Glenrowan Siege Commemorative Dinner
Saturday June 28, 2003

“The green silk sash. What was it all about? What did it mean? And what has it all got to do with Glenrowan? Well, as you saw from the Heath Ledger film, it was about Ned Kelly saving a boy from drowning… in very deep and very, very clear water for a rain-swollen creek.

“And then, those of you who saw the documentary Besieged last night would have seen the sash floating in a creek. And what was that about? I suspect that to the producers it just seemed like a good idea at the time.

“You see, that green silk sash is a vivid symbol. More than that, it commemorates the moment when Ned Kelly first emerges as a figure that people take notice of. And even more than that, in a shining moment of admiration and approval. No arguments, no controversy. And in Ned Kelly’s life, that was a precious, rare thing.

“Throughout the rest of his years, he would be torn between admiration and denigration – hero-worshipped, demonised, the ultimate hero, the ultimate villain.

“So, what about the sash? It all happened in Ned’s 11th year – 1865. In the little town of Avenel, about 100 kilometres south-west of Glenrowan on the Sydney Road. The Kelly family had arrived there from Beveridge the previous year – Irish ex-convict John ‘Red’ Kelly, his Irish migrant wife, Ellen, and their six Australian-born children – three boys, three girls, with one girl still to come.

“Ned attended the Avenel Common School. Quite a bright boy, he was remembered by one girl as ‘very quiet’, and, according to another classmate, ‘a champion of the weak… who played the game in school and at sport’.

“Among the younger kids at the Avenel school were Richard and Sarah Shelton, children of Esau and Maggie Shelton, who ran the Royal Mail Hotel. 1865 was very nearly a bad year for the Sheltons. It certainly was a bad year for the Kellys. Red Kelly killed and butchered a stray calf, was arrested, tried and fined 25 pounds or six months‚ hard labour. The family couldn’t scrape the money together, so Red was put behind bars – probably in the local lock-up.

“Ellen was pregnant. Young Ned helped her run the farm. The Kellys were always battlers. Things were just getting harder.

“One morning, young Dick Shelton left the Royal Mail Hotel to go to school. (He) took his usual route along a track that led to a footbridge over Hughes Creek, just below the schoolhouse. A huge redgum (had) fallen across the creek, with its trunk chipped flat to provide safe footing. Dick was wearing a brand new straw hat that morning. And as he passed to look down at the creek, swollen by recent rain, the hat came off and landed on a branch just above the surface of the creek. Dick clambered down to get it, slipped and fell into a treacherous boil-hole of swirling water.

“Ten-year-old Ned Kelly was just passing along the opposite bank. He dashed down to the creek, dived in and hauled young Dick to safety.

“Imagine the scene: the two boys, soaking wet, arriving at the Royal Mail Hotel; the almost tearful gratitude of Dick’s parents, commemorated in a handsome gesture. They presented Ned, the young hero, with a superb sash – green silk, more than two metres long, nearly 13 centimetres wide, with a seven-centimetre gold bullion fringe at each end. The sort of sash a flash bushman or a gold-digger would wrap around his waist and knot it at the hip with the fringed ends hanging down.

“It was a decoration for bravery. A proud trophy that became one of Ned’s most treasured possessions. Yet we know of only one occasion when he wore it. Fifteen years later. It was bound around his waist at Glenrowan. If nothing else told us that the Kelly plan for Glenrowan was something of a scale far beyond a mere criminal exploit; if nothing else told us that the attack on the police train planned here was the only prelude to some incredibly ambitious campaign, then the fact that Ned Kelly wore his sash of honour here should have made us realise that he saw the outcome of it all as some crowning achievement.

“Of course, we know now that his plans were for nothing less than a republic of north-eastern Victoria, spearheaded by a pre-emptive strike at his police enemies, who he had lured by the trainload into a carefully planned trap. Here.

“We know how the plan went wrong. Initially through the monumental inefficiency of the police pursuers, who were so slow in taking the bait for the trap that Ned and the gang had to wait more than 24 hours, holding their local hostages in the Glenrowan Inn. Their armour ready for the great final battle, Ned wearing his sash to celebrate the great victory – the day of triumph for him, for the gang, and for all the battlers of the north-east who supported them.

“At last, as the hours ticked by, the gang agreed to release prisoners, including the crippled teacher who warned the police train of the trap it was charging into. And then that ghastly shambles of a siege – a bizarre pre-dawn gun battle.

“The grand mad dream of the republic had become a nightmare. Everything had gone wrong.

“And in the icy dawn of the 28th of June, 1880, Ned Kelly tried to put it right. He had turned armed supporters away from the fight. He had gone back to lead the other members of the gang out of the pub, seen his mate Joe Byrne killed, and now, well outside the police cordon, he prepared to go back again.

“He had been bleeding from serious wounds for more than four hours, his left arm and right foot completely crippled. He was wearing 40 kilos of armour. He had been at least two nights without sleep. The temperature was below zero. And he attacked 34 police in an attempt to rescue the two surviving members of his gang.

“After an impossible half-hour gunfight, he fell from loss of blood with 28 gunshot wounds in both feet, both legs, left arm, both hands and both groins.

“Doctor Nicholson of Benalla thought he was dying but tended his wounds and, as he peeled away Ned’s clothing, found the green silk sash around his waist. He took it as a souvenir of this momentous day.

“Seven hours later, the Glenrowan Inn was burnt to the ground, cremating the dead bodies of the last two members of the gang. Five months later, Ned Kelly was executed.

“And what of the sash? Doctor Nicholson gave it to his son Richard, who, in 1901, took it with him to Scotland. When he died there in 1910, it went to a sister, a Mrs Pole, who eventually sent it out to her sister, Mrs McNab, who lived at Rose Bay in Sydney. At last, in 1973, Mrs McNab donated the sash to the Benalla Historical Society. And, to this day, it is a treasured exhibit at the society’s costume and pioneer museum, on the banks of the Broken River.

“The sash is faded, frayed and still stained with Ned Kelly’s blood. A uniquely precious Kelly relic.

“So back to where we started: what does it all mean?

“In the Heath Ledger film, I got the impression that it represented Ned Kelly’s one moment of glory. A moment of brief, glorious sunshine in a rather murky life. The one occasion when he seized the day and was something more than a victim of injustice and oppression. And the sash, the symbol of that single triumph, was taken from him and claimed by his police enemies in yet another darkly shadowed moment.

“I don’t see it that way. To me, what Ned Kelly attempted to do at Glenrowan was fantastic. Yet it almost succeeded. However, what he actually did her was impossible. His ‘Last Stand’ was an act of extraordinary moral and physical courage. A self-sacrifice of almost superhuman strength and endurance.

“Ned showed bravery in the exploit that won him the green silk sash. The sash of honour. Here at Glenrowan, the promise of that boyhood bravery was fulfilled magnificently. Here at Glenrowan, the sash was not dishonoured.”