The day Ned Kelly called a man out and shot him
John Lahey
8 November 1991
source smh.com.au

This story is utter rubbish but as it appeared in the Sydney Moring Herald we deemed it suitable for inclusion in our Writings section. Bear in mind, at the time of the alleged incident Ned was serving 3 years gaol for receiving a stolen horse:

Ned Kelly shot a man and secretly buried him in the years before he killed three policemen at Stringybark Creek, according to a new story. The policemen's deaths - in the heat of battle - are the only ones ever attributed to him. The story of a fourth death comes from Edna Griffiths Cargill, 64, of Croydon. In her childhood, her family owned the farm next to Ned's young brother, Jim, at Glenrowan West.

Jim Kelly was not part of the Kelly Gang and did not die until 1946, when Mrs Cargill was 19. She tells many stories which she says he passed on to her. Some of them are in The Children's World of Mr Kelly, a book which she published a few years ago. Her connections with the Kelly story go beyond this, for her middle name, Griffiths, denotes descent from a pioneering family that occupied the land next to the Kelly homestead at Eleven Mile Creek at the time of the troubles.

One of the Griffiths sons married Ned's sister, Grace. The Griffiths later bought the Kelly land and they still work it. All that remains of the Eleven Mile homestead are two brick chimneys. Mrs Cargill said Jim Kelly told her the story of the murder. She has written the first volume of a series called Glenrowan, and the story will soon become public knowledge.

Briefly, it is this. At some time in the late 1870s (Stringybark Creek was 1878), two thugs roamed the district terrorising the settlers. One of them -whose name she believes was Borrin - was apparently an ex-convict, for people used the expression "sent from chains" or "freed from chains" about him. One of Borrin's victims was a woman named Bridie Kelly who, Mrs Cargill says, may have been Ned's real mother Good God!. (This is a separate story altogether, based on a belief that Ned was adopted into the family.)

Ned returned from a journey and fought Borrin, but was so badly beaten he spent three weeks in bed, near death. During this time, Bridie Kelly tried to poison Borrin, and he savagely beat her again. Young Jim Kelly tracked Borrin to a hideout, which was a sort of dugout, half in the earth and half out, covered with sods. A man could sit in it but not stand. This dugout was on land that later became the farm of Mrs Cargill's father, who filled it in and planted an acacia tree on the spot. In Borrin's day, the area was wooded.

When Ned could stand, he tried to rally support to free the district of Borrin, but it came to nothing. In the end, he went after Borrin with a gun. Jim and his cousin, Ned Lloyd, both of them aged about 16, offered to stay with him, but Ned sent them off to the scrub, where they waited among the saplings. Ned went to a rise above a creek that flowed near the dugout and called Borrin out. The boys heard gunshots, and came running. Borrin had been blasted away, and little remained except his bones, which Ned insisted on burying himself. Ned told the boys: "This is my load. Don't any of you take my load upon your shoulders."

He said they could tell someone about the shooting if they felt they needed to, and he would not hold it against them, but they would honour him by letting him know their intentions, "for convenience sake". Mrs Cargill returned to the spot where this is said to have happened this week. It looked the way she had described it many times. The creek is not really a creek, but a wash, flowing only after heavy rain, and it hardly flows at all now because it has been dammed upstream.

A large acacia tree, said to be on the site of Borrin's dugout, is in line with the rise where Ned is said to have stood. Standing here, he would have faced a slit from which Borrin is said to have looked out. Nearby is a ford. "Mr Kelly (Jim) would never cross the ford," Mrs Cargill said. "He would not go anywhere near this spot. He would go out of his way to cross the creek further up, even when it was high." She said her father might also have known something, for he always admonished her not to play in the creek at this spot. He used the expression"eyes are watching".