The Hunt for Ned Kelly

by Sophie Masson

  All he wanted was justice, he said, but the world, and especially the police, was arrayed against him and others such as him from the start, they had lied and lied and persecuted his family without respite. They would not rest till his body and those of his friends were a mass of gore and bone. Always those people worked at crushing poor men and only ever giving justice to the rich, and those same sort of men had ground down his people in Ireland and then in Australia like his father when he was a prisoner in Tasmania and they had tortured and martyred them and never one shred of justice did he see anywhere, but the day would come, yes the day would come when such things would be paid for in a higher court than that of any man!

  It was a frightening shock to see the change in him, to hear the surging, hot wave of fanatic hatred and desperation and bitterness that poured from him. Suddenly I could see why people feared him so. He looked dangerous and ruthless at that moment, capable of anything; the physical strength and mental force of him were terrifying. Ellen and I dared say not a word or move a muscle while the tirade went on.

  But as to the other two, their faces were quite impassive and even a little bored, as though they’d heard it all before. After a moment, he quietened. He got up and motioned to his men to go. About to mount his horse, he turned back to us and said gently, ‘I have tried not to take life since then. In even the darkest life there is a bright side, do you see? I don’t seek pity, only justice …’ Then he broke off and shrugged. ‘But of course you do not understand, I see it in your eyes. Why should you? Goodbye, Jamie and Ellen Ross, and may Mother Mary and all the saints protect you from harm in this sad world.’

  Ellen and I murmured something in farewell, I hardly know what. Watching them leave, I was on the verge of tears and my mind and heart were in uproar. I did not know even what I was properly feeling, for I did not know anymore what I thought of the man who could change in an instant from book-lover to raging fury to haunted spirit. But I knew one thing for sure: it does not matter how long I live, I will never ever forget that day.

  And then—then came the final thing which nearly undid me and Ellen. Lorna had been sitting on her haunches all this time with her eyes fixed on us, but as the horsemen rode away into the distance, she threw back her head and gave a low, long, drawn-out howl … like a creature who has seen death approaching. The men must have heard her, and perhaps their hearts might have quailed as ours did at the sinister sound, I don’t know. But they never turned their heads.

  Later

  I had to take a break from this for a while because writing it down made me relive it, and it was so intense I could hardly bear it. It is very late now and I must stop this very soon or I will be bug-eyed with tiredness in the morning, when we must set off again.

  The rest of that day passed in a blur, Ellen and I keeping fairly quiet as we continued on our interrupted journey, and it was not till that night that we were able to talk about it at all. Even then the words came hard. But did we consider going to the police and telling them what we had seen? No. Because we were scared? I cannot deny that. Not for ourselves, really—he had not offered us harm in any way. But as Ellen said, to see a man in torment as he was in his own mind, with the mark of Cain so heavy on him—that is terrifying. But it was something else that stopped us. We simply did not want to betray him. We could not bear the thought of it. Right or wrong, that was how we felt and I cannot explain it more than that.

  Melbourne, January 22, 1880

  We have been back in Melbourne for quite a while now, but this is the first time I’ve picked up this diary since that day. I had no stomach for the writing of anything before now. I only did so today because I read in the papers this morning that Captain Moonlite and his accomplice Rogan were executed in prison yesterday, ‘hung by the neck till they were dead’, as they say. It is a terrible fate and in the press there is a good deal of talk of how it was to be hoped the same fate would befall the Kellys before very long.

  It made me feel a little sick, to read such a savage sentiment, remembering that day in the bush. Neither Ellen nor I have spoken of it to anyone else. Ellen has done nothing about developing that negative. She says she is afraid to look at the picture now. She says she has even thought of destroying it. The idea that she had before, of making money from it, seems repulsive to her right now. Developing the photo would somehow fix that moment in time, make it something other than what it was, make it sensational and public and yet somehow more ordinary. I am not sure if I understand quite what she means, but I do not want to press her on it either, because what happened seems like a kind of dream to me too at times.

  We did not take any more photos at all along the way. We just wanted to get to Melbourne quickly and back to people who knew us. We are living with Uncle Will and Aunt Julia and that is not too bad—Aunt Julia seems to have mellowed a bit, maybe it was the shock of her illness (she is a good deal better, though she still has to be careful), or else Uncle Will finally found the nerve to stand up to her when she was sick. For Christmas she even cooked a proper roast goose dinner with all the trimmings and gave us gifts of new clothes, and she hasn’t complained overly about us eating her out of house and home. Not overly, that is!

  January 30

  Yesterday Uncle Will talked to me seriously about my plans in life. Ellen is already set. She has just obtained employment with a lady photographer in a studio in the city, and for the moment seems content to be working for someone else. I said what I wanted more than anything was to be a reporter some day, and he said I had to start small. Then he took me to see someone he knew at The Age, and thanks to that and to the good reference I received from Mr Ingram, I got a position as a newspaper errand-boy. I am to start in two weeks’ time. It is a small step on the ladder to becoming a reporter one day. I really have my heart set on it. Those words of Elijah Turner’s have really stuck in my mind.

  Talking of Mr Turner, Ellen had a letter from him the other day. She showed it to me, at least a bit of it. Nothing much of any note has happened in Beechworth or anywhere up here for that matter, he wrote. Things jog on as usual, Mrs Pickett and her lodgers are still the same, our friend Mr Ingram continues to sell many books. He asked after you both and says that he rarely had a better employee than Jamie. Not a hair or hide of any of the Kelly gang has been seen for weeks, though I have heard some people say they are living close to home, especially now Jim Kelly was released and is back at Eleven Mile with his sisters. I have rushed off to cover news of sightings only to return empty-handed, so I am afraid I have had to spin out some stories almost past breaking point. I have also interviewed the police, but not much to report on that score. Detective Ward continues his meetings with his spies, but the police seem at a standstill right now, they are waiting for the foxes to poke their noses out, I suppose. Perhaps Detective Ward and Superintendent Nicholson will grow old and grey waiting for those particular foxes to leave their dens, but I do not wish to any longer. I need a big break on this story, but am not going to get it by cooling my heels here, so am heading to the bright lights of Melbourne and hope to see you there before very long.

  I was glad to think we will be seeing him soon. And I am glad also to have news of Beechworth, though our time there seems like a dream these days. We sent Christmas cards to Mrs Pickett and the lodgers and Mr Ingram and got some nice cards back, Mrs Pickett even saying she might make the trip down to Melbourne one of these days. Funny how I thought her so dour and dried-up when I met her, but now I think she is one of the kindest people you could ever hope to meet. People are never exactly how you think they’re going to be, are they?

  February 26

  This has been a very busy month, hardly any time to write in my diary. Two weeks ago I started at The Age. I was overwhelmed at first. It was so full of frantic activity and noise, in the editorial rooms with the shouts of reporters, and in the printers’ rooms where the machines make an infernal clatter. I have to run around all day long, ferrying copy and bringing drinks and sandwiches and r
unning errands of all sorts. It is a tiring but exciting job, for you are in the thick of news there, and you learn so much about what is going on! I have been told I am quick and reliable and I think I shall do well. I have spoken with a few reporters, and to one of them, Sam Ratcliff, a tall, fair-haired man about Ellen’s age, who’s a second-year reporter, I’ve confessed my ambition to be a journalist. He is very encouraging and thinks I have what it takes. I hope he is right, and am watching carefully to see how things are done. We have a good deal comes over the wires, and the Kelly story is still very much the topic of the day.

  Had a bit of a shock the other day: Sam, who knows I’ve come down recently from north-east Victoria, casually asked me if by any chance I’d met Ned Kelly! I nearly choked and was only just able to catch myself and say, ‘Oh, you hear a lot about him there, but practically no-one sees him,’ which is actually the truth. I did not exactly lie, I just did not say the full thing.

  He said, ‘Pity, I should very much like to know what he is like in the flesh. Some say he is such a monster, but then others that he is almost a romantic hero.’

  I said carefully I did not know about any of that, but that Mr Ingram, the bookseller I worked for, had once known Ned Kelly and Joe Byrne, and that as to me, I had seen Kate Kelly once in the tearooms.

  He sighed and said those sorts of things were ten a penny. The Age’s Beechworth correspondent (who I hadn’t met in the time I was there, but I remember Mr Jardine saying once he’d had a beer and a chat with him in one of the hotels) often filed stories of that sort. Every man and his dog knew Ned Kelly before, but after, now that was different. He’d read numerous accounts of people claiming to have come across the bushranger, but he didn’t give much credence to any of them. He supposed the people who’d really met him would stay tight-lipped for fear of Kelly or love of him. For whatever reason, people do clam up like oysters on the subject.

  Somehow I managed to keep my face straight and my mouth shut. When I told Ellen about it that night she made me swear, cross my heart hope to die, that I would never ever breathe a word of it to Sam or any other journalist, or the rest of them would be on us like swarms of flies and Uncle Will and Aunt Julia would be shamed in front of everyone.

  Mr Turner has arrived. But he’s not finding it easy in Melbourne. His bright optimism seems to be wearing down. He said the papers in America had lost interest in Kelly stories and that he’d tried to place things here, but couldn’t. He then asked me if I could put in a word for him at The Age. I said I would, but of course I have no power to do anything, and neither does Sam, he’s just a junior reporter. Poor Mr Turner is desperate for a big story, something that he could sell for a lot of money. He told Ellen he’d had money coming in from the States before but now it’s run out. Uncle Will, who’s met him, said that in his opinion the fellow was a gambler and that his money was probably lost at cards. I’ve never thought of it—I never saw him gambling in Beechworth—but then he was away such a lot, and who knew what he might have done? In any case, he is on the verge of being penniless.

  It does not look good for any plans he might have had to ask Ellen to marry him. Not that I think that’s on the cards now. She has met someone at the studio—a young man called Hugh something, who came for a portrait sitting—who she is ‘stepping out with’, as the saying goes, so I think Mr Turner has well and truly missed the boat, though they are still friends.

  March 30

  My entries are getting less and less frequent, I see. It is not because I am tired of writing, but because though my days are full of activity, they are pretty much the same every day. Get up early, go to the offices, run around all day on errands for reporters and editors and printers till late, go home, have dinner, go to bed. In my time off I lie in bed as late as I can and read and take Lorna for walks and sometimes go on little excursions with Uncle Will or Ellen and Mr Turner, or Elijah as he keeps telling me I must call him now I am well over thirteen and a man of business!

  I still think from time to time of our encounter with Ned Kelly, not only that fateful day, but the others, when we didn’t know who he was, and it feels almost like it happened to someone else. If I did not have the evidence of this diary I would scarcely believe it even now. Here in Melbourne people see the ‘Kelly Outbreak’, as they call it, as simply a sensational story serialised in the newspapers, and their ideas about the outlaws and their families and friends are the ones that are given to them in the press. And the press mostly gives no quarter to the Kellys or their supporters. People might imagine what they would do if they came across the outlaws unexpectedly. They can imagine sensational scenes and outlandish outcomes. But for Ellen and me it is very different. Our encounters with Ned Kelly and Joe Byrne and the others were both ordinary and, in hindsight, so very strange. And when you have met someone in the flesh and looked into their eyes and spoken with them, it is impossible to think about them in the same way as someone who has only read about them and imagines they know them that way.

  At the office I keep quiet when talk turns to the Kelly gang and how they continue to elude the police, but I still read every scrap of information there is published on the topic. And they can be very tiny scraps indeed—people are so avid for news of it all that they will print almost anything that might be related. Like for instance several farmers reporting the theft of mouldboards in the region of Glenrowan and Greta. Investigations by Benalla police seemed to indicate that the Kelly gang or their associates were responsible for the thefts, though why on earth the Kellys would be going around stealing mouldboards is anyone’s guess! They are hardly about to become selectors again and go ploughing land, are they? Sam says mouldboards are made of steel and maybe they need steel for something. But what?

  April 24

  A report today about the unveiling of the new police memorial at Mansfield two days ago. It was attended by a large crowd, including the families of the murdered men, and the Chief Commissioner of Police, Captain Standish, gave a speech which praised the bravery and dedication of Sergeant Kennedy, Constable Scanlon, and Constable Lonigan, and described the Kellys as cowardly assassins. The paper recorded the inscription on the memorial, which reads, To the memory of three brave men who lost their lives while endeavouring to capture a band of armed criminals in the Wombat Ranges near Mansfield, 26th October 1878.

  Reading it brings it all home to me again. I think of the enduring grief of the policemen’s families, and the anger of their colleagues and the outrage of society, demanding that the gang be brought to justice. Then I think of Ned Kelly in the bush, haunted by memories, demanding justice of his own … but caught in a trap from which there was surely no escape. I cannot keep it in my mind too long. It is all too difficult to think about, even harder to make up my mind.

  May 22

  A rather unpleasant episode today. Elijah Turner came to visit us this morning and, as it is Saturday, we went on a walk by the river. He was very low in spirits. He says newspapers in Victoria are crooks and shysters and try any means possible not to pay a man properly. There was no work at The Age, though Sam did ask. His book project has fallen through as well—that is to say, he has not started it and it sounds as though he has lost interest in it. I am beginning to suspect that, just as Ellen said some time ago, Elijah Turner talks a good deal but does not do enough to make his dreams happen. He is not a very steady sort of man.

  He was talking of heading to another colony to try his luck, or maybe even back to the States. Ellen and I tried to cheer him up, but he was determined to be gloomy and kept repeating that unless he found some sensational gem of a story and soon, he was done for. And then it emerged that he had indeed been gambling—though not on the cards, but betting on horse-races! And there he’d lost the little bit of money he did have.

  Then he said sadly that if only we three had managed to do what we planned and capture Ned Kelly in words and pictures then all our troubles would be over—well, his would be anyway, we seemed to have fallen on our feet. Ellen an
d I looked at each other and Elijah saw it and asked us quite sharply what was the matter, were we hiding anything from him. Ellen said, no, no, but Elijah persisted. He went on and on about it till finally Ellen cracked and admitted the truth, binding him to strict and utter secrecy. When she finished by saying there was no way in the world we could use the photo and explained the reasons why, he blew up like a volcano. Why hadn’t we told him before? We knew how much he needed a break, he raged. How could we just leave him in the lurch? We knew he’d twice tried to get information from the Kelly girls and been rebuffed; how could we be so cruel as to hide this scoop from him?

  It was our turn to be aghast. This was a bullying side of Elijah Turner we had never suspected. And it also showed he had lied to us. Despite his denials, he had been to see the Kelly girls twice, once before and once after we’d been, and both times made things very awkward for us. But it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d told us the truth. Ellen tried to say something like that, but he was so angry that I could only think that his recent troubles had turned his brain. At last Ellen snapped that it was very unfair of him to talk in that way, the whole thing had happened by pure chance. We’d done nothing with the photo. We hadn’t profited from it at all. And as to trusting him, weren’t we doing that right now? We’d told no-one else, only him. Though we had no reason to, knowing what we knew now, about how he had lied to us.