Authors: Carole Wilkinson
Black Snake
Other Books by Carole Wilkinson
“Everyone looks on me like a black snake.”
Letter to Sergeant Babington, July 1870
Ned Kelly was a thief, a bank robber and a murderer. He was in trouble with the law from the age of 12. He stole hundreds of horses and cattle. He robbed two banks. He killed three men. Yet, when Ned was sentenced to death, thousands of people rallied to save his life. He stood up to the authorities and fought for what he believed in. He defended the rights of people who had no power.
Was he a villain? Or a hero?
What do you think?
The area where the Kellys operated is known today, as it was at the time of the outbreak, as Kelly Country. Kelly Country is the area of North Eastern Victoria from Euroa in the west to Beechworth in the east, from Mansfield in the south to the Murray River in the north.
Ned Kelly was a horse and cattle thief, a bank robber and a murderer. He was in trouble with the law from the age of 12. He spent three years in jail before he turned 20. By his own admission, he stole hundreds of horses and cattle. He robbed two banks. He killed three men.
When he was hanged in 1880, his story refused to be buried with him. Now, more than 100 years after his death, interest in the man and his story is as strong as it has ever been. Hundreds of books have been written about him. Films have been made. Famous artists have used Ned as a subject.
This fascination with Ned isn’t a modern phenomenon. When he was sentenced to death, people rallied to save Ned’s life. Alongside his family and legal representatives, thousands of ordinary people joined in the fight for his survival. A petition to reprieve him collected 32,000 signatures in just five days.
Why are we fascinated with this criminal? What is it about Ned Kelly that makes him so interesting? Why is he one of the most famous Australians of all time?
Photo from Ned’s prison report sheet
What if you were there...
The Irish are all the same. A bunch of brawling thieves. And don’t tell me I’ve got no right to say that. I should know, I live among a great brood of them—the Kellys and their relations the Quinns and the Lloyds. I’m no squatter. I’ve worked hard all my life. I’ve paid for my land, all 250 acres of it, with the sweat off my brow. No one could call me rich, but compared to the Kelly clan I’m a wealthy man. They live in ramshackle huts, whole families in one room like herds of animals.
Old Mr Quinn’s not a bad bloke, but his sons are a pack of louts. Nothing’s safe. I have to keep my eyes on my few horses day and night, for fear of them disappearing. The women aren’t much better than the men. You couldn’t call them ladies. They scream abuse at you if you so much as look at them and they seem to marry fellows even worse than their brothers. I don’t know what’s to become of this colony if these are the sort of people who are allowed to settle. I’d rather have the convicts. Most of them have had the flashness knocked out of them by the time they’re freed.
I thought Red Kelly might make something of himself, but he didn’t. He turned to drink, God rest his soul. Now his wife and children are left to fend for themselves. The boys are always in trouble. If they’re not stealing chickens, they’re “borrowing” horses which they ride around, jumping fences and creeks. Sometimes the owners find the horses back in their paddocks a week or two later, exhausted and in need of being reshod. Sometimes they never see them again.
One of my horses went missing the week before last. A fine black mare with a flash on her head shaped like a diamond. I’d sent one of the farmhands over to the Quinns’ and the Kellys’ to scout around and see if he could find the horse, but there was no sign of her. I even told him to offer a reward for her return. But they were all playing dumb. I thought I’d seen the last of her.
Then the oldest of the Kelly boys came up to the house today. Ned, I think his name is. There he was with his hat pushed back on his head wearing a patched shirt and boots three sizes too big for him. He’d obviously just combed his hair for the visit. He has these dark penetrating eyes—I felt like he was seeing right into me, reading my thoughts. He was holding my mare.
“I found this horse wandering up in the Strathbogie Ranges,” he said, those eyes now wide and innocent. “I thought she might be the one that you lost.”
It was my horse all right. Even if she didn’t have my brand on it, I would have recognised the white mark on her head anywhere. The lad was stroking the animal’s head as he spoke. The horse, which is a nervous beast, was nuzzling his hand like she’d known him all her life. There was no way in the world that horse had been living wild in the bush for two weeks. It had been well fed and groomed as well. The lad had obviously stolen her. Sure enough. What did he say next?
“I’ll be entitled to the reward then. What was it? Fifteen shillings?” Bold as brass even though he can’t be any older than 12.
“You get outta my sight before I tan your hide,” I told him.
I can’t repeat the foul mouthful I got in return.
Still, the horse is in better condition than when it went missing. The boy obviously knows a bit about horses. Pity he can’t put it to better use, but with his father gone and no one to guide him but his larrikin uncles, I can’t see him making anything of himself.
Jacob Barker, selector
Early Days
“Everyone looks on me like a black snake.”
Letter to Sergeant Babington, July 1870
Ned Kelly was born in 1854 in the bush not far north of Melbourne. His father was called Red because of his red hair. He was a freed Irish convict, who had served his seven-year sentence in the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land (present day Tasmania) for stealing two pigs. Ned’s mother, Ellen, was also Irish. Her large family, the Quinns, had emigrated to Australia when she was just nine years old.
The Kellys were poor people, but Red made a little money in the goldfields and was able to buy 41 acres of land near the small town of Beveridge. The family grew, and for a while it looked like the Kellys were on their way to being successful farmers. This period of good fortune didn’t last long. Ned’s father had no experience as a farmer. The conditions in Victoria, from drought to flood, were unfamiliar to even experienced farmers. Beveridge didn’t flourish as expected. The road to Sydney skirted around the town, instead of going through it and bringing more business. The Kelly land lost value. Before Ned’s third birthday, his father got into debt and had to sell most of the land for half its original price. Things didn’t improve.
Selectors versus Squatters
When Ned was 12 years old his father died. A widow with seven children could not afford to buy land, but Ned’s mother was determined that the family would have land of their own. She didn’t want them to be like poor tenant farmers in Ireland, under the thumb of some rich English landowner. The government had a way for poor people to buy land. It was called selection. A family would “select” a piece of land from allotments in unsettled areas and pay rent on it. If they paid their rent regularly for around seven years and looked after the land, doing what the government called “improvements”, the land would become theirs. The improvements involved building homes and other farm buildings, clearing areas of bush to make fields and putting up fences.
It was a hard life. To survive, the selectors grew wheat and vegetables and kept cattle. They had to produce enough to feed themselves and earn enough to pay rent and do the required improvements on the land. This could be achieved with a lot of hard work when the conditions were right, but that wasn’t always the case. There were seasons when there was no rain and the crops died. There were bushfires that could destroy years of hard work in one afternoon. The government wanted the selectors to grow wheat, but often the land wasn’t good to start off with and was unsuited to wheat growing.
The best land, vast areas of it, was owned by the squatters. Today we call someone who lives illegally in a house a squatter. At the beginning of white settlement in the 1800s, squatters were men who claimed thousands of hectares of rural land in New South Wales and then in Victoria. They legally took whatever land they wanted. Even though the rich squatters had the biggest and the best pieces of land, they were unhappy about the government allowing poor people to take up selections. If any cattle belonging to selectors wandered onto squatters’ land, they impounded it and the selectors had to pay to get their own stock back. The selectors resented the squatters who had got the best land for nothing.