More thoughts about the CSI Report : Exhibit TWO

What people believe about what happened at Stringybark Creek can be predicted by what they think of Ned Kelly. If they think he was a wrongly accused and persecuted selector they think killing three Policemen at SBC was self defence and they got what they deserved. Everyone else thinks differently.

But when it comes to discussing the two suggested places where this atrocity occurred, its not as easy to guess which one someone supports by asking them how they feel about Ned Kelly. Obviously, that’s because the Two Huts versus CSI debate is about geography, its about where, not about why or what happened there, and geography ought to be above partisan views about Ned Kellys politics. As a result, as expected there are Two Huts supporters from both sides of the Kelly divide, people who disagree about Ned but agree that the Two Huts site identified by Bill Denheld is the right place. I noticed on Facebook the other day that Bob MgG , a Kelly gang descendant and strident Ned defender admitted through gritted teeth that he was on the same side as me on that subject! Good on you Bob!

But I think there IS something peculiar about this subject, and please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe CSI site believers are universally Kelly sympathisers, making belief in the CSI like one of the articles of faith of the die hard Kelly fancier. Does anyone know a CSI supporter out there who thinks Ned was a villain, and Ned was the one who got what he deserved? Ive not knowingly encountered such a person, a CSI believer who is  a Kelly myth believer as well. Ive been wondering why lately, asking myself what it is about the CSI site that appeals to people who see Ned as hero? I’m tempted to suggest that people whose powers of critical thought are such that they can accept the  Kelly mythology are equally susceptible to the illogic of the CSI pseudoscience. Maybe they like Ned because they are attracted to the idea of the rebel who defies all the usual rules,  the person who doesn't care about how things ought to be done and for that reason likes the CSI site  and the CSI team because they are defying logic and the usual way of doing things, maybe they want them to be right just because they're on the outer?

As an example of this CSI believer susceptibility I cite one of the CSI supporters, a person who called himself/herself “Poorflower” on a Kelly forum. I have to point out that Fitzy et al never objected to that person using a pseudonym and keeping their identity concealed from everyone – they reserve their hypocritical distaste for anonymous people only if they don’t agree with them, and then they only want to know who you are so they can attack you personally – but that’s an aside. But Poorflower, in his/her  attempts to discredit Bill and give support to the CSI site in an earlier debate on a now destroyed Forum, posted ridiculous comparisons of the Two Huts site then and now and claimed that in one, the trees were all leaning the wrong way and that proved Bill was wrong!  Poorflower posted the Burman photos and modern day photos of the Two Huts site with all the trees marked by vertical pink lines to show how in one photo they ‘leaned’ one way and in the other photo, they ‘leaned’ the other way.  The CSI Report didn’t include that wacky nonsense but as far as I know nobody  from the CSI crowd ever  called it out for what it was : nonsense! They’re definitely a weird mob, those CSI supporters.

Another example of their wackiness is their claim that a tree bearing identical marks can be seen in two photos taken several years apart. They call these marks 'burls', which are lumpy irregular protuberances found quite often on gum trees, which apparently are genetically susceptible to producing them. Given that the irregular marks are the same, they argue, not unreasonably, that the photos must be of  the same tree and so the two photos had to have been taken in the same place.  By this argument they link the Burman photo of the murder site to the Kelly tree shown in the Beautiful Mansfield photo.   The problem with their argument is the claim that these two burls are the same. Have a look at these blown up images of the two burls and ask yourself how similar are they?  I would say they are not at all similar. In fact I would say they are completely different, and therefore there is no logical way these two trees can be said to be the same one - AND YET , for the CSI report to hang together, these two marks MUST be accepted as the same. So what do you  think? If you cant say these two marks are identical  then you MUST reject the CSI Report! If these burls are not the same the CSI report has no way to link the site shown in the Burman photo to the Kelly tree shown in the Beautiful Mansfield photo. Its as simple as that!

The'burl' is the black mark on the tree trunk

The 'burl' is near the top of the tree trunk

When the CSI report was published way back in 2011, the CSI believers all immediately hailed it as definitive and a wonderful production, but there was never anywhere a single critical discussion of its claims, no questioning of any of the mad fruitcake arguments about leaves and burls and assumptions about maps huts rocks and so-on,  except by Bill Denheld, and to a person the CSI people just rejected Bills criticisms out of hand. You can read his analyses on his website HERE.

What needs to happen is for the CSI report to be  much more widely exposed, and Heritage Victoria and DELWP officials who may have seen it be asked if they have actually read it and if so to comment on it. They must be asked to say whether they accept it as a credible piece of science, if they agree with the methods used to locate the supposed site, if they accept the photographic interpretations, if they think the burls are the same, if they  have had actual archaeologists and the like review it, if they have read MY critique of it and so on. I am certain the more it is exposed and the more it is subjected to critical scrutiny, the more it will become discredited. It cant be allowed to become an uncritically accepted 'proof' of where the Police camp and the murders took place.

You can read my detailed critique of the CSI Report HERE but the following is something  I should have added to that Post - a summary of the summary! This shows how little actual substance there is to the CSI report which, if you happen to feel like getting one for $50 – if theyre still available that is – you will find looks like a real report and like actual research.

What you get is a 93-page document - but more than half of it – 51 pages – are the Bibliography and notes and Appendices. The 42 pages that make up the actual report are divided into 8 sections, and I detail the content of each one in the Critique. So heres a summary of the summary:

Section 1 Introduction : a bit of history and a sort of Mission statement

Section 2 Irrelevant stuff about the route the Police took

Section 3 Irrelevant stuff about a site on the East bank that nobody defends anymore

Section 4 This is the actual case for their site – the pseudoscience about burls, photo interpretation and other things about maps

Section 5 The rest of their argument for their site – the ‘seasonal soak’ they say is a spring, and a pile of rocks supposed to be remnants of the hut near where the police tent was.

Section 6 Irrelevant stuff about the murders

Section 7 “Findings” – a summary of what they think they showed in Sections 5 and 6

Section 8 Conclusions – another version of Section 7 really!

So, as you can see, there are only two sections that are the real ‘meat’ of the Report. All the rest is padding and irrelevant, though at times interesting reading, which might give the report some sort of illegitimate credibility. Its like fancy packaging which creates a false  impression something great is wrapped up inside. Theres nothing but pseudoscience inside. 

That doesn’t mean of course that the Two Huts site will be recognised by default. No, the Two Huts site has to make its own case, but in stark contrast to the CSI reports meagre two sections out of eight that are their argument, Bill Denheld has published huge stacks of his own research. He has made reconstructions and models, checked maps and charts and created diagrams and photographic analyses, all sorts of ingenious approaches to identifying the site from many different directions, and they all fit together into a coherent whole. Further more he has made everything freely available on his site and has  taken notable Australians such as Peter Fitzsimons and Professor Tim Flannery to the very place, and it seems everyone who sees the Two Huts site agrees with him. Read my assessment of the Two Huts site HERE then let us all know what you think, and answer this question:  Are the burls identical? 

CSI Pseudoscience : Exhibit ONE

Just so that everyone understands why I keep calling the CSI Report Pseudoscience, I will illustrate the weakness of their argument where it relates to this Photograph, one of the two famous photographs of the actual place where Lonigan and Scanlan were killed, at the site of the Police encampment at Stringybark Creek. This extraordinary photo was taken by the photographer Frederick Charles  Burman less than a week after the police were murdered there. Burman was taken there by Edward Monk, a local sawmiller with extensive knowledge of the surrounding terrain. Monk was part of the search party, which included the surviving policeman McIntyre  that found the bodies of the slain Police. Monk therefore knew exactly where the bodies were, and no doubt from his discussions with McIntyre, exactly what happened up there and he took Burman back  to photograph the scene. As you can see Burman re-created the scene, no doubt with Monks help and the descriptions of McIntyre, showing someone pretending to be Ned Kelly crouched behind the log on the left, someone pretending to be McIntyre sitting on the log to the left of 'Kelly' and Kennedy with arm raised advancing into the campsite, moments before being shot.

The CSI teams argument rests crucially on their understanding of this photo, because in it they believe they can see a mark on a tree which they claim enables them to identify the exact same tree in another photo, a tree with the exact same mark on it (they call it a 'burl') in the so-called Beautiful Mansfield Photo. Therefore they argue, this scene in the Burman photo is of the same place, or very close to the same place pictured in the Beautiful Mansfield Photo.

Who on earth would base an entire theory on a claim that these two 'burls' are the same one?(I stole these from Bill...) 

Here's the massive problem that they have to explain to sustain their argument : they go into great detail to establish that the Mansfield photo was taken looking to the north-east. To see the same 'burl' on the same tree in the Burman photo they have to therefore insist that the Burman photo was also taken looking to the north-east. This would then require us to accept that when Monk and Burman recreated the scene for the Camera, aiming it to the northeast, they got it completely arse-about-face' with 'Kelly' hiding on the wrong side of the Log, 'MacIntyre' facing south when he should have been looking north, and the arriving Kennedy walking into the Camp from the south, when we know he approached from the North.  And that is what the CSI team claim, that Burman got it completely wrong, by 180 degrees. So, I ask how likely is it that Burman and Monk, having seen the bodies and hearing McIntyres account, got it completely wrong, just a few days after the shooting took place but the CSI team got it right, all these decades later?

And how exactly have the CSI team determined that the Burman photo was taken looking north-east? What evidence do they have that Burman took the photo from somewhere near where the police tent was? The answer is that there is NO indication anywhere recorded about exactly where the picture was taken from, but to make their 'matching burls' argument stick together they HAVE to suppose that Burman took the photo from somewhere near where the tent had been in the northwest corner of the clearing. This then FORCES them into the absurd position of having to assert that Burman and Monk got it all wrong.

See what they've done? They've decided to make an argument about these ridiculous 'burls' - which are indistinct in both photos and nowhere near identical as they claim - and to make the burl argument stick they've forced everything else round to fit. That's Pseudoscience - where you make a theory and then twist everything else round however much you need, to  fit your theory. BAD, BAD BAD!

To accept the CSI theory, you have to accept that Burman and Monk didn't know what the hell they were doing. You also have to accept that two indistinct smudges on trees are identical burls in the same tree many years apart. If you can't accept both of  those two highly unlikely claims, the CSI argument collapses and all the other stuff in their Report becomes irrelevant.

Is there a Stringybark Creek Swindle underway right now?

The news article that Sharon drew to our attention the other day, about a plan to 'upgrade'  the Police Killing Ground at Stringybark Creek, says that 'the Police and other stakeholders' were consulted, and as a result a plan for a new walkway and new 'signage' was developed for activation later this year. 

‘‘The project includes the construction of a new walking trail in the locality of where the fourth member of the police party, Constable McIntyre, escaped and Sgt Kennedy was later killed,’’ DELWP Goulburn District manager Lucas Russell said.

‘‘This is an extremely important site from both a historical perspective and for the families of the policemen who were killed,’’ Mr Russell said. 

Now everyone who knows anything about Stringybark Creek knows that for many years the Signage was wrong. It identified a  place that Ian Jones nominated as the actual site of the murders, but now everyone accepts he was  wrong, and so it needs to be upgraded. However, where exactly should the signage be pointing to? 

Two groups of amateur researchers  have narrowed the debate down to two nominated alternative sites a few hundred meters apart. One is known as the Two Huts site and the other as the CSI site. There have been many fierce debates between the CSI group, and former member of that team Bill Denheld, who discovered the Two Huts site in 2009. On this Blog last year I critically reviewed both sets of claims and there is no doubt in my mind, and the minds of many others that Bill Denheld is right. Thats why I called my Blog post about the Two Huts site "Bill is right about Stringybark Creek"  I labelled the Report of the CSI team "Pseudoscience" for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who reads it or my critique of it HERE.

Where the CSI Team is winning however, is in the political battle to get Heritage Victoria to recognise THEIR site as THE site. I have no doubt that the new Signage mentioned in this newspaper article will be directing Tourists not to the wrong site once promoted by Ian Jones, but to the wrong site now promoted by the CSI Team, who I believe now have the blessing of Ian Jones, the powerfully influential Kelly go-to man of yesteryear. 

On reading this news article  I was immediately reminded of an email conversation I had at the very beginning of the year, with Kelvyn Gill, one of the authors of the CSI@SBC Report. He told me that "In the latter half of 2017 it will become quite clear as to the site that merits endorsement as the most likely site for the police camp as there is work already commenced by independent organisation(s) and which will verify the claims of the respective champions of particular locations."

I asked him for more detail but he said that it would all be made public  later  this year, and as he was only one member of the CSI group he didnt have authority to divulge anything else about this investigation. I then decided to email Bill Denheld directly to get more , as I assumed he would have been one of the 'respective champions' referred to by Kelvyn but Bill replied saying he knew nothing about  such an investigation. 

The newspaper article says that Police and other stakeholders were consulted in formulating their plans for the new look SBC. This is exactly what Kelvyn Gill said earlier in the year, and both are saying the results will be made later  this year. However, though its clear from what Kelvyn told me, and by what "Anonymous" posted to this Blog in the last 48 hours, that the CSI people are" in the know" about whats going on, and someone in the Police is also in the know, it's also very clear that one of the most important 'stakeholders'  or "champions" in the SBC debate, Bill Denheld has been deliberately excluded. Nothing more loudly speaks to whats going on with Heritage Victoria and the DELWP as being a swindle, as this fact, that a widely acknowledged  SBC expert and obvious major stakeholder has been deliberately excluded. This is a scandal! And we have, as usual, an anonymous poster to the Blog announcing yesterday that we need to 'prepare to be blasted by a SBC revelation' in a couple of months. This Anonymous appears to have insider information so must be one of the CSI team or supporters who are in the secret loop of insider knowledge, part of the sneaky and unscientific team who have so little confidence in their Site they wont allow it be subjected to open scrutiny or go one-to-one with the Two Huts site.

The Public are being told "stakeholders" have been consulted, and Kelvyn told me that 'independant organistion/s' have been conducting an evaluation 'of the claims of the respective champions" , implying that something unbiased and even handed is taking place to resolve the arguments, but in fact, by  excluding Bill Denheld and the Two Huts site from consideration, the 'evaluation' is really just  a charade engaged in for Public benefit, but behind closed doors. It is a disgraceful pretence at fairness when all along, the CSI team, now with Ian Jones backing appears to have has simply pulled the wool over the eyes of Heritage Victoria and convinced them with pseudoscience, and the illegitimate authority of Ian Jones  that the CSI site is where the Signage should be. 

Their Report is a joke. It really is Pseudoscience , and Heritage Victoria will be rightly subject to public abuse anger and derision  if once again their Signage directs the Public  to yet another Kelly historical  blunder under the authority of Ian Jones, a person whose public record of wrong endorsements of Kelly related phenomena is well known. The important problem with the CSI report is that it claims to be and sort of looks like "science", but it isn't. The arguments in it could be bad science, but the critical reason their report is NOT science is because the CSI team won't engage in open discussion with other interested people about their findings, which is a vital hallmark of actual science. Actual science involves placing your theory and argument in the public space and engaging in debate and argument with like minded people about it. Instead it's a report you have to buy if you want to see it, whereas Bill Denhelds every thought, every idea and calculation, photo, diagram and reconstruction is freely available for public scrutiny on his WebSite - the amount of detailed information at times is overwhelming. So whilst most people can at least try to understand Bills arguments, most cannot even read the CSI case let alone engage in debate about it. Petty arguments about whether a creek is a spring, which is the sort of argument they engaged in on a Forum I once created, is not genuine open debate. Notably that forum was destroyed by a CSI supporter. Their approach is completely unscientific - no openness, no willingness to engage and defend, a readiness to stifle and wreck alternative arguments, to cheat and to do political deals to advance their case illegitimately. 

On my Blog last year, when I posted the only comprehensive independent point by point  critique of the CSI report ever published , the CSI team pretended they never saw it, and made no attempt to answer the many important questions raised in it. 

When the Public begin to ask Heritage Victoria why they've changed the place they identify as the site of  the  Ambush to the CSI site they will be forced to direct them to the CSI Report and then the fun will start! Burls on trees? Piles of rocks? "Near" meaning 100 yards away? A photographer at the scene within a few days of the murders got it COMPLETELY wrong but the CSI pseudo scientists didn't?? Heritage Victoria will become a laughing stock about a site that is almost sacred ground, a site they've allowed themselves to be tricked into yet again misidentifying because they've  accepted pseudoscience and the authority of Ian Jones rather than consider the evidence, the logic and the genius of Bill Denheld.  I suspect Bill will have been dismissed by  Heritage Viuctoria and DEWLP on the say-so of Ian Jones, just as Ian MacFarlane was dismissed by Ian Jones when he was advising Peter Fitzsimons, telling him just to ignore the book. And why did Ian advise Peter thus?  - because, according to Peter, Ian Jones "hated it". And why did he hate it? - because it challenged pet theories of his, which is exactly what Bill is doing too.And so Bill is getting exactly the same treatment; dare I call it 'un-Australian'?

People will be aghast to think Heritage Victoria and DELWP accepted an absurd argument based on trees in old photos, and unprovable assumptions about huts drawn on maps, and that their claimed consultation with "stakeholders" was a pretence, that a little guy like Bill who challenged the powerful Mr Jones was swept aside because he upset their cosy monopoly of the Kelly story. 

This is not a pro or anti-Kelly subject. It is about the pure facts of geography and history, about historical accuracy and giving the utmost respect to slain police. It has also become a story about one man battling the authorities and a powerfully connected lobby group doing their best to silence and sideline him, because they want to be defeat his argument by every means possible, by hook or by crook, by  fair means or foul if need be. By excluding Bill Denhelds findings for reasons of personal pride and ego, the CSI team may well pull off some sort of "win" if the new signage doesn't point to the Two Huts site.However the win will be illegitimate, it will have been achieved by cheating, by unfairly excluding the only possible competition, and will be dishonourable to fallen police, because further generations of people will be paying their respects to them at the wrong place, yet again. 

•  I call upon Heritage Victoria and DELWP to step back from the brink, and to genuinely include the Two Huts site and its "champion" It will NOT be good enough to say we considered the Two Huts site but didn't involve Bill, especially as it's clear that you considered the CSI site and DID include the CSI team. They're in the know but Bill isn't, which is a disgrace. He hasnt been given a fair go.
• I would urge all involved to read my Critique of the CSI Report and my other exposition of the Two Huts site. 
• I also call on the CSI team to stop trying to gain legitimacy for your site  by engaging in secret  political subterfuge and the non-scientific tactic of freezing out opposition. If you were truly confident in the rightness of your argument you wouldn't hesitate to defend them publicly, and to answer the many important obstacles that I raised in my Critique last year. Hiding from them suggests you're afraid they don't stand up to scrutiny.

I would also encourage readers to protest to Heritage Victoria, and to DELWP Goulburn District Manager Mr Lucas Russell (lucas.j.russell@delwp.vic.gov.au ), to send him  and to anyone else who is interested in historical truth when it comes to Victoria and the Kellys printed copies of my Critiques. What we are asking for is not that Bills site be recognised in preference to the other one, but that Bill be given an EQUAL opportunity to make his case and that all investigations and evaluations be made openly, publicly and in a way that is fair to ALL "stakeholders" .That is the Australian way.

BOOK REVIEW: “Mrs Kelly” by Grantlee Kieza :

Ellen Kellys life was different from the thousands of other Irish immigrant women who settled in Victoria in the 19^th century because of one thing : she gave birth to Ned Kelly, an Australian with a combination of social and character traits that resulted in him becoming a notorious outlaw. If it hadn’t been for Ned she would probably just have been another forgotten woman who like many others of her time, was poor, married young, never learned to read or write properly, had many babies and lost several of them, was widowed and married again, raised grandchildren, worked extremely hard all her life just to survive, and rode horses.  In those difficult days, it wasn't unusual for a mother to lose an infant or two, but it was still tragic, but Ellen also lost  a daughter in childbirth and another by drowning,  she lost a son in a police siege and another by hanging, and endured the lifelong shame of being the mother of a notorious police killler, who's life and death is the only reason we know about Ellens.   The exploits of her son Ned greatly added to the hardships and the sorrow she was forced to endure to the very end of her long life. 

Grantlee Kiezas biography of Ellen is therefore necessarily largely about Ned, the  forty three years of her life after Ned was hanged occupying just the last two of this big books twenty six chapters, and most of ten chapters in the middle are about the 'Outbreak', events which Ellen had no part in because she was in Gaol for all of it. 

In reality therefore this biography is a new telling of the entire Kelly story, and its clear Kieza hasn’t simply relied on the hand-me-down Kelly story told by the usual suspects starting with Kenneally and ending at Fitzsimons. Instead he has done his own original research, a great and reassuring strength of this book– and created a work that is very heavily referenced from start to finish - chapter three has 124 references !

Kieza has pieced the story together convincingly and without sentimentality about either the Kellys or the Police. There were many interesting details that others may have known but which I hadn’t come across before, or else were things only mentioned in passing but here exposed in sometimes hideous detail – like Jack Lloyds brutal slaying with an axe of a neighbours horse. Who knew one of Harry Powers victims was called Charles Dickens?  Who knew that Mrs Catherine McCormick, the infertile woman that Ned insulted so disgracefully, was only 4foot 10 inches tall? Who’s ever read about the young worker at Kilfera Station who refused an offer of  £50 from the Police to tell them where the Kelly gang was because “I have a mother and father keeping a a little farm not far off and if I told anything they would be murdered and burnt” Keiza then wrote “There are  many more people who either sympathise with the Kelly’s or are afraid of them” These statements are referenced to the Age, Novmber 13^th 1878, p3, a reference that I regretfully could not  find in Kelvyn Gills “Definitive Record”.

This book differs from other books on the Kelly story because the focus is taken off Ned to enable a much wider field of view. What is revealed more clearly than anything Ive ever read before is how the Quinns, the Lloyds and the Kellys created such a chaotic maelstrom of criminality around Ellen and her family. There was an almost constant parade of drunken violence, of theft, of petty lawlessness and squabbling that Red and Ellen Kelly  struggled to separate themselves from, but inevitably got drawn into.  By 1857 “the Kellys now have about 50 Irish relatives living nearby and eventually the Kellys Quinns and Lloyds will be the most prolific family in NE Victoria”

The image created of Ned Kelly in this book will not please the modern Kelly Gang descendants and the sympathisers, because wisely Kieza has avoided the trap of most other biographers, of accepting Ned Kellys words as Gospel. The wise thing to do once you realize how unreliable Ned Kellys word is – in other words that he was a notorious and seemingly congenital liar – is to largely ignore Kellys version of events,  ignore the modern Kelly mythology and look at the record instead. Thus, in relation to Ned Kellys arrest for drunkenness he writes “Ned wakes up with a mighty hangover  the next morning complaining that he feels dazed and that he must have been drugged. He has an excuse for everything”. And later, after describing the fight when Ned refused to be handcuffed, and suffered the indignity of Lonigans ‘squirrel grip’ he writes “By his actions, though, Ned has turned the paltry drunk-and–disorderly offence into a major incident” 

He then goes on to describe how nine days later Dan Kelly and his cousins assaulted and robbed a storekeeper.

The Kelly descendants and sympathisers also wont be happy with Kiezas description of the three big moments in Kelly history : the ‘Fitzpatrick’ incident, Stringybark Creek and Glenrowan, because once again Neds lies and the modern myths are not the starting point of his narrative. Instead he largely lets the facts speak for themselves:

The Fitzpatrick incident : “Fitzpatrick is on a special mission that will lead him into the pages of infamy. Ned Kelly will say that the two years of murders and robberies that followed this day were the fault of Fitzpatrick. He will warn the Victorian Government during his reign of terror that the young policeman will be the cause of greater slaughter to the union Jack than St Patrick was to the snakes and toads in Ireland. Still, Ned will not be the first criminal to look for a scapegoat”

Stringybark Creek : “ All this time, Ned and Dan hiding in the undergrowth watch the four policemen. …….Ned and Dan retreat for a council of war with Joe and Steve at the Bullock creek hut. They could high-tail it out of there, but Neds predilection for violence imperils everyone yet again”

“Ned will say later that he thought he was watching Flood and Strahan – as though that will somehow justify his activities on that day – but there is nothing wrong with his eyesight, as subsequent events demonstrate. He cradles theold sawn off .577 carbine”

“As Sergeant Kennedy worries how his family will get on without him, Ned blows a huge hole in his chest.

Then he takes his watch”

Glenrowan : “Decades later one of his relatives will claim that Ned had plans to mount a revolution but his supporters would need brains of iron to follow this bleeding wreck carrying a metal mask” This is the only reference in this book to the modern myth promoted by Ian Jones in the 1960’s about a Republic of North East Victoria. There is no actual historical evidence for it, so Kieza rightly ignores the myth.

Chapter 11, which is where Ellens part in the outbreak starts and ends, is about the so called 'Fitzpatrick incident' and should be studied by every Kelly fancier. Kieza brilliantly exposes the messy web of lies, fabrications, changes of story, inconsistencies and absurdities in the accounts given by the Kellys and their friends in attempting to deny what they were accused of doing to Fitzpatrick, who by contrast maintained a  consistent, unwavering and coherent account of that night for the rest of his days. But Kieza hasn't been taken in by Neds lies and  is having none of the Kelly mythology and ends the Chapter with this:

"Now, having plunged Ellen into the worst crisis of her life Ned Dan and Joe gallop away from Greta into the blackness of the night.

In the early hours of 16th April 1878 they leave Ellen to face the full force of the law, with only her small children and poverty as company. The attempted murder of a police officer is a capital crime that carries the penalty of death by hanging.

Once again Ned Kellys propensity for violence has caused his family immeasurable grief.

Little Alice is now just three days old and Ellen is left holding the baby"

But what of the Police? Well personally I didn’t want to read about Police blunders, mistakes, brutality and misdemeanours, not because I want to pretend they didn’t happen but because every other Kelly narrative has exaggerated these Police failings into a massive anti-Kelly conspiracy theory, in conformity with what the paranoid Ned Kelly claimed. I wouldn’t want to give that delusional myth the least chance of  surviving a new look at the Kelly outbreak but in a properly even-handed way Keiza doesn’t hesitate to point out the police faults in the conduct of the hunt for the Kelly Gang. He says Brooke-Smith was “a blundering ditherer and bully hopelessly out of his depth as the Officer in charge of the Kelly district” and he discusses the depraved actions of Police and soldiers at Eureka and at the killing of bushranger ‘Mad dog’ Morgan. 

So, while the Police are not let off the hook by any means and Kieza accurately reports Ned Kelly's frequent claim that he is a victim of police persecution,  he is also careful to point out that the Royal Commission found no evidence that such persecution actually took place: "No evidence has been adduced to support the allegation that either the Outlaws or their friends were subjected to  persecution or unnecessary annoyance at the hands of the police"

It is indeed a warts and all account of the Kelly story, the life of Ellen being a loose thread that runs through the middle of it, from well before to well after Ned Kelly lived. She was a spirited and tough woman who was a largely a victim of the behavior of the men in her life, from Red to Bill Frost and George King, but mostly of her son Ned. He was not a hero or an admirable revolutionary but  'a very dangerous criminal', as Grantlee Kieza declared in an ABC TV interview, and as he makes clear in the book, not so much by asserting it but by telling the story and letting the facts speak for themselves. This book is a terrific read and makes a major contribution to the gathering body of work that at last is correcting the Ian Jones inspired mythology of Ned Kelly, and replacing it with historical truth. It wont change the minds of any of the Kelly gang descendants or of the dwindling ranks of modern Kelly sympathisers because theyre only interested in the Kelly fairy tales. Nothing will ever change a closed mind, but, as I keep saying about this Blog, those people are not my target audience and they are not the target audience of this great new book. The target audience is everyone genuinely interested in properly researched Australian history, and I believe that  if the only book they ever read about the Kelly story is this one, they will learn from it just about all they need to know.

Grantlee Kieza : you’ve written a terrific Kelly book. Well done Sir!