I was having a scroll through that site Wikerpe..Wiperkedi… Wirepidi…You know the site I mean; the one that has all that stuff about everything. I always thought the information they put up was fair dinkum. I was reading something about Ned’s bones, as one does, and came across this rubbish; Forensic pathologists have examined the bones, which are much decayed and jumbled with the remains of others, making identification difficult. However, Kelly’s remains were identified by an old wrist injury and by the fact that his head was removed for phrenological study.

Mrs. Ellen Hollow, Kelly’s 62-year old great-niece, offered to supply her own D.N.A. to help identify Kelly’s bones. After reading this I became very upset, as one does again, because of this outrageous, unbelievable and ridiculous statement. There is no way Ellen Hollow is 62 years old! Not unless of course that bloody Irish Nedoco she starred in was made in the early seventies.

I then proceeded to another site and came across even more rubbish in the Herald Sun. Something about getting D.N.A from Ned’s boots and sash and matching it up against the D.N.A from a ulna and radius with an injury sustained to the carpal and articulations just missing the scaphoid which I found to be almost humerus. I mean, really; What D.N.A could be possibly got from the blood from the injury Ned sustained to his right sesamoids and up into his calcaneus. What about all those sweaty, toe jam feet in smelly socks that have been trying on Ned’s boot for the past 128 years? And how many times has that sash been in the old copper boiler over the years, with Dr. Nicholson’s reli’es scrubbing away trying hard to get those yucky blood stains out and give it a good iron before they send it back to Australia? Now as you already know Brad, my knowledge of forensic science is vast, due to the many hours of not only watching C.S.I Miami, but also I might add, C.S.I New York and E.R, and find it almost laughable, in my professional opinion, that the D.N.A after all these years will be enough to give out any sort of result.

I don’t mind admitting, after filling my head with all this stuff about old bones, boots and D.N.A, and draining the last drop of Cabernet from the bottle, I was feeling rather tired, but somehow I found myself back at the computer reading even stranger things. This time I’m reading that Ned could have been adopted. And then I’m reading stuff about some ex-convict who was terrorising the area in the late 1870s but before the Stringybark shootings. Now it just so happens that one of this villains victims was a Bridie Kelly who was Ned’s real mother and just happened to have the same surname as Ned’s father and not so real mother Ellen. When Ned goes to protect his real mother, Ned gets beaten to a pulp. Yeah! I can see that. Remember this all happened in the late 70s when Ned might I say was built like a brick shi…house and could beat any man in the north east.. Then after he recovers from this terrible beating, Jim tracks the bloke down and Ned shoots him so many times there’s nothing left of the bugger but bones. Jim Kelly at this time is about 16 years of age.

The lady who has passed on this unbelievable information states she was told it by none other than Jim Kelly himself back in the 1940s when she was 19. Of course some of these stories are in a book she happened to publish titled The Children’s World of Mr. Kelly. This particular tale though was to be in a series of books titled Glenrowan. All I can say is that Jim Kelly must have had a good laugh to himself to find someone so gullible. But what makes matters worse is that there are actually people out there including well known Kelly historians who have not completely dispelled the idea of it being nothing more than pure fiction. But I suppose each to his own.

By the way, does anyone know what happened to George King?