Why I chose to reveal the true heroes of the Ned Kelly saga

The man behind a new investigation into Ned Kelly’s crimes and capture has lifted the lid on one of Australian history’s most divisive characters.

We know how the Ned Kelly story ends, but we can’t stop going back to it. Today biographer GRANTLEE KIEZA reveals why he is retelling it from another angle – that of the Kelly Hunters.

‘A divisive character’ … Ned Kelly, pictured before his execution in 1880.

The biggest manhunt in Australian history was sparked just before dawn outside a policeman’s small house in the hamlet of Mansfield, at the foot of the Victorian Alps. It was October 25, 1878.

Ned Kelly, a young criminal who ran a major horse and cattle stealing gang, had been accused of wounding a policeman sent to arrest Kelly’s brother.

For the next two years Kelly would shoot his way into Australian folklore, a divisive character idolised by some as Australia’s ultimate anti-authoritarian larrikin, and demonised by others as a vicious murderer, our first homegrown terrorist who planned to derail a police train and kill everyone who survived the crash.

The Kelly story has intrigued me since boyhood when, growing up in Victoria, my family would take country drives through so many of the Victorian towns connected with Australia’s own “Wild West” – Glenrowan, Greta, Euroa, Wangaratta, Benalla, and to Mansfield – where three shining white tombstones and a monument in the middle of the town honour the brave policemen who died trying to catch Kelly and his gang.

Ready for a life of crime … the first known photo of a much younger Ned Kelly, aged 15.

For more than 140 years since he was hanged in Melbourne, Kelly has become a romanticised figure – the dashing, daring outlaw, who wearing his suit of iron armour, took on a swarm of lawmen in a last defiant stand.

But I wanted to tell the real story of the police pursuit of Ned Kelly, how over its course it came to involve more than 200 mostly poorly paid policemen camping out for weeks on end in the freezing Victorian high country looking for a criminal gang who would likely kill them on sight.

I also wanted to tell the story of Stanhope O’Connor and his Queensland Native Mounted Police, who accused of leading a massacre of Indigenous people near Cooktown in 1879, arrived in Kelly country soon after, to harass the bushrangers into making fatal mistakes.

In the course of researching this book I met many of Ned Kelly’s relatives, and also relatives of men who hunted him.

Last stand … an illustration of Ned Kelly in his homemade armour shortly before his capture.

I met direct descendants of Ned Kelly’s mother, and people, who as children in the 1940s, had known Ned Kelly’s aged brother, Big Jim Kelly.

The Kelly story is such an important piece of fabric in the rich tapestry of Australian history, and the true story of the police courage and dedication to duty deserves to be told. The police are the true heroes in the Ned Kelly saga.

COP KILLINGS: THE DAY NED KELLY TURNED FROM THUG TO MURDERER

Just before dawn on October 25, 1878, outside the Mansfield home of a hardworking, popular, and honest cop named Sergeant Michael Kennedy, Constables Thomas Lonigan, Michael Scanlan and Thomas McIntyre waited for him in the dark with their horses.

They had been tasked with riding into nearby mountains to arrest Kelly and his dangerous young brother Dan over the wounding of a policeman.

His fears were realised … the grave of Constable Thomas Lonigan, one of the policemen killed by the Kelly Gang at Stringybark Creek.

Lonigan had said goodbye to his pregnant wife and their four children. Taciturn, with a propensity for violence, Lonigan also had a soft underbelly. After he had farewelled his babies they had started to weep, and Lonigan was so affected by their tears that after riding for a couple of miles the renowned walloper wheeled his horse around and galloped home as quickly as he could to kiss them one last time. He told friends that he was afraid he wouldn’t return from the mountains alive, but that he was “resolved to go” wherever he was ordered.

Before bachelor Constable Scanlan had left home and his beloved retriever two days earlier, he had told a mate “Look after my dog in case I don’t come back.”

The night had been frosty and that morning, with the sun still not risen, Kennedy gathered his pregnant wife and their five children around him.

New look at a legendary tale … The Kelly Hunters by Grantlee Kieza.

The Kelly brothers had declared they would not be taken alive and Kennedy’s family despaired at the prospect of losing him.

Being a country policeman meant long hours for low pay and constant danger. But someone had to do it, and as the sun was coming up over Mansfield, Kennedy climbed onto his horse and together the four brave lawmen, fearing the worst, rode off towards a place in the high country called Stringybark Creek.

The next day three of them were dead. Read how that happened here.

Soon, more than 200 police officers, 50 soldiers, and parties of Aboriginal trackers would join the biggest manhunt Australia had ever seen to catch their ruthless killers.

Grantlee Kieza’s The Kelly Hunters, published by HarperCollins, is on sale now. Come share your Ned Kelly theories at the Sunday Book Club group on Facebook. And remember, our new Book Of The Month is Fiona Lowe’s A Family Of Strangers. You can get it for 30 per cent off the RRP of $32.99 at Booktopia, by using the code FAMILY at checkout.

Originally published as Why I chose to reveal the true heroes of the Ned Kelly saga