Book Review : Ned - Knight in Aussie Armour

Peter Newman said he would be buying Eugenie Navarre’s book and would post a review, so here it is:

First of all Dee, you are going to hate this book. It is pro-Kelly for sure, with much of the ‘factual’ content being attributed to discussions with Kelly researchers like Gary Dean. The author says she is seeking to set the record straight by breaking a 136 year long silence to reveal the TRUTH. To this end, Ned is presented as an activist and reformer, whose dream of freedom from oppression and a ‘fair go’ saw him take up arms, with many sympathisers armed and ready to support the Glenrowan uprising. You get the idea!

The book is full of factual errors, which will be immediately obvious to those who know the Kelly story, but which will mislead those who don’t. The author also often jumps to conclusions about things. For instance, she said the authorities prevented publication of a pro-Kelly book until 50 years after Ned’s death, whereas perhaps the explanation for this was simply that it took someone (presumably she means Kenneally) that long to write it. Similarly,just because the bodies of Dan and Steve were never formally identified is not proof that they didn’t die in the fire.

There is also new information in the book that I have never heard before, but which is not referenced. For instance, it is news to me that Joe was the grandson of an Irish political activist who was transported as a convict. Where is the evidence for this? And is it true that he carried a bible at Glenrowan, as I don’t recall ever hearing that before.

There is also a tendency to justify Ned’s actions. For instance, Ned’s horse thieving venture is justified as a reaction to the police stealing horses including from Ned himself. And that having been outlawed for a crime he almost certainly didn’t commit, he needed guns and ammunition to protect his bush hideout at SBC and was therefore forced into a situation which resulted in the massacre of the police. Oh yes, she also adds here that the police were carrying body straps.

The reason for many of the inaccuracies and wrong assumptions may be due to Eugenie being over- reliant on the views of a relatively small number of Kelly researchers who happen to have a pro-Kelly position. But then again, this is a book that attempts to present the “untold generational stories that have been passed down through Kelly sympathiser families”, which means it is always going to be pro- Kelly. These stories and anecdotes are from many families who supported the Kelly Gang, including the Mc Guffie and Moore families in the Buffalo River Valley, the Woodyard family of Gentle Annie, the Barter family of Cheshunt, the Gambold family, the Limson family, and the Shanley family of Boggy Creek Road (Moyhu). Eugenie says there were hundreds of other families who were also supporters, but doesn’t include a list of who these families were.

Keep in mind that after Glenrowan, there was good reason for the forebears of these families to have kept quiet about what they knew and about any assistance they may have given the Gang. The stories had to be handed down orally, and there is undoubtedly a tendency for error to have crept in. However as I said in that post I put up about Edna Cargill, oral history is important and you have to be careful not to be to dismissive of it.

The stories that Eugenie has documented include:

• A suggestion (from Paul Gambold) that the reason for the Euroa bank raid was to provide struggling farmers between Moyhu and Glenrowan with funds to meet bank payments which were due by Xmas 1878, with those farmers likely to have lost their farms if those payments had not been met.
• That Glenrowan was a highly organised, but well concealed activist cause, with strong indications of a grand plan for a separate state or republic of NE Victoria.
  
• Recollections of the Nolan family about how Michael Nolan had accompanied Maggie Skillion (Ned’s sister) and Tom Lloyd (her cousin and later husband) to Melbourne to purchase
  ammunition two weeks before the Glenrowan siege.
  
• A quite common belief that Dan and Steve escaped Glenrowan, with the descendants of numerous sympathiser families believing this to be the case, including the Holihans, Walkers;
  Delanys, Dwyers, Pendergasts, Mack, Shultz, Kaufmanns, the Ryans, Tootells, and Nolan family.
  
• A detailed account which was told to Gary Dean by sympathiser descendent Irene Klingsporn (nee Reardon) of how Dan and Steve were escorted away from Glenrowan by John and Michael Reardon and their brother-in-law John Byrne.  That they were taken to Greta and then towards the hut at Bullock Creek, then on to the Kelly mine before heading to Goulburn where both supposedly had relatives. 
  
• Reference to Ned Kelly talking with sympathisers on Mount Morgan just prior to his last stand.
  
• That Ned Kelly was a member of the Greta branch of the Whiteboys, an Irish agrarian organisation which had its roots in Irish suppression (this is another Gary Dean revelation). The author says she was told there were 120 members of the Buckland branch of the Whiteboys armed and ready to help out if called upon at Glenrowan.
  
• Suggestions that perhaps Father Gibney (who ran into the burning hotel) had sympathy for the cause.
  
• Numerous recollections regarding the making of armour at various places, which to my reading suggests there were more than four suits. In fact, there is specific reference to a fifth set of armour that belonged to Alexander Gunn (Ned’s brother-in-law), and to this set of armour having been seen and handled by Darren Sutton (the guy who believes he has found the offcuts of Joe’s armour).
  
• Threats being made by police to several Glenrowan hostages to keep quiet about the police conduct during the siege.

What do I think of all this? Well I have always been open to alternate viewpoints, although have lately probably swung more to the Morrisey and MacFarlane viewpoints. But obviously for the gang to have stayed at large for as long as they did, they had to have had extensive support networks. And if Glenrowan was meant to have been the start of an insurrection then there was good reason for the people involved and others who had assisted the Kellys to lay low and keep quiet. Keep in mind that many selectors were semi-illiterate and that would also account for the lack of documented evidence. Oral history is therefore important and shouldn’t be dismissed lightly.

To conclude, Eugenie’s book is obviously pro-Kelly and is full of errors and assumptions. But I think she has made a worthwhile contribution and would recommend it to anyone interested in this period of Victoria’s history. 

Lying to Children : is this Neducation?

I visited the local Public Library recently to see what was available about Ned Kelly. My search on their Computer based catalogue for anything containing “Ned Kelly” as a subject produced exactly 50 hits. After excluding material that wasn’t really about Ned Kelly or the outbreak – for example a book about John Jarratt, the actor who played Ned in the Last Outlaw TV Miniseries of 1980 -  there were 37 books and DVDs available that were actually about Ned Kelly and the outbreak. A number of these books were about Bushrangers in general and had chapters on the Kelly Gang – one was called “A Guide to Australian Folklore”, another “Great Australian Speeches” and another “The Encyclopedia of Australian Crime”. Of books specifically devoted to the Kelly story many of ‘the usual suspects’ were there, such as  “The Fatal Friendship” and 3 versions of  “Ned Kelly : A Short Life” by Ian Jones , Peter Fitzsimons book, the Corfield Encyclopedia, and the books on Glenrowan by Paul Terry and by Ian Shaw. Noticeably absent were the recent important additions to the Kelly scholarship, “The Kelly Gang Unmasked” by Ian MacFarlane, “Ned Kelly a Lawless Life” by Doug Morrissey and “Ned Kelly Under the Microscope”  Edited by Craig Cormick, meaning that our local community is seriously under-informed about where the Kelly story has gone to in recent years. I will be recommending this deficiency be corrected as soon as possible.

However the thing that surprised me most was to see that there were 13 books about Ned Kelly in the Junior Non Fiction section. This was one more book about Ned Kelly than was listed in general Non Fiction. The other interesting thing I noticed was that the majority of them were written by women. Men have written hundreds  of books about Ned Kelly and the Outbreak but I can think of only a handful of adult works that were written by  women – for example theres one about Ellen Kelly and another is about the Glenrowan hostages, and in the last few months two more have appeared, one being a collection of newspaper articles and the latest is the worthless conspiracy theory about Steve and Dans survival at Glenrowan.  What’s that all about? 

I went to the Junior Non-Fiction section to have a look at what youngsters are being told about Ned Kelly, and what I found was at once in many ways delightful,  but at the same time also disturbing in works that are supposed to be teaching history to eager and trusting young minds.

It was the illustrations in many of them that delighted me  – they were very colourful and often slightly whimsical portrayals of Bushrangers, trains, horses,  the bush and the Kelly Gang. Kids must find them really appealing! There was a minimum of gore and murder. In fact when you think about it, the Kelly story is packed with colourful imagery and dramatic events that lend themselves to illustration and artistic interpretation. 

But what of the Kelly story told in these books? These short colourfully illustrated books were aimed mostly at children of Primary School age and so the story  was necessarily highly simplified and condensed and inevitably required many omissions of fact, and glossing over of detail. However in one respect these books were consistent : Ned was almost universally portrayed as a victim, as hard done by, as someone who was unfairly persecuted by corrupt Police – the Kelly Myth, in other words. The other thing they had in common was to contain numerous errors of fact.

Heres an example from Anna Shepherds “Australia’s Most Notorious Bushrangers”

FACT FILE :

Name: Ned Kelly

Born: Beveridge, Vic 1855

Deeds: He led a gang of Bushrangers in North Eastern Victoria. The Kelly Gang carried out some of the boldest robberies ever seen in Australia.

Died: Melbourne Vic 1880

Unlike most of Australia’s bushrangers Ned Kelly only stole from Banks, and only from the rich. He never held up travellers or mail coaches. He believed he only killed in self-defense and that his actions were the result of Police persecution and unjust treatment by the authorities.

The books aimed at a slightly older audience included photos  and referenced particular events in the saga, and much of it was factual but again the tone was sympathetic towards Ned and Kelly mythology, and error-ridden. Some of it is such obvious  and deliberate misrepresentation of the truth that I am tempted to describe it as lies about Ned Kelly. Heres an example from Paula Hunts “Outlaw Son : the story of Ned Kelly”

“Luckily for the Police and Journalists on the train Ned allowed the local school teacher, Thomas Curnow to leave the Hotel with his family”

This inverts the brave school teachers terrifying heart-in-mouth deception of a known Police murderer and hostage-taker with a gun and armour and more killing on his mind, into some sort of generous act on the part of Ned Kelly. It completely discredits the heroic bravery of Thomas Curnow. It is dishonest history telling at best.

Later Paula Hunt writes:

“The Police had been incompetent in their efforts to capture the Kelly Gang. The shootout at the Glenrowan Hotel was no exception.  Several people including a young boy were fatally wounded by the Police”

Again we are reading a deliberately prejudiced view of events rather than simple History, and the real message is actually subliminal, unstated : Police are to blame for fatally wounding people.  I find it objectionable.

The story is sometimes mixed up, events are out of order and facts simply wrong:

“Red was eventually arrested and Gaoled for horse stealing and died before finishing his sentence”

“Ned knew that Kennedy would not live and believed that right or wrong the best thing to do was put him out of his misery. He shot him in the head” (Geoff Hocking :The Kelly Gang: The last of the Bushrangers”)

“To raise money for Mrs. Kelly’s legal defense the Kellys robbed banks in the Victorian town of Euroa and across the border in Jerilderie in New South Wales.  Then at Stringybark Creek in the Wombat Ranges they shot and killed three policemen who were tracking them. Now the Kelly Gang was wanted for murder.  (“Ned Kelly’s  Jerilderie Letter” by Carole Wilkinson)

1880 26^th June Joe Byrne shoots a man named Aaron Sherritt for betraying the Gang to the Police. (The person murdered was not a random “man” but a close friend of the Gangs, and there  remains to this day enormous doubt that he betrayed them)

1880 27^th June The Police hear about the murder of Aaron Sherritt. They send a special Police train carrying 200 officers to Beechworth via Glenrowan to hunt down the Kelly Gang. ( 200 officers? I hope that’s just a typo!)(Meet Ned Kelly by Janeen Brian)

Anybody with an interest in the Kelly story who read these books would see many  more mistakes – another  one is the claim that Ned was the last man hanged in Victoria!

So what are we to make of this genre? Firstly I don’t think outright errors of basic  facts are excusable. There are so many of them in every book that I looked at that I found myself becoming quite angry about this careless  disregard for basic  facts and the truth. None of these mistakes were about obscure details but, as Ive illustrated , they related to basic information and easily verified parts of the story.  Why do these writers treat children with such obvious contempt by not caring about the truth of the stories they are telling? Remember these books were all in the Non-Fiction part of the Childrens section of the Library.

Apart from a big question about the motivation of these writers, the other question that these books raise in my mind is whether or not these errors of facts are important, and whether or not its important that children are being fed a line about Ned Kelly thats not actually true, mythology as true history?

One might argue they are being taught about the value of standing up for yourself and not putting up with bullying and corruption, about bravery, about respecting your family, about caring for the poor and underprivileged, the downtrodden, the disenfranchised?  It might also be teaching kids that if you break the Law, no matter for what reason you will suffer the consequences. Nobody would dispute that these are worthwhile values, but is it acceptable to use a mangled version of history to teach them? Personally I don’t think so.

Ive been giving it a lot of thought and have realised that we have two important agendas  being mixed together in these books - one is to teach history and the other is to learn lessons from it, and I think both are being done very badly. Firstly I believe that if you’re going to teach history you have to get the facts right, no matter who your target audience is. Its disrespectful to children to write as if facts, and truthfulness are less important for them. In fact I would say that for parents there is almost nothing of greater importance than telling the truth to children and being open and honest with them. Once they catch you out trying to pull the wool over their eyes your credibility and their respect for you is on a downhill slide.

The second bit, learning lessons from history, is much more tricky. Learning them from made up stories is much easier -  in fact thats why all cultures have myths and legends, fairy stories - they are exciting made up stories that act as vehicles or frameworks for the teaching of important values and social customs and mores. Everyone knows they are not strictly “true” stories but they contain “Truth” .  But if you are going to use an actual historical event like the Kelly Outbreak to do a similar thing, your first duty is to get the story right, but if you don’t how can you expect the value lessons to be taken seriously?

Ive written before about my suspicion of Kelly sympathisers who promote themselves as educators - as “Neducators” as one of them calls himself - offering themselves to schools, promoting school camps and educational tours revealing the story of the Outbreak.  I am deeply suspicious of their claims to be telling “the truth” and of telling it in some kind of balanced way so that people can make up their own minds.  And I am deeply suspicious of their tactic of targeting  children, to uncritical young minds who can easily be persuaded of just about anything by a practiced and polished adult. However having never been on one of the Tours, or received Neducation I cant claim to know exactly what they get up to but I would hazard a guess that a survey of Kelly Tour participants and recipients of Neducation would reveal a high proportion of them viewed Ned Kelly very favourably, would regard the Kelly myths as largely the truth but would never have been told about Ned Kellys lies, about the absence of evidence for a republic, about the attempts Police made to rehabilitate him, about threatening to harm women and children.

With Kids books however, I don’t have to guess that they might not be getting a balanced and reasonable account of the outbreak - I can read what theyre being told for my self - and they aren’t! They’re being feed the syrupy fairy tale of the gallant  Ned Kelly with the occasional token reference to his bad behaviour, or rhetorical question about his right to defend himself or stand up and fight for his rights. “Was he a victim of Police abuse or merely a villain?” asks Anna Purcell, placing before young minds that tedious false dichotomy and asking them to chose! The same old “Hero or Villain” nonsense. 

These books are mostly a disgrace. They treat kids as mugs and ought to be in the Junior Fiction section of the library. Or listed as Propaganda : Not suitable for Young Children.

Lost and Found : Kelly Armour

I have been prohibited from contributing to any Kelly discussions on the Iron Outlaw Facebook Page, and the Ned Kelly Forum Facebook Page, but I check them out at intervals to see if anything interesting is happening on either of them. Usually I am disappointed : this week for example on Ironoutlaw they are “liking” a new book that recycles the absurd conspiracy theory about Dan and Steve surviving the fire at the Glenrowan Inn. This perfectly illustrates the gullibiity of so many sympathisers, and how little they are interested in critical thought or rational analysis. Ian Jones must despair at times at the intellectual quality of the rabble who follow his Kelly mythology, and who use his name to try to legitimise the rubbish they put in print.

Another item that caught my eye on Facebook recently was a claim made on the Facebook Page of the Ned Kelly Forum that a piece of Ned Kellys armour has gone missing. Because I am unable to contribute there I will comment here, on my Blog – and maybe people like Bill and Peter among other interested and knowledgeable readers might be able to contribute their thoughts as well, and progress the discussion a bit further because it didn’t get anywhere on the Facebook Page.

This  Facebook Post was headlined “Breaking News” which seems a bit hysterical as the topic was something that happened in 1955. The author of this Post, ‘SJ’, watched a DVD which included a short film called ‘A Message to Kelly’, made in 1955, and he noticed a steel component of the armour hanging off the bottom of the back of the armour like the front one does. SJ called it a back lappet plate. Now I don’t know about anyone else but I have never seen an image anywhere  other than on this movie of any suit of the Gangs armour with a ‘back lappet plate’. But, according to SJ that ‘back lappet’ though having never been seen before or after that movie was made, is ‘missing' and “SJ” claims the NKF are working with the State Library of Victoria to try and find it. 

He also claims that in the movie, the director Rupert Kathner “inspects Ned Kelly's COMPLETE set of armour”  a statement that’s simply not true, because as you will see in the movie and even in the photos supplied on the NKF Facebook Page, the left and right shoulder armour is missing. Now, SJ is not a person I have any faith in as a source of reliable information - he’s the one who rubbished Greg Cormick of “Ned Kelly Under the Microscope” fame on those same FB Pages, and also the one who claimed in 2012 to know exactly where Ned Kellys skull is.  He’s got the same track record as the NKF member who announced he had solved the Lonigan killing mystery over 220 days ago, but has still not fronted up with it. So I read his breathless claims somewhat sceptically I have to say. SJ provides a phone number for the SLV but if you ring it you’ll discover nobody there has ever heard of SJ or the so called ‘missing' armour.  I get the feeling that he’s not so much “working" with the SLV as  ‘pestering’ the SLV and big-noting himself because he sent them an email. 

Of all the various suggestions about the missing armour that followed in the subsequent discussion, the best suggestion was that the ‘back lappet plate’ was actually Neds left shoulder armour, which as I noted, and SJ did not, was not in its usual position. I could easily imagine that if you were assembling the armour and had just one piece left over you might think it must hang off the back to balance the piece hanging off the front. However ‘SJ’s response was “When comparing the unidentified piece with the left shoulder plate currently on display with Ned's armour the two still look as though they are completely different pieces but needless to say, we have sent an email to the SLV to see if they can help confirm this information or not” Two weeks later if they replied SJ hasn’t mentioned it.Maybe they replied and told him to go away...

A still from the movie. The ‘back lappet plate’ is narrow enough to fit between the right side of the breastplate and the Armour stand just visible lower left.

A close-up of my photo : the hexagonal rim of the hole is easily visible as is a small bur on the edge above it, also visible on the Movie frame above

It just so happens that I have quite a nice picture of the left shoulder armour, taken at the Imagining Ned Exhibition last year, and comparing it with the still from the 1955 movie convinces me that the ‘back lappet plate’ is indeed the misplaced left shoulder plate. What I noticed in both photos, apart from the identical 'sugar scoop’ shape of the pieces was the raised almost hexagonal shaped edge to the hole in the top right corner of the plate, and just above it at the superior edge of the plate itself theres a distinct little bur that casts a shadow. The other important thing to notice is that it isn’t wide enough to reach and cover the vertical timber stand in the middle of the armour, so it simply isn’t wide enough to be a 'back lappet plate’ but is the perfect fit for the shoulder piece. You can see the vertical frame that  supports the whole suit of armour just to the left of the bottom of the ‘back lappet plate’ which is attached quite close to the bottom right corner of the front breastplate ( as viewed from behind ).

I’ll be interested in what others think, but I think SJ can stop panicking about the lost armour and ring the SLV and tell them to stop looking for his missing part because it never actually existed. The so-called 'back lappet’ is the left shoulder plate in the wrong place.  

The Ned Kelly Republic is a Fairy Story

Iron Outlaws Australia Day message is a lie : “In 1880 Neds dream was a Republic of North East Victoria”

I call it a lie, but it could also be called a fairy story because a lie and a fairy story are both stories that aren’t true. The important difference though is that nobody pretends that fairy stories are actually true.

This great Myth about the Kelly Outbreak was analysed in depth last year. In that discussion last year people asserted they believed it was true and that there were convincing arguments, but not a single scrap of direct evidence was ever produced. Its a great read(here) 

In regard to Dans alleged survival I recently posted that as long as people keep claiming it, we  will just have to keep  pointing out their mistakes, and its no different with the Republic : as long as people keep asserting it, I will keep on showing it be a hopeful fantasy propped up by Kelly sympathisers who are in denial about the truth of the Kelly outbreak.

Now, exactly a year ago , at the end of the discussions that followed my Post about the Republic, I summarized the debate like this : 

It seems the Kelly Republic discussion has run out of steam! I had a vague hope that someone would come up with something substantial but now I realize that the most remarkable thing about the idea of the Kelly Republic is how very weak the so called “evidence” is that supports it :

*Speculation on a rumor from a journo that a notebook and letters were taken from Neds pocket in 1880(no mention of a Declaration mind you)

*A mention in an Irish Magazine from the 1920s that cant be found

*A mention in passing by Max Brown in 1948

*A recovered memory by another journo of having seen a Declaration in London in 1962, and a claim by some other unnamed person to also have seen it

*Contradictory claims by Mr Lloyd about minute books seen 40 or perhaps 80 years before

*Another unnamed person still alive who also claims to have seen them

*Elaboration of the above by Ian Jones, Molony and everyone since into a full blown exposition of Neds republican Ideology!

In contrast to the speculation that is the foundation of the Republic idea, these facts had to be ignored to do it:

*Ned Kelly never ever mentioned a Republic

*No other member of the Kelly Gang or any of its sympathisers/co-Republicans ever mentioned it

*Ned Kelly specifically stated what his motivations were but the republicans don’t accept them!

*No early author ever mentioned the Republic

*Extensive searches have not found the Document seen by the Journalist in 1962

One of the most interesting new facts that emerged from my own investigations last year was the unreliability of the main source of information about the Republic idea, Mr Thomas Lloyd. He told Ian Jones in 1964 that his father recounted that when he was ‘a boy’ he saw notebooks that contained the minutes of the meetings that Ned and others held to plan the Republic. The problem with that claim is that when those meetings were supposed to have been taking place, Thomas Lloyds father was not “a boy” but a 22 year old man. This means that what he saw as ‘a boy’  - lets say 10 years earlier when he was 12  and Ned was 14 – whatever those meetings were about they were nothing to do with Ned or a republic.  Alternatively, if you want to argue that he was simply mistaken about his age at the time that he saw those books, my reply is that if he cant remember something as fundamental as his age, whether or not he was a boy or a man when he saw something, why would we believe anything else about that memory, except perhaps with a large grain of salt?

There is another problem though. This informant later told a completely different story to John Molony in 1976, contradicting the one he gave to Jones by now saying that the “boy” who saw those books was not his father but he, himself. In a Court, this mans evidence would be dismissed as completely unreliable.

Gary Dean told me that Kelly sympathisers in Kelly Country resented Ian Jones probing and prying into their history back then, and so they told him ‘tall stories’, whatever they thought he wanted to hear, and kept their secrets to themselves. The trouble with ‘tall stories’ is you have to remember them so you don’t contradict yourself when telling it to someone else later, which seems to have happened when John Molony turned up asking the same things a few years later. I  have no idea if Deans view is true or not but its curious that Thomas Lloyd provided two different stories – they undermine his credibility and the believability of the already flimsy Republican myth.

The truth is this : there is very good evidence for what Ned Kelly had in mind for Glenrowan, both in his actions and in his actual words - it was about family, about retribution, and his hatred of authority and the Police. Nothing at all, in anything he said or did, or in anything the so-called Sympathisers ever said or did , or in anything that has come to light since, provides any support or even the slightest hint that a Republic of North East Victoria was ever in anyones mind. 

Placing Ned Kellys image anywhere near the modern debate about a Republic would be like using Jack the Ripper to promote Safe Houses for women fleeing domestic violence. Revolting.

Strange words

Sorry but this is NOT Ned Kelly....or is it?

‘Mind you die like a Kelly, son’ were Ellen Kellys last words to Ned. They are described by Ian Jones in ‘A Short Life’ (p392 in the 2008 edition, Jane) as ‘strange words from a mother such as Ellen to a son such as Ned’.  So what was strange about them, and what did she really mean?

According to “Ned Kelly Volume 1” available from Amazon as an e-book,  Ellen was really saying  ‘Die AS IF YOU WERE a Kelly’ – because she knew that the man about to be hanged wasn’t her son, he wasn’t a Kelly at all but  a convicted Swedish murderer from NSW, Alfred Engstrom.  He was going to “Die like a Kelly” to maintain the Police secret that Ned had already left the district and was living as Mr J Thompson in Adelaide!

 

Note the Typo. Big ears? 

This work has a catchy alternatve title “Kelly-Gate: Unmasking the Ned Kelly Conspiracy” and seems to have arisen out of an observation made by the author, when comparing  the size of Neds ears in a photo taken as a young man and in the photo taken the day before he was hanged at Melbourne Gaol. He writes “The man we hanged was not Ned Kelly – he had small ears….while a younger Ned had large ears”

I immediately looked at those photos of Ned and sure enough in the prison photo the ears DID seem smaller. Talk about things being hidden in plain sight - there couldn’t possibly be any other explanation for this apparent discrepancy between two photos from the 1800’s. No doubt about it – different sized ears in old photos can only mean one thing : these were two completely different and unrelated men! And, obviously if that’s the case then everything else we thought we knew about the Kelly Outbreak is all completely wrong. All of it. The whole  lot! 

Big ears?

Small ears?

The author of this myth-shattering revelation is  Melboune ‘medicare accredited’, bulk billing Clinical Psychologist, Dr Michael King PhD, PhD (yes twice!) M.App.Sci, M.Ed. He would appear to regard himself as in some way qualified to analyse photographic evidences because he advertises himself as being available for ‘legal and forensic reports’ . He says he completed this book in 1997 but an unnamed Publisher “took actual money for his efforts and merely messed around with it until the writer gave up hope. Then came Amazon Kindle and a couple of friends said “put it out there”

Volume 2, still to be published “discusses in forensic detail every known fact and fiction relating to the Kelly story, showing how most of the Glenrowan myth just could not be true”. Well yes, of course! In Volume 3, also still to be published, there is ‘an extensive personality assessment of the man behind the mask’

King writes that he made a study of Ned Kellys personality mainly using  ‘Ned and the others’ a book by Gary Dean and Dagmar Balcarek, and says he ‘emerged as a sociopath’. According to King, Ned was sick of running, he wanted the hunt to end, and in desperation agreed to a diabolical plan devised by Superintendent Hare : Ned would bring the Outbreak to an end by betraying the gang in return for his freedom. Aaron would be the first to die but  Hare insisted no harm was to be done to the Policemen in his hut. A train would be sent from Melbourne to bring a convicted murderer from NSW, Alfred Engstrom, to replace Ned using the Police-made armour as a disguise.  Engstrom, impersonating Ned, would be ‘captured’, and the rest of the gang killed. Later, Engstrom as Ned would be hanged and the Kelly gang consigned to history.  And isn’t that exactly what happened? Remember when Ned left the Inn during the siege and for several hours his whereabouts were unknown? Did he not re-emerge in armour from behind Police lines early in the morning? By then, the substitute had been made – it was Engstrom - and Ned was already galloping to Echuca, a Paddle-steamer down the Murray to Wentworth, and freedom.

Unfortunately for the author of this convoluted explanation for what happened at Glenrowan, it is a spectacular failure of the test of Occams razor, and for that reason alone can be dismissed. It fails a whole lot of tests, but the one that’s fatal to this mad conspiracy theory is the one provided by Science: when the bones of the ‘fake’ Ned were examined, they contained scientific proof  in the form of DNA evidence that whoever it was that was hanged, it wasn’t a Swede but a direct descendant of Ellen Kelly. Not a fake at all. Who else but Ned? Explain that Mr King!- actually no, don’t bother - It will just be another chapter of insane conspiracy, and I’m getting tired of them.But I have to say, I just love science - the way it cuts through bullshit is spectacular!

The only reason anyone ought to read this mad nonsense is if they’re interested in seeing a conspiracy theorist at work.