Simply Ned
The bushranger business is thriving, 125 years after Ned Kelly's death
Lee Mylne
July 30, 2005
source: the australian.news.com.au

The brownish bloodstains on the green silk sash that Ned Kelly wore under his hand-forged armour during his last stand against the police at Glenrowan are still clearly visible 125 years later.

Visitors to the Benalla Costume and Pioneer Museum, where the sash is the most prized Kelly exhibit, linger by the glass cabinet that holds this evocative relic. The cabinet is inside an old wooden cell in which the young bushranger languished twice in the early 1870s.

The wide sash ends are trimmed with gold fringe, one end slightly torn. This relic is an integral part of the Kelly legend; it was awarded to Ned when he was 11 years old by a grateful family whose son he had saved from drowning. This public acknowledgement of his bravery was one he treasured to the end.

Relics of the Kelly gang are scattered around the towns of northeastern Victoria and southern NSW (notably Jerilderie), where the band of young men spent almost all their short lives, and which are this year marking the 125th anniversary of Ned Kelly's trial and execution.

Tracing the ill-fated path of Ned Kelly, his brother Dan and friends Joe Byrne and Steve Hart, is like piecing together a jigsaw.

The puzzle is helped by a glossy brochure that sets out the new Ned Kelly Touring Route, a joint initiative between the municipalities of Wangaratta, Benalla, Mansfield, Strathbogie, Indigo and Jerilderie. The themed route links key Kelly sites in the two states through the use of signs, a website (in the planning stages) and a brochure. The Old Melbourne Gaol is also part of the project, with support from Tourism Victoria.

Storyboards will be erected at sites along the route during the next six months. So far there are few, but this does not detract from my driving tour. The trail begins about 40km from the Victorian high country town of Mansfield, where an unsealed road leads to Stringybark Creek, site of the fatal shoot-out between the Kelly gang and police on October 26, 1878, and the beginning of serious trouble for young Ned. Stepping out of the car, we are met by the smell of eucalypts, and among the trees is a memorial plaque to the three slain policemen.

A little further on, the "Kelly tree", emblazoned with a bronze relief of Kelly's helmet, proves a tactile attraction for one pint-sized visitor.

Power's Lookout, off the King Valley-Whitfield-Mansfield Road, was the hideout of the notorious bushranger Harry Power, to whom Kelly was apprenticed as a youngster.

The lookout has stunning views of the King Valley.

In Mansfield's main street, an imposing marble monument to the policemen killed by the Kelly gang dominates the central roundabout. They are buried in the local cemetery, their graves marked by ornate headstones. But it is the town of Glenrowan that is most ostentatious about its links with the Kelly gang. The legend of Ned Kelly is everywhere in Glenrowan, manifesting itself in ways that make me wonder what he would have made of it.

This is where the siege took place on June 28, 1880, ending with Dan Kelly, Steve Hart and Joe Byrne dead and Ned captured. The town is intent on keeping the legend alive and tourist dollars flowing in, but its attractions seem to me tacky and woeful.

Drive down the main street and you are met squarely by a Big Ned Kelly statue looming over the entrance to one of two Kelly museums. The striking new orange and black banners proclaiming the Ned Kelly Touring Route flutter from the street lights.

In the basement of the Cobb & Co souvenir store is a museum (entry $2) featuring photos of the extended Kelly clan and a family tree, its links formed by lines of coloured wool. Any treasures that may lurk here are overshadowed by the tired presentation.

Upstairs there are ceramic figurines, tea towels, wind chimes and a host of other Kelly souvenirs. A suit of armour will set you back $1100 and I wonder aloud how many are rushing out of the shop. "I sold one this morning," says the woman behind the counter. At 36kg (Kelly's armour weighed 50kg), I can't imagine anyone wearing it. Lighter ones cost $450, plus $60 or $99 for the helmet.

A few doors down, at Ned Kelly's Last Stand, half-hourly "semi-live" shows re-enact the siege using animation and "computerised robots". I find this easy to resist despite the breathless advertising: "Starting as hostages in the hotel, and then on to gunfights – burning buildings – shoot-outs – a decent hanging, finishing in our magnificent painting gallery."

A replica of the railway station building that stood here in Kelly's time is surrounded by large wooden figures, painted garishly to represent Kelly and others in the story, like giant old-fashioned clothes-pin dolls. Across the road in Siege Street (yes, really) is the worst of all: the tragic Ned propped up against a log between the blacksmith's shop and the former police station. Wooden stumps, splashed with scarlet paint, protrude grotesquely from the "armour".

This month, the federal Government announced that the 8ha Glenrowan siege site had been heritage listed. With $1.8 million from the Victorian Government, plans are afoot to develop a "nationally significant" Kelly interpretive centre as part of the Glenrowan revitalisation project, which will start next month. It is to be hoped this formal recognition of Glenrowan as the repository of the Kelly legend means any future tributes to him will be more tasteful that those I have seen.

After Glenrowan, it is a relief to get to Beechworth, where the city leaders have had the gumption to ban poker machines, McDonald's and brand names from the streets, and where mellow sandstone buildings tell this part of the Kelly saga with a firm eye on history.

Each year Beechworth stages a re-enactment of parts of Kelly's 1880 committal hearing and his Melbourne trial. This year it will be on the exact historic dates, August 6 and 7. The courthouse, used from 1858 to 1989, was where Kelly faced charges over the deaths of the Mansfield policemen.
Beechworth will mark the 125th anniversary of Kelly's trial over next weekend with site tours, shop window displays, Irish dancing and music, footage from early Kelly movies and lectures by historian and Kelly expert Ian Jones.

Year round, you can take a guided tour of the courthouse, including the ladies' gallery upstairs, the dock in which Kelly sat, the judge's chambers, clerk's room, sheriff's office, jury room and remand cells. "It is just as it was when Ned Kelly was here," says our guide, Noelene Allen.

It is also, she confides, "the coldest courtroom in Victoria", with the temperature about 1C on winter mornings, not helped by the high ceilings.

Step into the remand cells and voices ring out: Kelly in conversation with a fellow inmate; his mother, Ellen, passing time with another woman prisoner. Kelly and his mother also spent time in the imposing Beechworth Gaol, which is at present closed to the public. Beechworth's interesting Burke Museum also has much Kelly memorabilia on display.

After his capture Kelly was taken to Benalla, where the museum exhibits now include a portable jail cell, Joe Byrne's armour and, most chilling of all, the pale green cell door from the Benalla jail on which Byrne's body was strung up after the siege. He is buried under a tree in the Benalla cemetery.

But it is the sash that we have come to see. "Gathered" by the doctor who dressed Kelly's 28 gunshot wounds, and later presented to the museum by his family, it is a poignant reminder of the proud boy who became a legend.

Where It Ends
Ned Kelly spent five months in the Old Melbourne Gaol and was hanged there, aged 25, on November 11, 1880. The jail, Victoria's oldest, operated between 1841and 1929 and was the scene of 134 otherhangings.

One of Ned's death masks and his brother Dan's armour are on display and there is a cell devoted to the story of Ned's mother, Ellen, who was in the women's jail when her son was hanged. Visitors can see a free and lively re-enactment in The Real Ned Kelly Story: Such a Life at 12.30pm and 2pm on Saturdays.

To view Ned Kelly's armour, head to the nearby State Library of Victoria, where it is on permanent display as part of the Changing Face of Victoria exhibition. Along with the 8000-word Jerilderie Letter (pictured), which Kelly dictated to Joe Byrne in February 1879 in an attempt to present his version of events, the armour is one of the State Library's treasures.

The surviving pieces of armour include Kelly's helmet, backplate, breastplate and shoulderplate, crudely constructed from parts of ploughs, pieces of leather and iron bolts. His right boot and his rifle complete the display.