Black Snake

by Carole Wilkinson

  Contents

  Cover

  Blurb

  Logo

  Map of Kelly Country

  Introduction

  Wild Colonial Boy

  Horse Business

  One Stray Bullet

  Enemies of Society

  Blunderers, Fools and Cowards

  A Perfect Plan

  The Kelly Gang Strikes Again

  Disappearing Outlaws

  Taken Alive

  Silenced

  Timeline

  Acknowledgements

  Internet Sites

  Sources

  About The Author

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Other Books by Carole Wilkinson

  “Everyone looks on me like a black snake.”

  Letter to Sergeant Babington, July 1870

  Ned Kelly was a thief, a bank robber and a murderer. He was in trouble with the law from the age of 12. He stole hundreds of horses and cattle. He robbed two banks. He killed three men. Yet, when Ned was sentenced to death, thousands of people rallied to save his life. He stood up to the authorities and fought for what he believed in. He defended the rights of people who had no power.

  Was he a villain? Or a hero?

  What do you think?

  The area where the Kellys operated is known today, as it was at the time of the outbreak, as Kelly Country. Kelly Country is the area of North Eastern Victoria from Euroa in the west to Beechworth in the east, from Mansfield in the south to the Murray River in the north.

  1. Introduction

  Ned Kelly was a horse and cattle thief, a bank robber and a murderer. He was in trouble with the law from the age of 12. He spent three years in jail before he turned 20. By his own admission, he stole hundreds of horses and cattle. He robbed two banks. He killed three men.

  When he was hanged in 1880, his story refused to be buried with him. Now, more than 100 years after his death, interest in the man and his story is as strong as it has ever been. Hundreds of books have been written about him. Films have been made. Famous artists have used Ned as a subject.

  This fascination with Ned isn’t a modern phenomenon. When he was sentenced to death, people rallied to save Ned’s life. Alongside his family and legal representatives, thousands of ordinary people joined in the fight for his survival. A petition to reprieve him collected 32,000 signatures in just five days.

  Why are we fascinated with this criminal? What is it about Ned Kelly that makes him so interesting? Why is he one of the most famous Australians of all time?

  Photo from Ned’s prison report sheet

  2. Wild Colonial Boy

  What if you were there...

  The Irish are all the same. A bunch of brawling thieves. And don’t tell me I’ve got no right to say that. I should know, I live among a great brood of them—the Kellys and their relations the Quinns and the Lloyds. I’m no squatter. I’ve worked hard all my life. I’ve paid for my land, all 250 acres of it, with the sweat off my brow. No one could call me rich, but compared to the Kelly clan I’m a wealthy man. They live in ramshackle huts, whole families in one room like herds of animals.

  Old Mr Quinn’s not a bad bloke, but his sons are a pack of louts. Nothing’s safe. I have to keep my eyes on my few horses day and night, for fear of them disappearing. The women aren’t much better than the men. You couldn’t call them ladies. They scream abuse at you if you so much as look at them and they seem to marry fellows even worse than their brothers. I don’t know what’s to become of this colony if these are the sort of people who are allowed to settle. I’d rather have the convicts. Most of them have had the flashness knocked out of them by the time they’re freed.

  I thought Red Kelly might make something of himself, but he didn’t. He turned to drink, God rest his soul. Now his wife and children are left to fend for themselves. The boys are always in trouble. If they’re not stealing chickens, they’re “borrowing” horses which they ride around, jumping fences and creeks. Sometimes the owners find the horses back in their paddocks a week or two later, exhausted and in need of being reshod. Sometimes they never see them again.

  One of my horses went missing the week before last. A fine black mare with a flash on her head shaped like a diamond. I’d sent one of the farmhands over to the Quinns’ and the Kellys’ to scout around and see if he could find the horse, but there was no sign of her. I even told him to offer a reward for her return. But they were all playing dumb. I thought I’d seen the last of her.

  Then the oldest of the Kelly boys came up to the house today. Ned, I think his name is. There he was with his hat pushed back on his head wearing a patched shirt and boots three sizes too big for him. He’d obviously just combed his hair for the visit. He has these dark penetrating eyes—I felt like he was seeing right into me, reading my thoughts. He was holding my mare.

  “I found this horse wandering up in the Strathbogie Ranges,” he said, those eyes now wide and innocent. “I thought she might be the one that you lost.”

  It was my horse all right. Even if she didn’t have my brand on it, I would have recognised the white mark on her head anywhere. The lad was stroking the animal’s head as he spoke. The horse, which is a nervous beast, was nuzzling his hand like she’d known him all her life. There was no way in the world that horse had been living wild in the bush for two weeks. It had been well fed and groomed as well. The lad had obviously stolen her. Sure enough. What did he say next?

  “I’ll be entitled to the reward then. What was it? Fifteen shillings?” Bold as brass even though he can’t be any older than 12.

  “You get outta my sight before I tan your hide,” I told him.

  I can’t repeat the foul mouthful I got in return.

  Still, the horse is in better condition than when it went missing. The boy obviously knows a bit about horses. Pity he can’t put it to better use, but with his father gone and no one to guide him but his larrikin uncles, I can’t see him making anything of himself.

  Jacob Barker, selector

  Early Days

  “Everyone looks on me like a black snake.”

  Letter to Sergeant Babington, July 1870

  Ned Kelly was born in 1854 in the bush not far north of Melbourne. His father was called Red because of his red hair. He was a freed Irish convict, who had served his seven-year sentence in the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land (present day Tasmania) for stealing two pigs. Ned’s mother, Ellen, was also Irish. Her large family, the Quinns, had emigrated to Australia when she was just nine years old.

  The Kellys were poor people, but Red made a little money in the goldfields and was able to buy 41 acres of land near the small town of Beveridge. The family grew, and for a while it looked like the Kellys were on their way to being successful farmers. This period of good fortune didn’t last long. Ned’s father had no experience as a farmer. The conditions in Victoria, from drought to flood, were unfamiliar to even experienced farmers. Beveridge didn’t flourish as expected. The road to Sydney skirted around the town, instead of going through it and bringing more business. The Kelly land lost value. Before Ned’s third birthday, his father got into debt and had to sell most of the land for half its original price. Things didn’t improve.

  Selectors versus Squatters

  When Ned was 12 years old his father died. A widow with seven children could not afford to buy land, but Ned’s mother was determined that the family would have land of their own. She didn’t want them to be like poor tenant farmers in Ireland, under the thumb of some rich English landowner. The government had a way for poor people to buy land. It was called selection. A family would “select” a piece of land from allotments in unsettled areas and pay rent on it. If they paid their rent regularly for around seven years and looked after the land,
doing what the government called “improvements”, the land would become theirs. The improvements involved building homes and other farm buildings, clearing areas of bush to make fields and putting up fences.

  It was a hard life. To survive, the selectors grew wheat and vegetables and kept cattle. They had to produce enough to feed themselves and earn enough to pay rent and do the required improvements on the land. This could be achieved with a lot of hard work when the conditions were right, but that wasn’t always the case. There were seasons when there was no rain and the crops died. There were bushfires that could destroy years of hard work in one afternoon. The government wanted the selectors to grow wheat, but often the land wasn’t good to start off with and was unsuited to wheat growing.

  The best land, vast areas of it, was owned by the squatters. Today we call someone who lives illegally in a house a squatter. At the beginning of white settlement in the 1800s, squatters were men who claimed thousands of hectares of rural land in New South Wales and then in Victoria. They legally took whatever land they wanted. Even though the rich squatters had the biggest and the best pieces of land, they were unhappy about the government allowing poor people to take up selections. If any cattle belonging to selectors wandered onto squatters’ land, they impounded it and the selectors had to pay to get their own stock back. The selectors resented the squatters who had got the best land for nothing.

  “Whitty and Burns, not being satisfied with all the picked land on King River and Boggy Creek…paid heavy rent for all the open ground, so as a poor man could not keep his stock, and impounded every beast they could catch, even off Government roads.”

  Ned’s complaints against squatters, Cameron Letter, December 1878

  Head of the Family

  Ned’s mother selected a piece of land near the town of Greta on the Eleven Mile Creek. Ned had to work hard on his family’s land, cutting down trees, digging out stumps, making fences. Ned wasn’t the eldest child in the family, but he was the eldest son. After his father’s death, he became the head of the family. As role models he had his uncles and cousins. If they taught Ned anything, it wasn’t how to be an honest law-abiding citizen. A dozen of his relatives had criminal records. Between them they were arrested more than 60 times in Ned’s lifetime. There was always one of Ned’s relatives in jail for something.

  Ned had his first brush with the police in 1867, just after his father died. A neighbour claimed Ned had stolen his horse and reported the theft to the police. Though it was noted in the Police Gazette, fortunately for Ned, the charge was dropped and nothing came of it.

  Local Hero

  Other local people suspected that Ned had stolen horses from them, including a family called the Sheltons. But Ned did something that made this family forget about their missing horse and remember Ned with gratitude. Their young son, Dick, was walking to school one day when he fell into the river. Eleven-year-old Ned happened to be passing by and jumped into the river to rescue the drowning lad. The grateful Sheltons praised Ned’s bravery and gave him a strange reward. It was a specially made green silk sash, seven feet long and trimmed with a fringe made of real gold threads. It was meant to be worn over one shoulder. Ned was very proud of his sash and wore it on special occasions.

  Horseplay

  As Ned grew up, he developed a love of horses. Dressed in moleskin pants and high leather boots, Ned found time between his farm chores to become an excellent horseman. He liked to show off his riding skills by riding down the main street of Greta on unbroken horses. The residents of Greta stood back in fear as the wild horses tried unsuccessfully to buck him off.

  There was not much in the way of entertainment in small country towns in the 1870s. Community picnics and sports meetings were occasions that everyone looked forward to. People came from miles around to attend. At these events, Ned performed demonstrations of trick riding. On a galloping horse he would lean down out of his saddle to snatch up a handkerchief from the ground. He would also kneel on the horse’s back as it leapt over fences at lightning speed.

  Further Education

  Ned had unusual eyes. A policeman once said that he had “dingo eyes”. A doctor who tended to Ned said he had what was known as “Alexandrite” eyes. When people with Alexandrite eyes become angry or excited they glow red.

  Ned went to school for less than two years. He must have been a bright boy because in that time he managed to learn how to read, write and do basic arithmetic. When Ned was ten, his father spent six months in jail for stealing a cow. Ned left school to take his father’s place on the farm. That was the end of his schooling, but not the end of his education.

  Four years later, Ned became an apprentice. Not as you might expect to a builder or a stockman, but to a bushranger. Harry Power wasn’t a very impressive looking bushranger. He was short, middle-aged, bad-tempered and he had problems with his bowels. He wasn’t very successful either. He had quite a talent for getting caught by the police. Harry spent 32 years in jail—almost half his life.

  Juvenile Bushranger

  The bushranger and his young assistant specialised in highway robbery. They would hide in the Strathbogie Ranges and suddenly appear on the road-side, pointing guns at unsuspecting travellers and demanding their money and valuables. They didn’t earn a fortune, but £10 here, a gold watch there and the occasional good quality saddle made it worth their while.

  Ned’s mother didn’t object to her son becoming a bushranger. She probably looked forward to getting Ned’s cut of the spoils. Mrs Kelly made money illegally herself, by selling alcohol to passing travellers. Ned didn’t like the life of a bushranger though. Sleeping outside in all kinds of weather, eating poorly and putting up with Harry’s bad moods wasn’t much fun. After just a few months as an apprentice bushranger, Ned left Harry and went back home. He had become known as Power’s apprentice though and troopers arrived to arrest him early the next morning.

  Young Ned spent several weeks in jail but was released without going to trial. Harry was caught after Ned’s release, and believed that Ned had told the police where his hideout was. It wasn’t Ned who got the £500 reward for Harry’s capture though, it was one of Ned’s uncles.

  Out of Luck

  Ned was lucky that neither of his early brushes with the law had led to him going to prison. But it wasn’t long before he ended up in jail. He got caught up in an ugly argument between two hawkers (people who travelled around the countryside selling goods to farmers). They exchanged insults, and then punches. Ned was drawn into a fight that had nothing to do with him.

  It wasn’t a serious crime, but this time his luck ran out. Ned claimed he was innocent but he was charged with “violent assault”. His sentence was to pay a fine of £10 plus an additional sum of £60 as a bond that he would not get into trouble again. This doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but in 1869 £50 was as much as a labouring man would earn in a year. Ned’s family managed to scrape together the £60, but couldn’t find the other £10. Instead of paying the fine, Ned had to serve six months in jail. He was 15 years old.

  Ned, aged 15, taken when he first went to prison.

  3. Horse Business

  What if you were there...

  I was on my way to Greta yesterday driving my hawker’s wagon. Young Ned Kelly rode up beside me looking very pleased with himself. He was astride a beautiful chestnut mare.

  “I just had a bit of a holiday in Wangaratta,” he told me, even though I didn’t ask.

  “That’s a nice piece of horse flesh you’ve got there,” I said.

  “She’s not mine,” he said, regretfully patting the horse. “She belongs to a friend of my mother’s.”

  “And what’s this fine horse’s name?” I asked.

  “He didn’t have a name for her, but I call her Lady. I’ll be sorry to give her back. We cut quite a flash in Wangaratta, Lady and me. There she was, strutting down the main street. When we did a bit of trick riding, it was like we’d been doing it for years. She was as gentle as a lamb when th
e publican’s daughters rode her, but every now and then she’d shake her head and rear up a bit, just to give them a thrill.”

  The boy sighed. “Now it’s back to splitting fence posts.”

  As we rode over the bridge into Greta, Constable Hall waved Ned over. Hall’s a big, fat tub of lard with a fearful temper. Ned didn’t seem to like him any more than I do. “Morning, Senior Constable,” he said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

  “Can you just come over to the station for a minute, Ned?” asked the constable cheerily. “There’s a few more papers just arrived that you have to sign.”

  I pulled up outside the hotel. Ned gave me a long-suffering look and rode over to the police station. The lad’s not long out of jail and still on a bond to keep the peace. He wouldn’t want to upset the police. He was about to dismount when Hall grabbed hold of his jacket.

  “I’m arresting you,” Hall shouted, “for stealing this horse.”

  Ned pulled away from him. There was a rip as his jacket tore. The fat constable made another grab at Ned. Ned allowed himself to be pulled off the horse and the constable fell on his back in the dust with Ned on top of him. The mare reared up. As soon as her hooves hit the ground again, she started galloping away. Ned, caring more about the horse than the policeman, got up to run after her. He’d only taken two steps when Hall called out to him.

  “Stop where you are,” he shouted, “or I’ll have the pleasure of shooting you dead.”

  Ned turned on his heels and found Hall’s revolver in his face. Hall was sweating with the exertion of getting up so quickly. Ned was bristling with anger. After all, the lad had only just got out of jail and the pigs were already trying to lag him again.

  “Shoot and be damned,” Ned shouted.

  Hall pulled the trigger. The gun was aimed right at Ned’s head not four foot away. Even clumsy Hall couldn’t miss from that distance. I was only a few feet away myself. I heard the crack as the gun fired, saw a plume of smoke rising. Ned didn’t move a muscle. No doubt he thought he’d seen his last. But the gun had misfired. Ned was frozen to the spot. Hall moved towards him. He pulled the trigger again—and again. The gun misfired for a second and then a third time.