As he pondered the problem, a high distant sound penetrated his consciousness and his eyes automatically flicked to the clock. It was the 2:15 train, pulling into Glenrowan half an hour late as usual.
He’d been pleased when the North East line had been extended to Wangaratta back in 1873, making it far easier for him to obtain the instruments, materials, and few comforts he required from overseas, but its whistle also served as a daily reminder of the life he’d left behind in England. He’d had his successes there, to be sure—a few tunnels and trestles he’d designed had been entirely satisfactory to himself and his creditors—but his constant, overweening ambition had not been satisfied, had always stretched for faster, bigger, better, more. In the end it had brought him nothing but failure, disgrace, and heartbreak.
But there had been a joy in engineering—the eternal duel between weight and power, the combat with recalcitrant materials, the exaltation of victory over an obstinate technical conundrum. And when the pieces did fit together, when the ship that he, by God, had designed actually floated, or the engine moved, the speed and power of it had made him laugh like a schoolboy.
Power.
Steam power. That was the ticket.
It was the only way.
Dual pistons would be required on each leg. Lift assist of some sort on the arms. The weight of the boiler would be a serious problem, and the heat.
But it could work. It could work, damn it!
Grinning, he swept the drafting table clean and brought out a fresh sheet of vellum.
“Try it now.”
Ned moved his left leg forward. Through the rat’s nest of rods, tubes, and cables that formed the prototype leg control assembly, Ike observed Ned’s knee and ankle as they contacted the actuation levers. Steam hissed and the framework lurched forward to match Ned’s motion. “Still kind of touchy.”
“Hmm.” Ike selected an extra-long screwdriver from his tool chest and tweaked one of the verniers. “Again.”
This time the framework matched the motions of Ned’s leg perfectly. Ike stood back, arms folded, watching it move and visualizing the armour plating that would cover it. The back of the knee would be tricky.
“This is quite a piece of kit,” Ned admitted. “You gonna get a patent on it?”
“Patents?” Ike scoffed. “I’ve never taken out a one. They are supposed to encourage innovation in the useful arts, but in reality they smother innovation in the cradle!”
Ned raised his hands against Ike’s vehemence. “Sorry I mentioned it.”
Later, after being unbuckled from the prototype, Ned wiped his brow with a bandana. “So how does a toff like you wind up in the Wombat Ranges anyway?”
It was a very good question. Ike looked past him, staring through the wall, ten thousand miles of desert and ocean, and twenty years. “Failure.”
Ned snorted. “I can’t credit that. Look at all this kit.” He gestured at the expensive imported tools and machinery that filled the shack. “I doubt you’ve ever spent a day hungry, never mind in gaol.”
Ike returned his focus to Ned, realizing that the gulf between them was nearly as large as the distance he’d just been contemplating. “That’s true. But I failed at my chosen profession—failed repeatedly and disastrously, all due to my own ambition and pride. The tunnel under the Thames…the atmospheric railway…the broad-gauge locomotive…they were all the best possible designs, in theory, but every one of them met calamity in execution. And then, worst and last, that damnable steamship of mine.” The tidy, cluttered shack faded from Ike’s sight, replaced by memories of great chains and hydraulic rams. “She should have been my triumph. The greatest ship ever built! But it took us over a year just to launch her. And then, on her very first foray into the Channel…” He shook his head. “Explosion. Disaster. Death.” He looked Ned in the eyes. “She broke my heart, sir, and ruined my health. It was my own dear wife who suggested I pretend death and flee the country, to escape the professional and financial catastrophe that would surely follow.”
Ned regarded Ike contemplatively. “You said all them locomotives and steamships and what-all was the best possible designs. Did you build ’em yourself?”
“No, of course not. There were technicians, labourers…hundreds of workmen.”
Ned nodded, a decisive little jerk of his chin. “So then. You and I, we’re not so far off each other. We’ve both been victimized by the errors of lesser men.”
“I wouldn’t say that I’ve—”
“You were let down by your workmen,” Ned insisted, “while I—ever since I was fourteen years of age, and due to no fault whatsoever of my own—have been chased and hounded by a parcel of big, ugly, fat-necked, wombat-headed, big-bellied, magpie-legged, narrow-hipped, splay-footed sons of Irish bailiffs or English landlords which is better known as officers of Justice or Victorian Police, who some calls honest gentlemen!”
At this vehement outburst Ike could do no more than gape.
“The difference between us,” Ned went on, “is that you chose to run from your tormentors, whereas I choose to fight.” He leaned in close, his breath hot and sour and foul. “And with the armour you’re building me, I’m going to win.”
The work went slowly, endless rounds of design and test and fittings peppered with interruptions and arguments.
The biggest argument came on the twenty-second of June, after Ike finally had to admit that there would not be sufficient time or materials to produce more than one set of armour. For hour after screaming hour he feared that at any moment his head would be blown off his shoulders, but in the end even Steve, the youngest and most hot-headed of the gang, was forced to concede that building four full sets of the complex armour was not humanly possible.
But even with his workload reduced by three-fourths, Ike’s task was still hideously daunting. Day after struggling day, night after sleepless night, he dragged and pounded and forged and bent an endless pile of stolen iron mould-boards, until his eyes were red and his white muttonchop whiskers had gone entirely black with soot. The gang helped out with the lifting and hauling, but all of the design and fine work was Ike’s.
Three complete boilers were built, found wanting, and discarded. Every time Ike thought he’d steered a safe course between the Scylla and Charybdis of power and weight, he realized that the boiler would either weigh so much that the armour would never budge, or would burst asunder under pressure as that damnable steamship had done. In the end he found a solution, involving reinforcing bands of chromium steel, that seemed satisfactory…though distressingly close to the material’s tolerances.
Finally, just before dawn on June twenty-sixth, the thing was done.
It had long before grown too large to be accommodated inside Ike’s shack, and he had moved his workspace to the yard behind it. Ike had been working by the light of a windproof lantern, but as he tightened the last bolt and stepped back to inspect his work he found that it was no longer necessary and snuffed it out.
The rising sun traced the edges of the armour’s riveted plates, outlining its black manlike shape with a tracery of glowing orange. It stood over eight feet high. Each leg was big around as a tree trunk—a proper English tree, not the stunted wrist-thick mallees of the Wombat Ranges—and the torso bulked as large as a butt wine cask. Within that giant shell lay the pistons and rods that drove the legs and arms, great quantities of wool padding to insulate the operator from the heat and motion of the mechanisms, and of course the operator himself. Operator was the term Ike preferred, not wearer as Ned insisted—though Ike had carefully positioned the control levers so that the natural motions of the operator’s legs would cause the suit to walk, the suit’s occupant would also be required to constantly direct, adjust, and monitor its workings.
The helmet was the only thing about it that resembled Ned’s original sketch, a bucket shape with a horizontal eye slit.
Twin smokestacks rose above the shoulders.
It weighed over three thousand pounds.
It was a thing of beauty.
Breast swelling with pride, Ike lay his abraded and blackened hand on the armour’s side—it was as high as he could reach—cleared his throat, and spoke. “I dub thee…Goliath.”
A sharp sound from behind Ike made him whirl in surprise. Ned stood there—had apparently been there for some time—and was applauding, slow measured claps. “Well done, mate,” he said, and stepped forward to slap Ike on the back. “Well done. But it could be even better.”
From his duster pocket he drew one of his revolvers, and fitted it into the armour’s right hand. Sunlight gleamed greasily on the pistol’s barrel.
“Now we’re all set for tomorrow’s festivities.”
Ike felt sick at heart.
“Feed valve for the left leg’s here,” Ike reminded, pointing. “Right leg here. Arms, here and here. Relief valve’s here; don’t adjust it unless I tell you to.” The sweat-stink of Ned’s body fought in Ike’s nostrils with the tang of hot iron and the greasy kerosene smell of the naphtha-powered boiler as he leaned in to tighten the strap across Ned’s chest. Even with the chest plate open the heat was nearly intolerable. “Do you understand?”
“Feed. Legs. Arms. Relief.” Ned touched each valve in turn. “Right. All sorted. Close me up.”
Ike closed and dogged the chest plate shut and stepped back. He could see only darkness through the slit in the helmet. “Can you see?”
In reply Ned raised the armour’s arm—the mechanisms hissing and groaning as steam shrieked from the shoulder and elbow joints—aimed the pistol over Ike’s head, and fired. A moment later came a tearing crack and a shiver of leaves as a limb fell from a nearby mallee-tree. A flock of pink galahs burst into the air, chirping their distress.
“Well enough,” Ned said, his voice echoing and metallic. “Now let’s get to work.”
It was the morning of Sunday, the twenty-seventh of June. On the previous day they’d hauled the disassembled armour, in two wagons, down the hill to the outskirts of the little town of Glenrowan and made camp there. All was in readiness for whatever the gang had been planning for so many months.
Smoking and spewing steam from every joint, Goliath jolted down the hill toward town, shaking the ground with every step. The other three gang members followed, dragging Ike along “in case anything should happen to go wrong.”
He didn’t know if he was intended as engineer or hostage. Perhaps both.
Glenrowan was little more than a loose assemblage of buildings and tents surrounding a railway station, with a population of perhaps seventy. Dan, Joe, and Steve fanned out through the town, rousting the populace from their homes and businesses, while Ned, inside Goliath, stomped toward the tiny train station, which also served as post and telegraph office. “Don’t you dare get out of my sight,” Ned growled, and Ike followed him.
One blow of Goliath’s iron fist shattered the telegraph office door into flinders. “You inside!” Ned roared, pointing his revolver into the office. “Telegraph man! Come out, and bring your pad and pencil!”
The postmaster, a slim sandy-haired gentleman, soon emerged, holding the requested items high in his trembling hands.
“Take this down and send it to all the newspapers,” Ned said, his voice booming metallically. “Let it be known to all and sundry that I, Ned Kelly, together with my compatriots, have bailed up and taken hostage the entire populace of Glenrowan. The Felons’ Apprehension Act of 1878 having expired on June the twenty-sixth, we are no longer outlaws, and therefore the common people may aid and abet us without fear of government reprisal.” Ike blinked up at Ned, the fierce sun haloing his cylindrical helmet. So that was why he had been so insistent that the armour be completed by this day! “We invite all people seeking innocence, justice and liberty to join us here. Today, June the Twenty-Seventh of the Year of Our Lord Eighteen-Eighty, marks the birth of the Republic of North-Eastern Victoria!”
After Ned’s proclamation had been copied down, repeated back, and transmitted to his satisfaction, he clomped around to the side of the station, straightened the armour to its full height, reached up one mighty arm, and wrenched the telegraph wires down from the wall.
But that act of destruction wasn’t enough. Ned clanked out onto the railroad track, walking several hundred yards toward Melbourne. Then Goliath bent down, grasped one of the rails in its vice-like hands, and—groaning and with steam shrieking—straightened up.
The rail cried out as it was torn from its bed, bending into a useless twist of metal. Its sibling rail protested its demise equally loudly and with equally little effect.
Ike had spent most of his engineering career building railroads. The inevitable consequence of this vandalism was as clear in his mind as if he’d already witnessed it with his own eyes. The next train to arrive would come barrelling around the curve at full speed, slam into the damaged section, and tumble off the tracks in a shower of sparks and flying metal. Everyone on the train would surely be killed.
Ned walked back to town and brought Goliath to a halt near the shattered telegraph office. Then the chest plate clanged open. “Now we wait,” Ned said as he emerged, running with sweat. “They’ll send a train full of constables to hunt us down like dogs. But they’ll find a bit of a surprise when they arrive.” He gestured to the torn-up track, his face set in a hideous leering grin. “It’ll be spectacular.”
Ike gulped. This was monstrous. What had seemed at first little more than an interesting engineering problem had turned into insurrection, treason, and slaughter, and now he was right in the middle of it.
He had to find some way to warn the officers that they were speeding into an ambush. But how?
The gang herded the population into the Glenrowan Inn, a wood-framed pub and hostelry that was the settlement’s largest structure. Many of the townspeople were Kelly supporters, and the occupation had more the mood of a celebration than a siege, with dancing, card playing, and drinking.
Ned left the armour standing where it was, hidden behind the station from the view of any inbound train, with a low flame under the boiler to keep it ready for action. One member of the gang stood watch over it at all times, which incidentally prevented Ike from approaching the station in search of some means to signal the train.
Ike was pacing behind the bar when Steve came in from guard duty. “Hey, brainbox,” he said. “It’s stopped making that noise, and it’s gone all cold. Is something wrong?”
“I’ll have a look,” Ike said. “I’ll need my tool chest.”
Staggering with the weight of the heavy chest, Ike allowed Steve to chivvy him along to the armour, which stood beside the station like a triumphal statue to a battle that had not yet occurred. No hint of smoke rose from the stacks; plainly the naphtha flame had simply run out of fuel.
“Get to it, brainbox,” Steve said, gesturing sharply with his pistol. He fidgeted nervously, bouncing on his toes.
Then Ike spotted the telegraph cable’s broken end, lying in the dirt a few paces away, and a plan began to formulate itself in his mind.
“Looks like a framulated wazigummit,” he said aloud. “Might be a bit.”
Ike puttered industriously and pointlessly for long minutes, keeping an eye on Steve and an ear out for the oncoming train. Steve grew increasingly agitated, shifting from foot to foot, and Ike feared the bushranger’s patience was wearing thin. But then a miracle occurred. “Gotta visit the dunny,” Steve said, backing away around the corner of the station. “Don’t you dare break nothing.”
As soon as he heard the sound of pattering liquid, Ike set his plan into motion. Grabbing a small electrical battery from his tool chest, he scuttled to the point where the broken telegraph cable’s catenary curve lay tangent to the ground. Twisting one of the exposed wires onto one battery terminal, he touched the other wire to the other terminal in a rapid series of Morse code pulses: TRACKS TORN UP IN GLENROWAN STOP NED KELLY HAS ARMOUR STOP USE ALL CAUTION STOP.
Just as he finished the message, Ike realized the
sound of Steve’s urine had already stopped. Slipping the battery into his coat pocket, he hurried back to Goliath’s side, arriving just as Steve returned. “Found the problem,” he gasped.
Steve looked up from buttoning his trousers. “What’s wrong? You’re all flushed.”
“Just the excitement of a difficult engineering problem.” He struggled to calm himself as he filled the armour’s fuel reservoir and lit the pilot light.
Soon the boiler was rumbling to itself as it had before, and Steve herded him back inside. As he lugged the heavy tool chest along, Ike wondered whether he should have tried to sabotage the armour somehow as well as warning the police about the torn-up track.
But as soon as they arrived at the inn, Ned got up and left to check on the armour, giving Ike a penetrating look as he passed. He had worked so closely with Ike on Goliath’s development that he would know immediately if anything were wrong. And if Ned even suspected Ike of shady dealings, or if the armour suddenly malfunctioned…one word to his gang would put a bullet through Ike’s head.
No, sabotage was out.
All Ike could do now was hope that someone in authority had received his message and would believe it.
Hours passed. The sun set. The card-playing and dancing grew desultory and then ground to a halt. Many people bedded down in corners, laid low by drink or by simple exhaustion. Only a few remained seated at the table, including Ike and the four members of the gang, sitting quietly and drinking cold billy tea.
At two o’clock in the morning, Ned finally gave in. “All right, everyone,” he called out. “You can all go home. No excitement tonight. But I want all of you to remember one thing—”
But no one would ever know what Ned wanted. He was interrupted by the distant cry of a train whistle.
The gang immediately roused themselves, smiling and slapping each other’s shoulders, joking about how they would pick off any constables who survived the crash “like stomping ants as they scurry from a crushed ant-hill.” Ned then ran to the armour and strapped himself in. Even as he closed the chest-plate, Ike heard the boiler coming up to full pressure.
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