Saving
the Kelly Homestead
Feel free to send as many
questions and queries regarding The Kelly Home
at Beveridge to the National Trust. Hopefully we
will be able to wake the Trust up to the sorry
plight of the Beveridge homestead. You can email
the National
Trust direct with any
and all questions you have regarding the property
and what plans (if any) they have for it. If we
can generate a quantity of letter traffic perhaps
this will start a larger ball rolling. For a while
there we did have a forum going in their feedback
section but we were generating too many complaints
so they simply pulled the page off their site.
Now that's a good way of dealing with the problem!
 John
Kelly's House, situated at Kelly Street in Beveridge,
is in a pitiful state indeed. The entire house is
in need of urgent repair and restoration yet the
National Trust seem to be ignoring it. All around
the homestead houses are springing up. Only 100 metres
away we can see a residential house erected on the
same block! In less than 10 years this entire area
will be just another outer suburb of Melbourne, full
of houses, streets and people.
Remember what happened to Phar
Lap's stables? The original area where they stood
was taken over by development so they moved them
to Braeside Park where they were destroyed by fire
after years of abuse by vandals. Is this what is
to become of the Kelly house? Are the powers that
be hoping a lighted match will end their headache
about what to do with the property? Or do they simply
not care?
This homestead is part of Australia's
living history. Our heritage buildings are sadly
few and far between. We have already seen the destruction
of the bank in Jerilderie as well as other significant
Kelly landmarks. Is the government on some sort of
secret agenda to rid us of this part of history?
 We
need to get the public interested in restoring this
vital piece of Australia. We need debate on the issue.
We need media support. We need to shame the government
and National Trust into doing something positive.
And we need to raise funds to get the job done. But
first we need to generate some ground support.
Further reading: Why
save Beveridge? | How
to save Beveridge |
Steve
Hart descendant Paul O'Keefe has alerted me to yet
another ridiculous Kelly Gang claim (the latest in a line
of many). Not just content to see Dan escape, this time
around Steve also made a bolt from the Glenrowan Inn
fire (so why was Ned heading back when they had both left?).
Lucky Steve also headed north where he lived a long and
happy life in Queensland under the name of Billy Meade. Apparently
this Meade character confessed about his double identity
on his deathbed in 1938. Well, in that case, it
