘insane’, the work of a person losing touch with reality, a psychopath. And  just as the Court decided on the basis of the incriminating evidence in his possession when arrested that Abu Hamza was a terrorist, so Ned Kelly must also be regarded as a terrorist, albeit a failed one like Abu Hamza. 

This unpleasant reality is something Kelly sympathisers refuse to face. If they talk about Glenrowan they focus on what the Police did, or on how the hostages were supposed to have played games and danced at the Inn, or how brave Ned was to stand there in his armour fighting them all singlehandedly.  Ive searched the entire Ned  Kelly Forum for discussions about Glenrowan and the only things I found were discussions of books about Glenrowan , and three Posts on June 28th 2014 expressing sympathy for Ned Dan Steve and Joe on the anniversary of the siege. Sympathy for the terrorists!  

When are they going to accept the awful truth about Glenrowan that it exposed what was really inside Ned Kellys mind, an angry and violent desire to rain death and destruction on the Police? When are they going to cast  aside the myth that it was a heroic ‘Last Stand’ and accept it was supposed to have been an act of terrorist mass slaughter?  When are they going to accept that if Ned Kelly had succeeded at Glenrowan their fanciful legend would have been still-born, that in its place Kelly would only be remembered as a violent serial killer, a mass murderer, a 19^th Century terrorist,  and his Jerilderie Letter seen as a bloodthirsty and chilling forecast of what was to come? When are they going to stop pretending to themselves that Kelly was trying to establish the Republic of NE Victoria, and that this somehow turns him into some sort of revolutionary and a hero, and renders his murderous intent somehow less evil? There is no evidence for the republic but masses of evidence of Ned Kellys desire for revenge and to kill.

Any person who plans and carries out an attempt at mass killing can only ever be utterly condemned. The excuses made for Ned Kelly are ridiculous. He was NOT picked on and persecuted, he was NOT a Police made criminal, he was NOT Australias Robin Hood, he was NOT a revolutionary and he was NOT a hero. Whatever he may have been as a kid, whatever sympathy you might have for his origins and for whatever influenced him, by the last few years of his life he had become a violent angry and murderous criminal whose focus became the Police.


The great irony of Kelly mythology is that it only exists because Ned Kellys  ‘colonial stratagem’ failed, and because sympathisers are in deep denial about what Ned Kelly exposed of his true nature at Glenrowan. The last thing they will want to do is discuss it here.

Discuss the Kelly Gang Unmasked

The Author and his landmark challenge to Kelly mythology

I have repeatedly written that my intention in this blog is not to change the minds of the die-hard Kelly sympathisers, but to provide corrections to the errors, and balance to the arguments made by such people about the Kelly story, so that interested and open-minded readers will be better informed. Hopefully then the people who venerate the horse thief turned Police-killer, Bank Robber and wannabe mass murderer will be reduced to a minimum and the age of the Kelly Icon consigned to history. Kelly himself, and the Kelly Outbreak  will of course never be forgotten, such was its startling impact on the Nation at such an early stage in its history,  but what will be remembered will be accurate history and not mythology.

The futility of trying to educate and change the minds of Kelly sympathizers is nowhere better illustrated than in their responses to the 2012 publication, ‘the kelly gang unmasked’   by Ian MacFarlane. This book provides a massive body-blow to Kelly mythology and the Kelly sympathisers are justifiably afraid of it. Its publication  provoked an acrimonious discussion on the Ned Kelly Forum, - a place that declares itself to be ‘the home of the TRUE Kelly gang sympathisers’ - between a tiny minority of open minded Kelly sympathisers who wanted people to read it, and the majority who condemned it out of hand, who proudly announced they would never read it and who attacked anyone who may have defended it, or even its right to have a point of view. In the end various NKF members were expelled and the entire discussion excised from the Forum and further discussion about it banned! No one is allowed to  discuss me or this Blog on that site either!

Absurdly, one of the NKF members then set up a Facebook page devoted to ‘unmasking’ this book that he refused to read.  He was completely out of his depth and quite quickly gave up on his attempt to ‘unmask’ the book, and instead preoccupied himself with attacking me. He now insists that I am the author of that book - but earlier insisted I was the ex-wife of the author -  and therefore attacking me is the same thing as debunking the book. He also maintains that I write all the Comments on this blog, because according to him they all have the same grammar and  spelling mistakes! The wait for his promised explanation of Lonigans gunshot wounds  has now exceeded eight months. He also announced in June 2014 "I have been busy working on other projects, one of which will blow the whole Fitzpatrick Affair out of the water and prove that it was all concocted” Need-less to say nothing ever came of that claim either. 

Another  NKF  member, Lisa, wrote a “Review” of the Kelly gang unmasked for the Iron Outlaw  website, where it remains among other book reviews, such as the one describing J J Kenneallys book as ‘the first true account of what happened in Kelly country ’ (see my review of  The Inner History of the Kelly Gang HERE). In contrast to all the other published reviews that I have seen which give it high praise,  Lisa describes the  Kelly gang unmasked book as ignorant, extremely one-sided and  ‘THE most biased/pro police book I have read yet.’ Theres an air of outrage and indignation thoughout the ‘review’ that Ian MacFarlane could DARE to suggest that Kelly mythology could be wrong! For example she writes "He even questions the fact that Ned and his mother were close?!?”  implying its an outrage to even ask the question about that relationship! But as readers of this Blog would  know, there are indeed good reasons to question that claim, and a reviewer ought to be able to consider the reasonableness of challenging it, and not simply overreact to a challenge to her cherished beliefs. This ‘review’ fails, like the ‘unmasking’ Facebook page fails because they are not attempts to critically evaluate the book but are hysterical over-reactions to the challenges the book contains, and both completely miss the point. 

The entire point  of the book is to challenge and analyse the narrative about the Kelly Gang that has been relentlessly advanced in book after book after book for decades, and to provide  and make the case for an alternative view. It was long overdue and is a groundbreaking publication because this kind of analysis had never been attempted before. 

The allegation that TKGU is ‘biased’ and ‘pro-Police’ is the one most frequently leveled at it.  Captain Jack is critical of the books ‘selective use of facts and its aversion to printing anything that may contradict its hypothesis’  a criticism that could just as easily be leveled at the pro-Kelly works. However, in its defense I would say there was no need for it to rehash all the ‘pro-Kelly’ and ‘anti-police’ narratives – they’ve been told and retold in just about every Kelly publication for 130 years, and ought to be familiar to anyone with an interest in the story. Reduced to its simplest, the sympathisers Kelly story is about the bad Police and the good Kellys. Inevitably, to counter that succesfully, at its most simple MacFarlane’s book would have to show the Kelly’s weren’t so good, or the Police so bad.  And that’s exactly what he does.

Importantly though, MacFarlanes writing is heavily referenced, and almost nothing is asserted without original references to back it up. It is packed with factual information and  logical argument  to make its case.

The best review of this book is found on Sharon and Brians Blog at 11 Mile Creek .  It’s the best available because, unlike all of the others it was written by someone with a detailed knowledge of the Kelly stories, Brian Stevenson. He levels a number of criticisms at the book, for example MacFarlanes failure to mention Constable Halls brutal bashing and attempted shooting of Ned when he was 15, but his overall assessment of the book was very positive.   Everyone should read all three parts of his brilliant review.

Finally, it goes without saying that this book should be read by everyone who has an interest in the Kelly story. It really does show up the gaping holes in Kelly mythology, and its blatant distortions and misrepresentations.  And if you discern in it that the author developed a dislike of Ned Kelly, you’ll realize it was for very good reasons : Ned Kelly and his extended family were not admirable downtrodden and persecuted country folk – as portrayed in the mythology – they were a criminal rabble.

Did John Monash Meet Ned Kelly?

Sir John Monash on the back of our $100 note. Dame Nellie Melba is on the front.
They were both born in Victoria and died in 1931.

The Ned Kelly Forum Facebook Page has recently informed its readers that when he was a schoolboy, WWI hero General John Monash had a chance meeting with Ned Kelly. It happened, according to the NKF report, in the midst of the Gangs raid on the Bank at Jerilderie, a meeting Monash is reported to have described as one of the two proudest moments of his life.

A number of NKF Members responded with thanks at being provided with this interesting information and the NKF Member who calls himself a “Neducator” boasted about his role in getting Peter Fitzsimons to include this anecdote in his 2014 Ned Kelly biography, writing:

“It took quite a bit of convincing to get Peter FitzSimons to include this incident in his Ned Kelly book as Monash's own biographer Roland Perry said this event didn't actually occur (Monash meeting Ned)...Perry was wrong ...and i found the actual interview and gave it to Peter...which he thought was fantastic to include in his book ‪http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/17137438...”

The problem with this story is that much of it is wrong! For a start, the Neducator is wrong to claim that Perry said  ‘this event didnt actually occur'. You don’t even have to buy the book to see he’s wrong - just look the book up on Amazon, use the ‘Look inside’ function and scroll down to Chapter Two : "An awe struck John Monash had the courage to approach Ned. According to Monash they chatted for a while. Kelly gave him a shilling to mind his horse”

The ‘Neducators’ second mistake was to believe that the meeting took place during the Gangs raid on the bank at Jerilderie. We know this is false because when the raid took place,  John Monash no longer lived in Jerilderie where his father ran a store, but with his mother in Melbourne where they had both moved to assist in Johns schooling. His father Louis remained a shopkeeper in Jerilderie in NSW and John had visited him for Xmas but then returned to Melbourne, some 350km away for the rest of the summer.  The  Jerilderie robbery occurred only a couple of days before the start of the new term at Johns school, Scotch College in Melbourne,  so he couldn’t possibly have met Ned Kelly at the time of the raid. When Ned was robbing the Bank at Jerilderie, John Monash was in Melbourne.

So what are we to make of the story that Monash apparently told of  having once met Ned ? There are two possibilities : either Monash got his dates confused or else he - or someone else - made the whole thing up!

In regard to the former possibility, it has been suggested that perhaps Monash and Kelly met about a year earlier, when the Kellys were engaged in their more regular criminal work of stock theft.  Perry says that Monash told of his fathers purchase of a horse from Ned Kelly who brought them to his home, and of receiving a shilling from Ned for holding his horse. In the newspaper article referred to by the Neducator quite a different story is told - the meeting happened on the verandah of the Hotel where the Gang was quartered, and Ned gave John Monash 'a short lecture. A Sunday school superintendent couldn’t have given me better advice as to human conduct.’ In another place, Monash is reported to have said  Kelly sold his father  four white ponies.

The reason people wonder if Monash was making the whole thing up was not just these  obvious discrepancies between the various tellings of it : theres also the fact that Monash was a prolific writer of letters and a diary-keeper from a young age - but this event doesn’t appear in any of these writings, an absence made harder to understand by the claims he is purported to have later made that this meeting was one of the two proudest moments of his life. In fact he is not known to have mentioned this anywhere until after the end of the First World War, 40 years later.

A more recent biography of Monash, by Grantlee Kieza,  citing a reference from the Argus of 1942, makes this rather sceptical comment:

'We only have his word for it that he had a long meeting with one of Australias most  colourful and infamous criminals but he will recite the story so many times that it acquires the flavour of truth’

Earlier in the same book he wrote of Monash attending a reception at Buckingham Palace, seated alongside Churchill, media Barons and Rudyard Kipling:

“Monash has his own stories to tell the guests surrounding him. He can spin tales as fascinating as any Kipling ever dreamed up. He has been talking himself up since boyhood...’

and later he wrote 

'Monash has been fashioning his own astonishing story from boyhood when he claimed to have met a big-bearded horse thief named Ned Kelly...’

The reality of course is that having a reputation for spinning tales, or failing to record something in a diary, or mention it to a single soul for 40 years doesn’t prove this meeting between Ned and John Monash didnt occur. These facts don’t make it impossible that such a meeting took place but it must raise a doubt about it, something which even Peter Fitzimons realized, prefacing his remarks about this event with the comment ‘it will be disputed by some’ – obviously he wasn’t altogether convinced by the “Neducators” pitch.

But the issue at stake here  in this Kelly Legend discussion is not actually whether or not John Monash met Ned Kelly - in the end, its an insignificant minor detail in the wider Kelly saga of no real importance. Whats at stake here is the integrity of people and websites and Facebook places claiming to be informing us about history, and in this instance of Kelly history. This conversation on the NKF Facebook page is yet another  illustration of  badly done history telling and is an example of the way in which Kelly mythology is sustained - by badly done history telling, or in other words misinformation. If they did history properly there would be no Kelly mythology. Actually when you think about it, the idea that Monash - an erudite, multilingual, travelled and brilliant military man, scholar, engineer, father and proven leader  with a lifetime of achievement and accolade - would nominate meeting Ned Kelly, a horse thief and nothing more at the time of the alleged meeting as one of the two most proud moments of his life is an absurdity. The only agenda that promotion of this story suits is that of the Kelly myth makers.

Its perfectly possible to imagine the evolution of a story about 'something that happened 40 years ago in my town', to 'well yes I was there’ to ‘and I actually met Ned’ to ‘and I held his horse’ - one embellishment leads to another, and its easy enough to justify it to oneself as a bit of harmless fun.

What was needed here was for the NKF member reading that newspaper article to have applied a little analysis and critical thought to the topic. Doesn’t everyone know that you never believe what you read in the newpapers?  He could have asked himself why was this not published at the time of the supposed interview rather than four years later when the great man was dead? Instead of rushing to print , like a trashy Gossip columnist, the NKF could have done a little reading about the  subject as I have done, and these days with the Internet and TROVE and so many resources available at our fingertips there is no excuse for not doing this. There is even less excuse for someone purporting to be a ‘neducator’ to get it so badly wrong.  But if this work had been done, and the uncertainties and problems with the story explored then a useful and interesting post could have been made about the possible meeting between Ned and Monash that might have provoked others to think about and perhaps even do their own research.

But instead of a useful and informative discussion, we have  misinformation, and visitors to that FB page being misled.  I wrote about a similar tactic at the Kelly Vault in relation to a piece of steel Darren Sutton found and believes is a piece of Joe Byrnes armour. There is actually an interesting story to be told there about its discovery and the controversy in relation to its true identity - and it wont be resolved until Darrens book is published later this year – but in the meantime it would have reflected better on the integrity of the Vault for that controversy to have been acknowledged. Instead they labeled the origin of the metal as ‘beyond doubt’.

People purporting to tell us facts about Australian history need to be a whole lot more careful. The Internet has a deserved reputation as a repository for all kinds of nonsense and misinformation, put out there by all manner of  deluded amateurs who think they’re  experts, and with this latest example, The Ned Kelly Forum Facebook page is enhancing that perception. They need to get their act together when it comes to making claims about Kelly history -  indeed all the Kelly Facebook pages do - because if they don’t before much longer they will have destroyed any hope they may have of  their story ever being regarded as believable.

Ned Kelly : The Man Behind the Mask

Unbelievably, already this year two new books have been published about Ned Kelly. The first was the appalling  “Ned : Knight in Aussie Armour’ by Eugenie Navarre which we reviewed over two Posts here a couple of weeks ago. Its such a dreadful publication that I am not surprised that not a single Kelly sympathizer has dared respond to these damning reviews and attempted to defend it, even though several of them made a big song and dance about its imminent release and the Book launch in Glenrowan. If they had any concern for the bloated and ever growing body of Kelly literature they ought now to be apologising for ever promoting it – nailing it to their dunny walls would be too decent a treatment of it!

“Bailed Up” Tom Roberts

The second 2016 Kelly Book is “Ned Kelly : The Man behind the Mask”  by Hugh Dolan.  I discovered it by accident at the bookshop of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, where I visited the awesome exhibition of the paintings of Tom Roberts. One of his most famous paintings  “Bailed up” depicts bushrangers holding up a coach on an outback bush track, and I suppose for this reason, among many others in the Exhibition souvenir shop there were a number of books about Bushranging, and inevitably, about Ned Kelly. This one was a modest $20.00, and is the third in a series published by Newsouth Books.

The author, somewhat surprisingly - given the long hair and green bow-tie he wore for his photo - is a retired Squadron Leader, which would explain why his first two works had war themes : one was about an Indigenous War Hero and the other about Gallipoli. He describes these books as  ‘factual graphic novels’ – or in other words ‘comics’ – and he wrote them for schoolchildren. Ive recently reviewed the way in which Kelly history is told in childrens books and found it universally badly done, so my heart sank – was this going to be another sloppy rehash of Kelly mythology masquerading as history teaching, made even easier to ingest by the use of cartoon  cowboy characters ? A further alarm bell went off in my head when I saw on the back cover “Violent Gunslinger or our greatest hero? Find out who Ned Kelly really was”

The book has a soft cover and runs to about 80 pages so can easily be read in one session. Hugh Dolan says that his starting point was a Kelly Country tour with Matt Shore the guy from the Kelly Vault, and says he will measure the books  success ‘by city folk touring the stunning vistas of the Kelly trail’.

 

Can anyone spot the Typo?

I have no idea at all about what the experts might say makes a good comic, but my guess is that this is a good one. The drawings are clear and uncrowded, and the tones are muted to give the whole thing a sort of old fashioned sepia quality. The text is minimal, the dialogues are simple and the text boxes informative. In fact the story told in this comic is surprisingly comprehensive, and I was impressed by the authors attempt to be impartial and fair to all sides. The good and the bad of the Kellys and of the Police are not exaggerated or disguised, and there doesn’t seem to be any attempt to make a hero out of Ned or demons out of the Police. Obviously in such a brief re-telling, theres very little opportunity to deal in depth with many of the contentious and controversial parts of the story, though I think all are touched on. However, there are three versions of the ‘Fitzpatrick incident’.

At the end, Dolan lists the 8 books he says were stacked on his desk for easy reference while doing the writing and it was pleasing to note one was Morrisseys “Ned Kelly A Lawless Life”. He also lists a few websites, and includes the Iron Outlaw Archive as a resource for its collection of newspaper articles and other documents.

Curiously, no link is provided in the book to something I found on Booktopias listing for this book (which they sell for $15.95) – a free downloadable Teachers Guide and Study Notes by Robert Lewis.(Get yours HERE)

This guide ‘shows how to make most effective use of this graphic text in the history classroom so that students can know, understand and critically evaluate the ideas being put. It also offers a set of criteria for helping students evaluate this and other graphic texts.’

Its excellent reading , though I disagree with this:

 “So, which was he: a murderer/terrorist or a victim/hero?  There is no way any of us can finally decide this for ourselves. The historians and writers know far more than we readers will, and they disagree about their conclusions. So we cannot come up with a final conclusion about who Kelly was.”

As I have repeatedly said, alleging that Ned Kelly was either a ‘Villain or Hero’ and one is somehow at liberty to choose between them, depending on how you happen to feel at a particular moment is an illogical and false dichotomy. Its a tactic used by the sympathiser lobby to blur the distinctions and elevate the idea that Ned was a hero and to minimise the villainy of his life. The truth is that we CAN arrive at a final conclusion about who Ned Kelly was, just as we can decide if we answer the right questions that a cat is not a dog.  

The Study Guide provides  sets of questions to be answered about various stages and events in the Kelly story, and provides numerous links to a variety of relevant resources. To my great surprise and delight I found among them two active links to THIS BLOG, the first to our discussion about Fitzpatrick,(here) and the second at the very end of the guide where it says this:

‘The strength of feeling that still exists about the Kelly gang can be seen in the fierce debates that are carried on online between the pro-Kelly Iron Outlaw website, and the critical Ned Kelly: Death of the Legend blog:”

I already liked this Comic, but when I read this reference to my Blog in the Study Guide, I liked it a whole lot more. It signified to me that Death of the Legend Blog is not only being noticed, but is now being recognized as a legitimate part of the serious debate about the Kelly story and that we are making a real difference. I am excited by the prospect of a stream of young historians coming to read our discussions and learning from them, and hopefully even contributing.Kelly sympathisers would have to be concerned about this book being widely distributed, because I don’t doubt that a majority of readers would see through the kelly myths if they applied the techniques of reason and critical evaluation they are being taught in this study guide. 

This book is the best Kelly book ever written for school aged readers, and I hope all Year 9 kids get a chance to read it, but it can be enjoyed by everyone.

At last, another Kelly book I can recommend.