“TAKE my word for it, old man, everything is not settled yet.”

Those were the closing remarks published from an interview in The Weekly Times on July 3, 1880 — exactly 139 years ago today.

The subject of the interview was none other than Ned Kelly. The interview had occurred the day after his arrest at Glenrowan.

It was just one part of the pages of coverage about the Kelly Gang’s “destruction” less than a week earlier, and one of the most significant historical events covered by this newspaper in its 150 years.

Reading them now, Ned’s remarks are somewhat prophetic. While it was the end for his freedom, as he was hanged at the Old Melbourne Gaol about four months later, his legacy is far from settled more than a century after his death.

Trevor Poultney has been a tour guide at the gaol for almost two decades. Asked where he sits on the hero-or-villain spectrum, he replies firmly he is “down the middle” on Ned.

“He was Irish and therefore had a fairly rough time here,” Mr Poultney says.

“But hundreds of people were in that situation and they didn’t turn out to be cop killers and bank robbers.”

EARLY STARTER

EDWARD “Ned” Kelly was the son of an Irish Catholic convict. He was only a teenager when The Weekly Times first hit the stands in 1869, but his criminal life started that year when he was arrested for an alleged assault.

In April 1878, policeman Alexander Fitzpatrick attempted to arrest Ned’s brother Dan for horse stealing. Fitzpatrick claimed that in an altercation he was shot by Ned; Ned would insist he was not even present. The episode ended with Ned’s mother, Ellen, in jail and her sons going into hiding with Steve Hart and Joe Byrne.

That October, Ned would commit the crime that turned the Kelly Gang into outlaws — the murder of three policeman at Stringybark Creek.

Over the next few months the gang’s notoriety grew, robbing the bank at Euroa and also penning the Jerilderie letter.

Then the gang went quiet for just over a year — only to emerge in devastating fashion in June 1880.

LOOMING LARGE

IT IS hard to escape the Kelly legend in the North East Victorian town of Glenrowan.

A 6m-high Ned casts his gaze over streets named Kelly, Ned, Edward and Kate (Ned and Dan’s sister), while the site of Ann Jones’ Inn, where the Kelly Gang made their last stand, is at 1 Siege St.

Chris Gerrett and her husband have run the tourist attraction Kate’s Cottage in the town for decades. It was also the Gerretts who commissioned the statue of Ned when “big” things were all the rage.

“The siege put Glenrowan on the map,” she says.

On June 26, 1880, members of the gang murdered Aaron Sherritt, a friend whom they suspected had turned into a police informer, near Beechworth.

Confident the authorities would respond, the Kellys set a trap by tearing up the train tracks outside Glenrowan. Then with hostages, they bunkered down in the inn.

“It was going to be Ned’s glorious end. He had been on the run for 18 months and he was definitely getting tired,” Mr Poultney says.

“He had also heard Aboriginal trackers had been brought down from Queensland and he was quite sure they couldn’t outrun them … he opted for the blaze of glory.”

The events at Glenrowan might have had a very different ending had Ned not let schoolteacher Thomas Curnow go to care for Curnow’s ill wife.

Curnow stopped the train before it was derailed. The gang was now outnumbered.

This was the moment the famous armour was unveiled.

“The Glenrowan siege itself is iconic in Australia because of the use of the Kellys’ armour — that was the one and only time that the famous armour was used,” Mr Poultney says.

While the armour did stop some bullets, it did not make the gang invincible.

Byrne died in the inn, shot in the groin. Dan Kelly and Hart also died in the hotel, their bodies burned when the building was set alight.

This was the account in The Weekly Times of Ned’s capture on June 28, 1880, police having aimed their bullets at his arms and legs.

“Scout after scout fired at some object invisible to me … after dodging about awhile, the object of the alarm stood out in the open, wearing a long white oil-skin overcoat, and having his head covered in a thick steel helmet, made from ploughshares … which discovered no opening but a narrow line across the eyes, through which to see. It was Ned Kelly.”

WORD SPREADS

NEWS of the Glenrowan siege and Ned’s capture quickly reached Melbourne, and caused a sensation.

The Weekly Times, published the following Saturday, featured almost blow-by-blow accounts, and also the interview with Kelly, which is said to have taken place at 10pm on Tuesday (about 38 hours after his capture).

Ned denied mutilating a Stringybark police officer’s body as reputed, and also denied he knew about plans to kill Sherritt.

An editorial in the same issue declared it was “dreadful” to hear men sympathising with the Kellys — and outs one of our own as a supporter.

“There is a fellow on our rank who looks upon Ned Kelly as a hero … I was rather amused at the manner in which this fellow abused the police and everyone who assisted in breaking up the gang of murderers.”

Ned’s supporters could not save him. On November 11, after a trial Mr Poultney described as a “travesty”, Ned made the short walk from his cell to the gallows within Old Melbourne Gaol.

HOT TOPIC

SO WHY has the myth of the Kelly Gang endured?

“The existence of the armour is the reason people still remember Ned to this day,” Mr Poultney believes.

Mrs Gerrett, meanwhile, suspects it is because of the debate about his character.

“It is not black and white, this is why the story has gone on for so long like this — people debate,” Mrs Garrett says.

THE COMPLETE INTERVIEW

GLENROWAN, Tuesday, 10 p.m.

KELLY INTERVIEWED BY OUR REPORTER.

… I had also another conversation late last night. While holding him in my arms he fainted. Having known Kelly and most of his friends for many years, in fact since boyhood, after telling my name and referring to the time his family lived on the Plenty, near Wallan Wallan, and other circumstances which occurred on the Plenty, the Goulburn, and the King River — nearly all of which he remembered — I asked him a few questions, which I give below, together with the answers. There were many more questions I put to him relative to what occurred at Sergeant Kennedy’s death and since the Jerilderie bank robbery, but to some of these he gave evasive replies, and to others he let it be plainly understood that he would not criminate himself, or give any information which might be used against him; thus, even when on the brink of eternity, exhibiting that caution and firmness which is characteristic of not alone the members of the gang, but also of the whole of those connected even in the most remote degree with the outlaws.

Reporter: When you bailed up the police at Stringybark Creek, and shot Sergeant Kennedy, did the sergeant give you a message, letter, or note-book, to give to his wife; and if so, what have you done with it?

Kelly: Well, if he did, it would have been sent to her. I would have taken good care of that.

Reporter: That is no answer to my question. Will you tell me, Ned, straightforwardly and candidly, as you are now on your dying bed, whether poor Kennedy gave you anything or not?

Kelly: I tell you if he did, Mrs. Kennedy would have got it. I could tell you the whole circumstances, but if I do, neither you nor the public will believe me, so what’s the use of talking?

Reporter: But is the account of the affair at Stringybark, and about Kennedy’s death, correct?

Kelly: It’s right enough in most particulars — the shooting and the sticking-up; but it’s all false about my cutting the ear off Sergeant Kennedy. I can never forget that report. It was spread about to do me harm. I did not know Kennedy; never saw him till we stuck up the police, and I had no down at all on him. If he had told me to deliver anything to his wife, it would have been done; but he only sent his love to her.

Reporter: When you were in the Warby Ranges, and Senior-constable Johnstone’s party pressing you, could you have shot them then; or did you say you would have the life of Johnstone?

Kelly: They were so close to us that I could easily have shot them if I had thought of doing so.

Reporter: Why was the train to have been wrecked; why did you try to throw the train off the line, and perhaps murder scores of innocent people?

Kelly: No one but the police and trackers had any right to come by the special; if they did, and got killed, it served them – well right. All I wanted was to get rid of the trackers and police and then get back into the Benalla Barracks, where I could hold out for a time.

Reporter: Why did you shoot Aaron Sherritt in such a manner?

Kelly: I did not do it. I knew nothing about it. Dan and Steve and Joe did it all together, unknown to me. I was – wild about it.

Reporter: Why did you keep so quiet for the last twelve months?

Kelly: Because we thought the trackers would go away.

Reporter: Will you tell me anything more about the fearful deeds you and the others have committed?

Kelly: I don’t care saying anything more now, as it might go against me some other time; but take my word for it, old man, everything is not settled yet.