October 15, 2024 • 33 mins
Ned Kelly is Australia’s most famous outlaw. A mix of frontier bandit, murderer, and gang leader, Kelly has gone down in Australian lore as an anti-establishment hero. Dr. Lachlan Strahan tells the story of his great-great-grandfather, Anthony Strahan, who was one of the Australian policemen who helped hunt down Ned Kelly. Listen to this fascinating story about the famous Ned Kelly, hero worship in Australian history, but also about the men tasked to uphold the law. Episode 569.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Hello, everyone, it's Professor Buzzkill here busting myths, taking names.
And you know, one of the biggest sort of myth
machines in the world is the outlaw hero, the backwoods,
the prairie bank robber, Bonnie and Clyde, things like that,
and there are examples of these all around the world.
But fortunately for you we have with us on the
(00:32):
line doctor Lochlan Strong, whose great new book Justice in
Kelly Country, the story of the cop who hunted Australia's
most notorious bush rang Rangers, is out and is on
the Buzzkill bookshelf, and it's about Ned Kelly, the most important,
most famous, most infamous Australian outlaw, Doctor Strong, thanks so
(00:53):
much for coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Well, you know one thing we have to admit to listeners.
Now you and I are buddzs. We go back a
long way. I was doing my master's degree in Melbourne
where you were doing your doctorate and so no, I've
watched your work for a long time and been fascinated
by it. But this book is also personal for you.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah. So this book, Joe tells the story of one
of my ancestors, one of my great great grandfathers, who
was a police officer. He migrated from Ireland to the
Australian colonies in eighteen sixty when he was twenty and
two years later he joined one of the colonial police forces,
the police Force of the Colony of Victoria, where I
(01:36):
grew up. So this book is in part about one
of our great national legends, Near Kelly. And just to
explain to your listeners, the term bush ranger is the
most common Australian term for what would be called an
outlaw in the United States. They were called bush rangers because,
(01:58):
of course when they committed their crime, they then heading
and lived off the bush, the country, the forests. So
for Australians, of course we call forest the bush. So
these outlaws were called bush rangers. My ancestor was on
the other side of this great national legend. It was
a police officer.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Now what's so fascinating is you know you don't read
enough about I mean, there are eight billion books on
Ned Kelly. In fact, buzz killers will be interested to
know that the first feature length film ever made is
about Ned Kelly. And so he's been a huge figure
in Australian history and in Commonwealth history. For a long time.
(02:40):
But like so many people in crime history, no one
talks about the cops or the people who chased Bonny
and Clyde, or the people who caught Jesse James. And
that's what's so wonderful about this book. You know, you
can go out and find eighty books on Ned Kelly.
Most of them are highly fictitious, but you're actually looking
from the other side. That's great.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Well, just to go back to that question of cinema
and popular culture, you know, the outlaw figure, the bandit,
the bush ranger is of course an inherently colorful and
dramatic figure. There have been three picture length movies made
about Nick Kelly, and in one of them, bizarrely, Mick
(03:21):
Jagger played Nick Kelly. Stands a popular culture coming together
and both.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
By the way, if you look at the pictures of
Comporary Pictures and Drugs of Dad Kelly, Mick Jagger doesn't
have nearer the muscly figure than Kelly.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
No, he made a very puny Nick Kelly. It was
quite ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
But He's Ledger also played in the most recent, i
think the most recent film, He's Lager plays Kelly.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah. Well, look, it's a kind of weird obsession that
runs through Australian culture. Now, for for many decades, to
go back to your other question, this story, for quite
some decades, what was called the Kelly outbreak because his
gang was composed of himself, a younger brother, and two friends,
(04:07):
so there were four core gang members. The Kelli gang
story for decades was told very much as a heroic story.
These four figures were seen as these four outlaws. They
were seen as romantic figures, almost as robin Hood types,
that they were rebelling against an unjust society which was
(04:30):
ruled by rich farmers, corrupt policemen and nasty politicians. In
the last couple of decades, that national legend has been
subjected to significant reevaluation and scrutiny. So now what you
have is a very polarized historical and cultural debate about
(04:51):
Near Kelly. You can go online and you can find
lots of Facebook groups in Australia devoted to Nick Kelly.
Most of these groups are they're kind of almost like
hero worshippers for them. The Nick Kelly legend is, as
I say, very much that one of the romantic robin
Hood figure. At the same time, however, following this reevaluation,
(05:16):
you've got another group of people who I'd call them
Nick Kelly haters. It's that kind of classic, almost over correction.
For the people on the second group, Nick Kelly is
almost a devil. He's not just a criminal, but a
particularly nasty criminal. So the historical literature, which you mostly
get today, tends to divide into these two camps. The
(05:39):
romantic hero camp, and they always call Kelly ned. They
address him by his first name, as though he's a friend,
a personal friend, and the people in the other camp
they always call him Kelly with a kind of emphatic
damning note in his family name. My book about my ancestor,
(06:00):
a police officer, I tried to find a kind of
middle ground. Now, as you know, Joe, my career for
thirty years was a diplomat. I kept writing history because
I've always loved history. Perhaps as a diplomat, I'm a
little pro to trying to find the middle ground. I
didn't want to was fanning these two camps, the pro
(06:21):
Kelly camp and the anti Kelly camp. They are so categorical,
and to some extent, Nick Kelly the outlaw figure, a
bit like what has happened perhaps in the United States,
with people like Jesse James and Billy the Kid, we've
almost lost a sense of the real person because Kelly,
like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, has become kind of mythic,
(06:43):
has become a simple has become a legend. So in
telling my ancestors story, I wanted to try to get
some sense that one, in my opinion, he was not
a Robin Hood figure and that you actually robbed from
the rich and the poor. So at one level he
was a bit of a common thug, and that might
be said about Jesse James and Billy the Kid, but
(07:05):
he wasn't the kind of evil soccer path that he
sometimes portrayed as by the anti group. So in telling
my ancestors story, the police officer, I wanted to deconstruct
somewhat this national myth.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Well, but we need to tell our listeners we have
a lot of Australian buzz killers, but not enough. We
shall always try to get more. Please tell the rest
of us the basic Ned Kelly story, because if someone
goes to forr Instans Wikipedia and scrolls down, you'll see
that he's involved in almost innumerable crimes. He makes Jesse
James frankly look like an amateur. So there's a long
history here. It's not just a one event. The climactic
(07:42):
event is very big, but there are all kinds of
previous events and a sort of career of crime and
bush ranging.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
So Ned Kelly he was the son of a convict,
an Irish convict who was transported to Australia. So Ned,
unlike many the other residents of the Tory at this
time we're talking about the eighteen fifties eighteen sixties, was
Australian born. And that actually becomes a very important part
of the myth because the Cali Gang or four of
(08:11):
them were Australian born. So it was about this new
generation of flash young men born in Australia, very good
at horse riding, very good on the land. So Ned
early in his life becomes entangled with another much older
bushranger called Power. It's often thought that Power kind of
(08:32):
was his early tutor in becoming a bushranger. As a
teenager and young adult, he ends up in prison on
several charges. He becomes involved in horse stealing. Horse stealing
is the big money making venture that the Cali Gang
and a bigger group who were called the Greater Mob,
where each was a small town in Victoria and more
(08:56):
indicated that this particular gang was a rather larger outfit.
They were, you know, as I say, flashy men, very
good horse riders, and they engage in horse stealing on
an almost industrial scale. Wow. So they were taking hundreds
of horses in and out of the colony of Victoria
into the colony of New South Wales and vice versa.
(09:19):
So right up through the eighteen seventies you could say
that it's not quite organized crime, but it's certainly an
organized racket moving horses over a very very big distance.
We're talking about many hundreds of kilometers, and of course
this racket involved all sorts of other people who were
receivers of the horses, who would sell the horses. What
(09:42):
happens is that in eighteen seventy seven, the Kelligang steals
some horses from four farmers in northern Victoria. A warrant
is issued for their arrest for stealing these horses. They
go on the run and in April eighteen seventy eight,
so just what six months or so later, several police officers,
(10:03):
including my ancestor, are given the job of trying to
arrest the Keli Boys. And what they do is go
to the Cali Hut, which is small what we're called
slab hut. It's made of slabs of timber, which is
owned by their mum Alan and she runs it as
a bit of a sly grog shop and possibly is
(10:25):
a bit of an informal brothel. And in April eighteen
seventy eight, my ancestor, Anthony Strawman, at that point is
a constable. He and several other police officers endeavor to
arrest the Keli Boys. They don't. Instead they arrest the mother.
There is a fight that takes place in this hut
(10:45):
that results in a court case in October of eighteen
seventy eight and Alan Kelly is imprisoned. The Keli boys
are furious that their mother has been in prison. They
think that that's yet another example police persecution. Then in
eighteen seventy eight, the most infamous event in the Keli
(11:06):
outbreak takes place. What happens is that the Keli Boys
they retreat into some very rugged country called the Wombat Rangers.
One bat is an Australian marsupial animal, So they're hiding
in an old miner's hut up in this dense mountainous country.
Two police patrols are sent out to try and capture them.
(11:27):
One patrol is commanded by my ancestor, Anthony Strawan. The
second patrol by accident makes camp just a kilometer or
two a mile or two from where the Calis are
in fact hiding. The Klis ambush this camp. They end
up killing three of the four police officers shooting them.
(11:49):
So that takes what has been until this point mostly
a story about horse stealing, although they are accused of
possibly trying to kill one police officer, but that was
an attempted murder charge which might have stuck or not.
But now they're wanted for killing three police officers Joe.
Until a couple of years ago this was the single
(12:12):
largest death of Victorian police officers in one incident. So
for the Victorian police this was has become an iconic
event in this commemory to this day. So then what
happens I just summarized the last couple of bits. The
Kelligang then pull off two daring robberies where they take
(12:35):
basically two whole townships hostage, clean out the local bank.
So you're quite daring, very well planned. They then go
into hiding from February eighteen seventy nine until June eighteen eighty,
and they're basically living off the proceeds of their bank robberies.
They're sheltered by a certain part of the population who
(12:57):
sympathize with them. In June eighteen we have the other
very famous event that their last stand, where they try
to derail a police train, hold up again a whole town.
It's a little place called called glen Rowan again in Victoria.
They hold up in an inn with a lot of hostages.
(13:18):
The inn is surrounded by police officers. There's a siege,
a big shootout. Three of the four gang members are killed.
Ned Kelly, although he's shot more than twenty times, survives,
is put on trial in October eighteen eighty. Just a
couple of months later, is found guilty of murdering one
of the police officers at that incident back in October
(13:41):
eighteen seventy eight, and justice at that time could move
very quickly. The trial started on the twenty eighth of
October and neck Kelly was executed by hanging on the
eleventh of November.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
And one of the most amazing things about that final stand,
if you will, is that he fashioned for himself this
suit of armoring looks like it's made out of a
big oil drum and other stuff and comes out sort
of blasting away with this thing on. And I've seen
it in the State Loverry of Victoria's on display, and
(14:14):
that in itself that suit of armor has become iconic
at Australia absolutely.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
So what he did was he had this, I guess
daring but ultimately quite hair brained idea that he would
get plow parts of plows and get blacksmiths to fashion
them into helmet and torso armor so indeed't looked bizarrely
like a Knight of the eighteen eighties. He gets four
(14:43):
sets of this armor made one for each gang member.
Of course, very quickly at this siege, the gang members
realize that this armor is incredibly heavy. It doesn't protect
their legs, which is what the police officers work out
in the final shootout with Ned himself. They should him
in the legs. So it was incredibly hard made moving
(15:04):
around very very difficult. I think the other gang members
realize that the whole venture of trying to derail this
train sticking up this town with the aim of robbing
another bank, and then they shoot out. That the police
was an enormous mistake and leads to of course the
fall of the gang, right Joe. That that armor has
(15:25):
become iconic. It featured in a series of paintings by
one of Australia's most famous contemporary painters of what the
middle latter part of the twentieth century, Sydney Nolan. Those
paintings are in our National Gallery here in Canberra. And
that iconic image of neck Kelly wearing this bizarre bucket
(15:48):
like helmet with a slip for his eyes has also
become iconic and is very much amalgamated into the heroic
image of Ned. There he was in this latter day
fighting these police officers in this last stand.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
In fact, I think is it true that some of
the wheezy was show was that actually hit the armor.
But he said in his trial or in another interview
that the bullets hitting the armor were also like being
hit with a sledgehammer, So he was injured by the
ones that didn't pierce the armor.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Yeah, So the impact of a bullet, especially fired at
fairly close range directly into the armor would have caused
a major bruising contusions that slowed him down, But it
was the multiple gunshots he got to his arms and
especially his legs. He was finally shot in the legs
with a shotgun and broke to the ground. There was
(16:43):
a real risk at that moment that some of the
police officers were about to summarily execute him. They were
so angry about what he had done killing three of
their own.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Oh yeah, pulled the armor off and shoot him in
the head.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah, they were enraged. Their blood was boiling. But one
police officer came forward and said, now, look, we can't
do that. This man's got to go on trial.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And he survives well enough at least to stand trial.
Now again, I'm relying on presumably nineteenth century or I
hope nineteenth century, hope, not twentieth century engravings showing him
standing in the very British and Commonwealth court style in
the witness box in the dark, being questioned. So he
survives enough to actually literally stand trial obviously on that amazing.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Look he is standing trial just months after receiving twenty
odd bullet work. Yeah, so he was, and this is
part of the legend. He was a man of impressive physique,
great strength and great endurance. And he was quite articulate
if you read the way he defends himself in the trial.
He spars with the judge Redmond Barry, and so he
(17:50):
wasn't a kind of common thug. He certainly wasn't stupid.
So in all of this saga, how does my ancestor
become dragged into it?
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Exactly? Because that's really what the book is about.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
So he becomes part of the legend in a very
important way. So when the Kelly Gang sticks up a
town in southern New South Wales, and as I say,
they hold a large part of the town's population hostage,
they don't harm them. Actually, while Kelly is there in
this town, they hold the town for several days. The
(18:24):
town is relatively remote. What Kelly does is he dictates
what becomes known as the Gerrildary Letter. It's one of
the most famous documents in Australian history. All our history
have these kind of touchstone documents. This is one, and
this is where he dictates to one of the other
gang members his account of what has happened. It's like
(18:45):
a long self defense, a self justification. It runs for
thousands of words, and part way through it he says
that my ancestor, Anthony Strawn, by that point was a
senior constable, had said to one of neg Kelly's uncles,
I will not ask him to surrender, I will shoot
him like a dog. And that threat apparently took place
(19:10):
just days before these killings at Stringy Bark Creek, when
the three police officers are murdered, and so part of
ned Kelly's defense of himself is well, I had no
choice but to kill these police officers because I know
another police officer who wasn't present at this camp. My
ancestor had threatened to shoot him like.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
A dog, threatened ahead of time.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, so what he's doing is mounting, in effect, a
defense of self defense. I was fighting back against these
police officers who are coming with no intention of apprehending
me for horse stealing and shooting this other police officer
who's wounded in his hand. They are just going to
summarily execute me. So then when you look at the
historical literature, the pro Kelly people have this threat as
(19:53):
a key moment. Ancestor, then, of course, is a villain.
He is this thuggish police officer who's threatened to shoot
someone without question. Conversely, in the Kelly literature which has developed,
which sees him as a murderous thug and a psychopath,
they say that this alleged threat, if it did or
didn't take place, and Joe ibid unable to find definitive
(20:16):
information to indicate whether or not my ancestor did have
this argument with one of Nick Kelly's uncles, and if
he did, did he use his threat. But the anti
Kelly force what they say is that this is just
another example of Nick Kelly lying and making excuses for
his murderous deeds.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
And what role does he play? Does Anthony Strong play
in the actual final app branch and after Kelly's on
the ground.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
So Anthony is the one police officer at the beginning
of this outbreak who is stationed in Greeter. So that's
the little town where the Kellys live. He's there with
his wife, Marian and his children, surrounded by the Keli
gang and all their sympathizers. It would have been a
very uncomfortable place to be. Secondly, as I mentioned earlier,
(21:07):
he leads this second patrol in October eighteen seventy eight
to try and capture him. He then spends many many
months out on patrol, often alone, trying to track down
the Calid. So in that period, it's bizarre. From February
eighteen seventy nine to June eighteen eighty, which is when
you had the final stand, the final siege and shootout,
(21:28):
the counties kind of vanished. They become like ghosts. Anthony
during that time is searching for them, along with a
lot of other police officers and Victoria. For him, it's
a kind of a cruel thing that although he had
spent towards two years tracking the Calis, he was not
present at the final siege. By that point, he had
(21:48):
been placed in charge of a police station in another
town and was responsible for law and order in that
particular area. So he wasn't there at the last stand.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Oh yeah, I guess I meant what happens? What role
does Anthony play in the after the capture and during
the trial? And I thinks of what people.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Are, Well, this is a very curious thing, and it's
something I say in the book is a real anomally
because if it is true that he's threatened to shoot
near Kelly like a dog before the killings at Stringy
Bar Creek, he should have been called as a witness
in the trial, presumably the defense to strengthen their case
for self defense. However, he's not called as a witness.
(22:30):
I've decided in the end that is because the defense
realized that the uncle, a man called Pat Quinn, who
had claimed that Anthony made this threat, was himself a
convicted basher. He bashed up a police officer and spent
several years in prison. He was a thief himself, he
was a liar. He flip flopped all over the place,
and I think the defense realized if he's put on
(22:53):
the stand, the prosecution will probably quickly demonstrate that he
in fact is a liar. So Anthony again is not
involved in the trial itself. He watches from a distance.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
But he does this thing which is amazing and sorry
I'm skipping back. Before the Kellys are caught. He goes
off often, as you say, on his own, on searches
for the Kelly Gang. Now we're talking about the Australian
bush here, and so it's not as if he can
immediately call for backup. Right, this is a very brief
thing to do.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Look, it's brave and to some extent was against the
instructions of the commission of the Victoria Police, realizing that
the Kellys were even if you thought they were heroes
or not, they were violent men and they were well
armed living off the land. So the Commissioner Police said, look,
I don't want people going anywhere near the Kelly Hut alone.
(23:44):
Police officers have to go at least two or more.
At that point, the Victoria Police was a relatively small outfit.
It was policing a very large area Victoria today, Joe,
you lived there for a while. If you drive around,
of course the twenty sense of twenty first century, it's
full of roads and towns. There still stretches which are
(24:05):
pretty rugged and remote. Back in the eighteen seventies, oh yeah,
the relation was small. Settlement was sparse, so Anthony would
often ride incredibly long distances in one day. I'm in
a horse a couple of times I'll find its supremely uncomfortable.
Now he would ride a couple of hundred kilometers on
a horse in dense bush. As he said later in life,
(24:28):
he would often be out at night watching a particular sight,
trying to see if the Kellys would turn up. It
could be really cold, yeah, it damaged his health.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
We should give a sort of comparison for American listeners,
and this is like riding from the Panhandle of Florida
up to Tennessee. Victoria is the south is southeasternmost state
in Australia, but it's not small. It's very big. You know,
Australia is a continent country, so you know this is
a major thing. This isn't just every night going out
and checking the neighbor.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
When I look back on the life of a police
officer in the late nineteenth century, now I have to
put some extent been aw of just how physically testing
it was. They worked very, very long hours. They had
very very few days off. They rose early, especially if
you're a mounted constable like Anthony, who had to get
(25:20):
up look after the horse. To begin with. Now, the
other thing about my book, I wanted to tell the
story of the Kelly out break, but I also wanted
to give very much a sense of, well, what is
it like being a police officer day to day, not
just this great legendary crime, this Cally outbreak that he
becomes involved in, but also to trace his life through
(25:41):
a series of towns in the eighteen sixties and seventies
eighteen eighties, to give a sense of the struggles of
a police officer in small country towns bringing up a family.
I also bring to light again certain other crimes which
were famous in their day back in the eighteen seventies,
but had been overshadowed by the Kelly outbreak. So this
(26:04):
book also takes us through some other quite ripping primes
which indicated to a certain extent in sixties eighteen seventies
Victoria was still a fairly lawless place. The arm of
authority often was quite weak. So I'm doing several things
in this book. I want to some extent take the
(26:25):
gaze of readers away from just a Kelly outbreak to
see things with a wider view. But it's also about
engaging with a national myth which has loomed large my
own family's history. See, my own father was a great
Nick Kelly fan. He heroized ned.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Even though his great grandfather was one of the policemen.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yes, and in fact he denigrated our ancestors. I found
out our dad was a historian himself, but he totally
bought into the myth of Neck Kelly. And the thing
about Nick Kelly Joe is that he's seen as representing
a very particular type of masculinity, Australian masculinity. Yeah, and
(27:08):
in that he was seen as the exemplar of values
and characteristics which some Australians have seen as their own.
That he's egalitarian, that he believes in makeshift. These are
some of the features which Australians hold dear.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
But as you and so many people have shown a
lot of these, a lot of these things weren't true.
He's not a Robin Hoodie robs from the rich and
from the poor. But I think what makes it so
interesting and why I get so wrapped up in this
legend and hero worship aspect of history is is a
quote that a journalist wrote in the Age a few
years ago. The Age is Melbourne's, one of Melbourne's big newspapers,
(27:44):
and I found this is this is a journalist named
Martin Flangan. He wrote, what makes net a legend is
not that everyone sees him the same, which, by the way,
of course, you know you have these two Kelly Camps
he talked about, so that's true. But the quote continues
is that everyone sees him like a bushfire on the
horizon casting its red glow. Into the night. So like
(28:05):
Jesse James, like Billy the Kid. You know, all Americans
know them and all Australians know Nead Kelly. I just
find that fascinating, given it so long ago, and you
know he was a criminal. Why do we worship these people?
Speaker 2 (28:18):
I think in part Joe, it's because they appeal to
our need for great mythic figures. Yeah. I think a
lot of us human beings we yearn for something which
is more eternal. Now, of course there is religious faith
which fills that space, but beyond that, we have these
yearning for figures who are larger than life, who will
(28:39):
endure across the centuries, is somehow represent something more than
just the passing lives of ordinary people. So at this
mythic level, Ned Kelly, as I said earlier, he's become
something almost. It's like, you know, the real person is
no longer there. Instead you have the figure often incased
(28:59):
in the helmets, and now that figure you can drive
through some Australian country towns and you have these enormous,
towering statue of neck Kelly is dwarfing you as an
ordinary human being and looking up this great man with
a brandishing a rifle and in this mythic armor.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
I've even seen someone in the country, someone in a
picture of someone in the country having their mailbox in
front of their house designed like the armor them. You know,
it's just amazing.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
In addition to the mythic quality, the courses, the commercial.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Quality, and that is you can make a lot of
money out of Kelly's so all the neck Kelly paraphernalia,
which is around everything from mugs and two towels to clothing.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
And these statues, these movies. Son has also to something
that's become almost like a money making business. The other
thing is that he's become a bit entangled with a
certain type of kind of or two things. Some of
our outlaw motorcycle gangs have taken on Ned as an icon,
as a symbol and secondly, elements of I think you
(30:07):
call it sin. It's kind of ironic. To begin with,
when Ned was heroized, it was really the progressive left
who took him up as a hero. He was an
anti establishment figure, an anti authority figure. In more recent
times it's kind of flipped and now for some i'd
say kind of right wing Australians, Ned has become a
symbol of kind of white Australian patriotism, and that is
(30:32):
a kind of figure who stands in contrast to Australia
that some of these people now don't like. That's contemporary Australia,
which is, from my point of view, wonderfully multicultural, which
is doing more to come to terms with the terrible
acts which were committed during European colonization, the dispossession of
the Indigenous population. A large part of the Indigenous population
(30:54):
was killed. There was a certain segment of contemporary white Australia.
It kind of mirrors, i think, to some of what
you see in the United States, which resents and doesn't
like this modern cosmopolitan, multicultural Australia, or Australia which says
we did terrible wrongs to the Indigenous population and ned bizarrely,
(31:16):
and all of this has become for them this symbol
of their identity. So it's kind of odd. You can
see that the neck Kelly myth also is a little
bit mobile, and it's kind of meant different things at
different points in time. Today, there are I think probably
still some left learning progressive Australia had seen as this
(31:37):
anti authoritarian figure. But as I say, motorcycle gangs. They
loved the neck Kelly paraphernalia, the symbols of Ned with
his pistols.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
It makes me think of the Motorcycle Gang or Camp
in the first or the second above, both Mad Max films,
the Motorcycle Outlaws.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
If you look at the Mad Max figure, the villains
that he is fighting against in this desolate landscape of
the future, some of their paraphernalia which mixes in iconography
from kind of punk music to stuff from the night
to the past, but it's kind of got echoes at
the same time of a neck Kelly, like the sort
(32:18):
of armor. If you like that. That shows you how
deeply this mythic figure runs through our culture.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
It's just absolutely fascinating and I can't recommend the book
enough for Americans, especially because of the parallels. And as
you've been listening to Doctor Strahan, you know this is
an absolute gripping story. The book is even better. There's
so much more in it and many more of these stories,
but also more analysis of why these things continue to happen.
So I just want to thank you so much for
(32:46):
coming on.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
The show, Joe. It's been an absolute pleasure. As you mentioned,
we were studying together back in the late nineteen eighties
in Melbourne. We've remained friends since then. It's pleasure to
talk to your listeners about in Australia and figure Nick Kelly,
who indeed kind of echoes in American culture in his.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Own way well, and our listeners will be happy to
know that as soon as we turn off the record,
as soon as we stop recording, I'm going to ask
you come on the show about different topics. So let
me say to all of you, please go to professor
buzzkill dot com. The book is obviously in the Buzzkill bookshelf,
and we will talk to all of you next week.
Hello, everyone, it's Professor Buzzkill here busting myths, taking names.
And you know, one of the biggest sort of myth
machines in the world is the outlaw hero, the backwoods,
the prairie bank robber, Bonnie and Clyde, things like that,
and there are examples of these all around the world.
But fortunately for you we have with us on the
(00:32):
line doctor Lochlan Strong, whose great new book Justice in
Kelly Country, the story of the cop who hunted Australia's
most notorious bush rang Rangers, is out and is on
the Buzzkill bookshelf, and it's about Ned Kelly, the most important,
most famous, most infamous Australian outlaw, Doctor Strong, thanks so
(00:53):
much for coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Well, you know one thing we have to admit to listeners.
Now you and I are buddzs. We go back a
long way. I was doing my master's degree in Melbourne
where you were doing your doctorate and so no, I've
watched your work for a long time and been fascinated
by it. But this book is also personal for you.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah. So this book, Joe tells the story of one
of my ancestors, one of my great great grandfathers, who
was a police officer. He migrated from Ireland to the
Australian colonies in eighteen sixty when he was twenty and
two years later he joined one of the colonial police forces,
the police Force of the Colony of Victoria, where I
(01:36):
grew up. So this book is in part about one
of our great national legends, Near Kelly. And just to
explain to your listeners, the term bush ranger is the
most common Australian term for what would be called an
outlaw in the United States. They were called bush rangers because,
(01:58):
of course when they committed their crime, they then heading
and lived off the bush, the country, the forests. So
for Australians, of course we call forest the bush. So
these outlaws were called bush rangers. My ancestor was on
the other side of this great national legend. It was
a police officer.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Now what's so fascinating is you know you don't read
enough about I mean, there are eight billion books on
Ned Kelly. In fact, buzz killers will be interested to
know that the first feature length film ever made is
about Ned Kelly. And so he's been a huge figure
in Australian history and in Commonwealth history. For a long time.
(02:40):
But like so many people in crime history, no one
talks about the cops or the people who chased Bonny
and Clyde, or the people who caught Jesse James. And
that's what's so wonderful about this book. You know, you
can go out and find eighty books on Ned Kelly.
Most of them are highly fictitious, but you're actually looking
from the other side. That's great.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Well, just to go back to that question of cinema
and popular culture, you know, the outlaw figure, the bandit,
the bush ranger is of course an inherently colorful and
dramatic figure. There have been three picture length movies made
about Nick Kelly, and in one of them, bizarrely, Mick
(03:21):
Jagger played Nick Kelly. Stands a popular culture coming together
and both.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
By the way, if you look at the pictures of
Comporary Pictures and Drugs of Dad Kelly, Mick Jagger doesn't
have nearer the muscly figure than Kelly.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
No, he made a very puny Nick Kelly. It was
quite ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
But He's Ledger also played in the most recent, i
think the most recent film, He's Lager plays Kelly.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah. Well, look, it's a kind of weird obsession that
runs through Australian culture. Now, for for many decades, to
go back to your other question, this story, for quite
some decades, what was called the Kelly outbreak because his
gang was composed of himself, a younger brother, and two friends,
(04:07):
so there were four core gang members. The Kelli gang
story for decades was told very much as a heroic story.
These four figures were seen as these four outlaws. They
were seen as romantic figures, almost as robin Hood types,
that they were rebelling against an unjust society which was
(04:30):
ruled by rich farmers, corrupt policemen and nasty politicians. In
the last couple of decades, that national legend has been
subjected to significant reevaluation and scrutiny. So now what you
have is a very polarized historical and cultural debate about
(04:51):
Near Kelly. You can go online and you can find
lots of Facebook groups in Australia devoted to Nick Kelly.
Most of these groups are they're kind of almost like
hero worshippers for them. The Nick Kelly legend is, as
I say, very much that one of the romantic robin
Hood figure. At the same time, however, following this reevaluation,
(05:16):
you've got another group of people who I'd call them
Nick Kelly haters. It's that kind of classic, almost over correction.
For the people on the second group, Nick Kelly is
almost a devil. He's not just a criminal, but a
particularly nasty criminal. So the historical literature, which you mostly
get today, tends to divide into these two camps. The
(05:39):
romantic hero camp, and they always call Kelly ned. They
address him by his first name, as though he's a friend,
a personal friend, and the people in the other camp
they always call him Kelly with a kind of emphatic
damning note in his family name. My book about my ancestor,
(06:00):
a police officer, I tried to find a kind of
middle ground. Now, as you know, Joe, my career for
thirty years was a diplomat. I kept writing history because
I've always loved history. Perhaps as a diplomat, I'm a
little pro to trying to find the middle ground. I
didn't want to was fanning these two camps, the pro
(06:21):
Kelly camp and the anti Kelly camp. They are so categorical,
and to some extent, Nick Kelly the outlaw figure, a
bit like what has happened perhaps in the United States,
with people like Jesse James and Billy the Kid, we've
almost lost a sense of the real person because Kelly,
like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, has become kind of mythic,
(06:43):
has become a simple has become a legend. So in
telling my ancestors story, I wanted to try to get
some sense that one, in my opinion, he was not
a Robin Hood figure and that you actually robbed from
the rich and the poor. So at one level he
was a bit of a common thug, and that might
be said about Jesse James and Billy the Kid, but
(07:05):
he wasn't the kind of evil soccer path that he
sometimes portrayed as by the anti group. So in telling
my ancestors story, the police officer, I wanted to deconstruct
somewhat this national myth.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Well, but we need to tell our listeners we have
a lot of Australian buzz killers, but not enough. We
shall always try to get more. Please tell the rest
of us the basic Ned Kelly story, because if someone
goes to forr Instans Wikipedia and scrolls down, you'll see
that he's involved in almost innumerable crimes. He makes Jesse
James frankly look like an amateur. So there's a long
history here. It's not just a one event. The climactic
(07:42):
event is very big, but there are all kinds of
previous events and a sort of career of crime and
bush ranging.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
So Ned Kelly he was the son of a convict,
an Irish convict who was transported to Australia. So Ned,
unlike many the other residents of the Tory at this
time we're talking about the eighteen fifties eighteen sixties, was
Australian born. And that actually becomes a very important part
of the myth because the Cali Gang or four of
(08:11):
them were Australian born. So it was about this new
generation of flash young men born in Australia, very good
at horse riding, very good on the land. So Ned
early in his life becomes entangled with another much older
bushranger called Power. It's often thought that Power kind of
(08:32):
was his early tutor in becoming a bushranger. As a
teenager and young adult, he ends up in prison on
several charges. He becomes involved in horse stealing. Horse stealing
is the big money making venture that the Cali Gang
and a bigger group who were called the Greater Mob,
where each was a small town in Victoria and more
(08:56):
indicated that this particular gang was a rather larger outfit.
They were, you know, as I say, flashy men, very
good horse riders, and they engage in horse stealing on
an almost industrial scale. Wow. So they were taking hundreds
of horses in and out of the colony of Victoria
into the colony of New South Wales and vice versa.
(09:19):
So right up through the eighteen seventies you could say
that it's not quite organized crime, but it's certainly an
organized racket moving horses over a very very big distance.
We're talking about many hundreds of kilometers, and of course
this racket involved all sorts of other people who were
receivers of the horses, who would sell the horses. What
(09:42):
happens is that in eighteen seventy seven, the Kelligang steals
some horses from four farmers in northern Victoria. A warrant
is issued for their arrest for stealing these horses. They
go on the run and in April eighteen seventy eight,
so just what six months or so later, several police officers,
(10:03):
including my ancestor, are given the job of trying to
arrest the Keli Boys. And what they do is go
to the Cali Hut, which is small what we're called
slab hut. It's made of slabs of timber, which is
owned by their mum Alan and she runs it as
a bit of a sly grog shop and possibly is
(10:25):
a bit of an informal brothel. And in April eighteen
seventy eight, my ancestor, Anthony Strawman, at that point is
a constable. He and several other police officers endeavor to
arrest the Keli Boys. They don't. Instead they arrest the mother.
There is a fight that takes place in this hut
(10:45):
that results in a court case in October of eighteen
seventy eight and Alan Kelly is imprisoned. The Keli boys
are furious that their mother has been in prison. They
think that that's yet another example police persecution. Then in
eighteen seventy eight, the most infamous event in the Keli
(11:06):
outbreak takes place. What happens is that the Keli Boys
they retreat into some very rugged country called the Wombat Rangers.
One bat is an Australian marsupial animal, So they're hiding
in an old miner's hut up in this dense mountainous country.
Two police patrols are sent out to try and capture them.
(11:27):
One patrol is commanded by my ancestor, Anthony Strawan. The
second patrol by accident makes camp just a kilometer or
two a mile or two from where the Calis are
in fact hiding. The Klis ambush this camp. They end
up killing three of the four police officers shooting them.
(11:49):
So that takes what has been until this point mostly
a story about horse stealing, although they are accused of
possibly trying to kill one police officer, but that was
an attempted murder charge which might have stuck or not.
But now they're wanted for killing three police officers Joe.
Until a couple of years ago this was the single
(12:12):
largest death of Victorian police officers in one incident. So
for the Victorian police this was has become an iconic
event in this commemory to this day. So then what
happens I just summarized the last couple of bits. The
Kelligang then pull off two daring robberies where they take
(12:35):
basically two whole townships hostage, clean out the local bank.
So you're quite daring, very well planned. They then go
into hiding from February eighteen seventy nine until June eighteen eighty,
and they're basically living off the proceeds of their bank robberies.
They're sheltered by a certain part of the population who
(12:57):
sympathize with them. In June eighteen we have the other
very famous event that their last stand, where they try
to derail a police train, hold up again a whole town.
It's a little place called called glen Rowan again in Victoria.
They hold up in an inn with a lot of hostages.
(13:18):
The inn is surrounded by police officers. There's a siege,
a big shootout. Three of the four gang members are killed.
Ned Kelly, although he's shot more than twenty times, survives,
is put on trial in October eighteen eighty. Just a
couple of months later, is found guilty of murdering one
of the police officers at that incident back in October
(13:41):
eighteen seventy eight, and justice at that time could move
very quickly. The trial started on the twenty eighth of
October and neck Kelly was executed by hanging on the
eleventh of November.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
And one of the most amazing things about that final stand,
if you will, is that he fashioned for himself this
suit of armoring looks like it's made out of a
big oil drum and other stuff and comes out sort
of blasting away with this thing on. And I've seen
it in the State Loverry of Victoria's on display, and
(14:14):
that in itself that suit of armor has become iconic
at Australia absolutely.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
So what he did was he had this, I guess
daring but ultimately quite hair brained idea that he would
get plow parts of plows and get blacksmiths to fashion
them into helmet and torso armor so indeed't looked bizarrely
like a Knight of the eighteen eighties. He gets four
(14:43):
sets of this armor made one for each gang member.
Of course, very quickly at this siege, the gang members
realize that this armor is incredibly heavy. It doesn't protect
their legs, which is what the police officers work out
in the final shootout with Ned himself. They should him
in the legs. So it was incredibly hard made moving
(15:04):
around very very difficult. I think the other gang members
realize that the whole venture of trying to derail this
train sticking up this town with the aim of robbing
another bank, and then they shoot out. That the police
was an enormous mistake and leads to of course the
fall of the gang, right Joe. That that armor has
(15:25):
become iconic. It featured in a series of paintings by
one of Australia's most famous contemporary painters of what the
middle latter part of the twentieth century, Sydney Nolan. Those
paintings are in our National Gallery here in Canberra. And
that iconic image of neck Kelly wearing this bizarre bucket
(15:48):
like helmet with a slip for his eyes has also
become iconic and is very much amalgamated into the heroic
image of Ned. There he was in this latter day
fighting these police officers in this last stand.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
In fact, I think is it true that some of
the wheezy was show was that actually hit the armor.
But he said in his trial or in another interview
that the bullets hitting the armor were also like being
hit with a sledgehammer, So he was injured by the
ones that didn't pierce the armor.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Yeah, So the impact of a bullet, especially fired at
fairly close range directly into the armor would have caused
a major bruising contusions that slowed him down, But it
was the multiple gunshots he got to his arms and
especially his legs. He was finally shot in the legs
with a shotgun and broke to the ground. There was
(16:43):
a real risk at that moment that some of the
police officers were about to summarily execute him. They were
so angry about what he had done killing three of
their own.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Oh yeah, pulled the armor off and shoot him in
the head.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah, they were enraged. Their blood was boiling. But one
police officer came forward and said, now, look, we can't
do that. This man's got to go on trial.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And he survives well enough at least to stand trial.
Now again, I'm relying on presumably nineteenth century or I
hope nineteenth century, hope, not twentieth century engravings showing him
standing in the very British and Commonwealth court style in
the witness box in the dark, being questioned. So he
survives enough to actually literally stand trial obviously on that amazing.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Look he is standing trial just months after receiving twenty
odd bullet work. Yeah, so he was, and this is
part of the legend. He was a man of impressive physique,
great strength and great endurance. And he was quite articulate
if you read the way he defends himself in the trial.
He spars with the judge Redmond Barry, and so he
(17:50):
wasn't a kind of common thug. He certainly wasn't stupid.
So in all of this saga, how does my ancestor
become dragged into it?
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Exactly? Because that's really what the book is about.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
So he becomes part of the legend in a very
important way. So when the Kelly Gang sticks up a
town in southern New South Wales, and as I say,
they hold a large part of the town's population hostage,
they don't harm them. Actually, while Kelly is there in
this town, they hold the town for several days. The
(18:24):
town is relatively remote. What Kelly does is he dictates
what becomes known as the Gerrildary Letter. It's one of
the most famous documents in Australian history. All our history
have these kind of touchstone documents. This is one, and
this is where he dictates to one of the other
gang members his account of what has happened. It's like
(18:45):
a long self defense, a self justification. It runs for
thousands of words, and part way through it he says
that my ancestor, Anthony Strawn, by that point was a
senior constable, had said to one of neg Kelly's uncles,
I will not ask him to surrender, I will shoot
him like a dog. And that threat apparently took place
(19:10):
just days before these killings at Stringy Bark Creek, when
the three police officers are murdered, and so part of
ned Kelly's defense of himself is well, I had no
choice but to kill these police officers because I know
another police officer who wasn't present at this camp. My
ancestor had threatened to shoot him like.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
A dog, threatened ahead of time.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, so what he's doing is mounting, in effect, a
defense of self defense. I was fighting back against these
police officers who are coming with no intention of apprehending
me for horse stealing and shooting this other police officer
who's wounded in his hand. They are just going to
summarily execute me. So then when you look at the
historical literature, the pro Kelly people have this threat as
(19:53):
a key moment. Ancestor, then, of course, is a villain.
He is this thuggish police officer who's threatened to shoot
someone without question. Conversely, in the Kelly literature which has developed,
which sees him as a murderous thug and a psychopath,
they say that this alleged threat, if it did or
didn't take place, and Joe ibid unable to find definitive
(20:16):
information to indicate whether or not my ancestor did have
this argument with one of Nick Kelly's uncles, and if
he did, did he use his threat. But the anti
Kelly force what they say is that this is just
another example of Nick Kelly lying and making excuses for
his murderous deeds.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
And what role does he play? Does Anthony Strong play
in the actual final app branch and after Kelly's on
the ground.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
So Anthony is the one police officer at the beginning
of this outbreak who is stationed in Greeter. So that's
the little town where the Kellys live. He's there with
his wife, Marian and his children, surrounded by the Keli
gang and all their sympathizers. It would have been a
very uncomfortable place to be. Secondly, as I mentioned earlier,
(21:07):
he leads this second patrol in October eighteen seventy eight
to try and capture him. He then spends many many
months out on patrol, often alone, trying to track down
the Calid. So in that period, it's bizarre. From February
eighteen seventy nine to June eighteen eighty, which is when
you had the final stand, the final siege and shootout,
(21:28):
the counties kind of vanished. They become like ghosts. Anthony
during that time is searching for them, along with a
lot of other police officers and Victoria. For him, it's
a kind of a cruel thing that although he had
spent towards two years tracking the Calis, he was not
present at the final siege. By that point, he had
(21:48):
been placed in charge of a police station in another
town and was responsible for law and order in that
particular area. So he wasn't there at the last stand.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Oh yeah, I guess I meant what happens? What role
does Anthony play in the after the capture and during
the trial? And I thinks of what people.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Are, Well, this is a very curious thing, and it's
something I say in the book is a real anomally
because if it is true that he's threatened to shoot
near Kelly like a dog before the killings at Stringy
Bar Creek, he should have been called as a witness
in the trial, presumably the defense to strengthen their case
for self defense. However, he's not called as a witness.
(22:30):
I've decided in the end that is because the defense
realized that the uncle, a man called Pat Quinn, who
had claimed that Anthony made this threat, was himself a
convicted basher. He bashed up a police officer and spent
several years in prison. He was a thief himself, he
was a liar. He flip flopped all over the place,
and I think the defense realized if he's put on
(22:53):
the stand, the prosecution will probably quickly demonstrate that he
in fact is a liar. So Anthony again is not
involved in the trial itself. He watches from a distance.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
But he does this thing which is amazing and sorry
I'm skipping back. Before the Kellys are caught. He goes
off often, as you say, on his own, on searches
for the Kelly Gang. Now we're talking about the Australian
bush here, and so it's not as if he can
immediately call for backup. Right, this is a very brief
thing to do.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Look, it's brave and to some extent was against the
instructions of the commission of the Victoria Police, realizing that
the Kellys were even if you thought they were heroes
or not, they were violent men and they were well
armed living off the land. So the Commissioner Police said, look,
I don't want people going anywhere near the Kelly Hut alone.
(23:44):
Police officers have to go at least two or more.
At that point, the Victoria Police was a relatively small outfit.
It was policing a very large area Victoria today, Joe,
you lived there for a while. If you drive around,
of course the twenty sense of twenty first century, it's
full of roads and towns. There still stretches which are
(24:05):
pretty rugged and remote. Back in the eighteen seventies, oh yeah,
the relation was small. Settlement was sparse, so Anthony would
often ride incredibly long distances in one day. I'm in
a horse a couple of times I'll find its supremely uncomfortable.
Now he would ride a couple of hundred kilometers on
a horse in dense bush. As he said later in life,
(24:28):
he would often be out at night watching a particular sight,
trying to see if the Kellys would turn up. It
could be really cold, yeah, it damaged his health.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
We should give a sort of comparison for American listeners,
and this is like riding from the Panhandle of Florida
up to Tennessee. Victoria is the south is southeasternmost state
in Australia, but it's not small. It's very big. You know,
Australia is a continent country, so you know this is
a major thing. This isn't just every night going out
and checking the neighbor.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
When I look back on the life of a police
officer in the late nineteenth century, now I have to
put some extent been aw of just how physically testing
it was. They worked very, very long hours. They had
very very few days off. They rose early, especially if
you're a mounted constable like Anthony, who had to get
(25:20):
up look after the horse. To begin with. Now, the
other thing about my book, I wanted to tell the
story of the Kelly out break, but I also wanted
to give very much a sense of, well, what is
it like being a police officer day to day, not
just this great legendary crime, this Cally outbreak that he
becomes involved in, but also to trace his life through
(25:41):
a series of towns in the eighteen sixties and seventies
eighteen eighties, to give a sense of the struggles of
a police officer in small country towns bringing up a family.
I also bring to light again certain other crimes which
were famous in their day back in the eighteen seventies,
but had been overshadowed by the Kelly outbreak. So this
(26:04):
book also takes us through some other quite ripping primes
which indicated to a certain extent in sixties eighteen seventies
Victoria was still a fairly lawless place. The arm of
authority often was quite weak. So I'm doing several things
in this book. I want to some extent take the
(26:25):
gaze of readers away from just a Kelly outbreak to
see things with a wider view. But it's also about
engaging with a national myth which has loomed large my
own family's history. See, my own father was a great
Nick Kelly fan. He heroized ned.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Even though his great grandfather was one of the policemen.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yes, and in fact he denigrated our ancestors. I found
out our dad was a historian himself, but he totally
bought into the myth of Neck Kelly. And the thing
about Nick Kelly Joe is that he's seen as representing
a very particular type of masculinity, Australian masculinity. Yeah, and
(27:08):
in that he was seen as the exemplar of values
and characteristics which some Australians have seen as their own.
That he's egalitarian, that he believes in makeshift. These are
some of the features which Australians hold dear.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
But as you and so many people have shown a
lot of these, a lot of these things weren't true.
He's not a Robin Hoodie robs from the rich and
from the poor. But I think what makes it so
interesting and why I get so wrapped up in this
legend and hero worship aspect of history is is a
quote that a journalist wrote in the Age a few
years ago. The Age is Melbourne's, one of Melbourne's big newspapers,
(27:44):
and I found this is this is a journalist named
Martin Flangan. He wrote, what makes net a legend is
not that everyone sees him the same, which, by the way,
of course, you know you have these two Kelly Camps
he talked about, so that's true. But the quote continues
is that everyone sees him like a bushfire on the
horizon casting its red glow. Into the night. So like
(28:05):
Jesse James, like Billy the Kid. You know, all Americans
know them and all Australians know Nead Kelly. I just
find that fascinating, given it so long ago, and you
know he was a criminal. Why do we worship these people?
Speaker 2 (28:18):
I think in part Joe, it's because they appeal to
our need for great mythic figures. Yeah. I think a
lot of us human beings we yearn for something which
is more eternal. Now, of course there is religious faith
which fills that space, but beyond that, we have these
yearning for figures who are larger than life, who will
(28:39):
endure across the centuries, is somehow represent something more than
just the passing lives of ordinary people. So at this
mythic level, Ned Kelly, as I said earlier, he's become
something almost. It's like, you know, the real person is
no longer there. Instead you have the figure often incased
(28:59):
in the helmets, and now that figure you can drive
through some Australian country towns and you have these enormous,
towering statue of neck Kelly is dwarfing you as an
ordinary human being and looking up this great man with
a brandishing a rifle and in this mythic armor.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
I've even seen someone in the country, someone in a
picture of someone in the country having their mailbox in
front of their house designed like the armor them. You know,
it's just amazing.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
In addition to the mythic quality, the courses, the commercial.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Quality, and that is you can make a lot of
money out of Kelly's so all the neck Kelly paraphernalia,
which is around everything from mugs and two towels to clothing.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
And these statues, these movies. Son has also to something
that's become almost like a money making business. The other
thing is that he's become a bit entangled with a
certain type of kind of or two things. Some of
our outlaw motorcycle gangs have taken on Ned as an icon,
as a symbol and secondly, elements of I think you
(30:07):
call it sin. It's kind of ironic. To begin with,
when Ned was heroized, it was really the progressive left
who took him up as a hero. He was an
anti establishment figure, an anti authority figure. In more recent
times it's kind of flipped and now for some i'd
say kind of right wing Australians, Ned has become a
symbol of kind of white Australian patriotism, and that is
(30:32):
a kind of figure who stands in contrast to Australia
that some of these people now don't like. That's contemporary Australia,
which is, from my point of view, wonderfully multicultural, which
is doing more to come to terms with the terrible
acts which were committed during European colonization, the dispossession of
the Indigenous population. A large part of the Indigenous population
(30:54):
was killed. There was a certain segment of contemporary white Australia.
It kind of mirrors, i think, to some of what
you see in the United States, which resents and doesn't
like this modern cosmopolitan, multicultural Australia, or Australia which says
we did terrible wrongs to the Indigenous population and ned bizarrely,
(31:16):
and all of this has become for them this symbol
of their identity. So it's kind of odd. You can
see that the neck Kelly myth also is a little
bit mobile, and it's kind of meant different things at
different points in time. Today, there are I think probably
still some left learning progressive Australia had seen as this
(31:37):
anti authoritarian figure. But as I say, motorcycle gangs. They
loved the neck Kelly paraphernalia, the symbols of Ned with
his pistols.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
It makes me think of the Motorcycle Gang or Camp
in the first or the second above, both Mad Max films,
the Motorcycle Outlaws.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
If you look at the Mad Max figure, the villains
that he is fighting against in this desolate landscape of
the future, some of their paraphernalia which mixes in iconography
from kind of punk music to stuff from the night
to the past, but it's kind of got echoes at
the same time of a neck Kelly, like the sort
(32:18):
of armor. If you like that. That shows you how
deeply this mythic figure runs through our culture.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
It's just absolutely fascinating and I can't recommend the book
enough for Americans, especially because of the parallels. And as
you've been listening to Doctor Strahan, you know this is
an absolute gripping story. The book is even better. There's
so much more in it and many more of these stories,
but also more analysis of why these things continue to happen.
So I just want to thank you so much for
(32:46):
coming on.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
The show, Joe. It's been an absolute pleasure. As you mentioned,
we were studying together back in the late nineteen eighties
in Melbourne. We've remained friends since then. It's pleasure to
talk to your listeners about in Australia and figure Nick Kelly,
who indeed kind of echoes in American culture in his.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Own way well, and our listeners will be happy to
know that as soon as we turn off the record,
as soon as we stop recording, I'm going to ask
you come on the show about different topics. So let
me say to all of you, please go to professor
buzzkill dot com. The book is obviously in the Buzzkill bookshelf,
and we will talk to all of you next week.
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