Carey’s book is the latest in a long line of creative works, from the 1970s film starring Mick Jagger to a much-admired set of paintings by Sidney Nolan, to be inspired by Kelly’s turbulent 25-year life. The tale of the impoverished son of Irish-Catholic criminal stock, who rapidly grew from a proficient petty thief into an idolised, armed robber with a passionate political agenda, is a ready-made tragedy.
The first play about Kelly, Catching the Kellys, opened in 1879 when Kelly and his gang were still on the run. A second played to packed houseswhen Kelly was executed in 1880. Australia’s first full-length film, made in 1906, was The Story of the Kelly Gang. And Kelly is now Hollywood-bound: Neil Jordan, director of The Crying Game, has snapped up the film rights to Carey’s novel.
But outsiders who attempt to tell Ned’s tale often incur the wrath of those who live in remote Kelly Country. New York-based Carey’s ironically titled fictional tale of Kelly’s life contains ‘so many falsehoods it should never have been called ‘True History‘ ,” says Gary Dean, a local historian.
Bill Bryson, author of the travel book Down Under, has also been accused of ‘malicious fabrication” when it comes to Kelly. ‘These distortions go beyond error,” says historian Ian Jones. Such stories, he believes, are a result of a continuing ‘almost pathological hatred” for Kelly. The Australian newspaper dismissed Carey’s novel as ‘Nedophilia” and described Kelly as a ‘Pol Pot” in the making.
In the ‘Jerilderie Letter”, Kelly described in brutally honest detail the gang’s killing of three policemen. Its startling language — Kelly calls the police ‘big ugly fat-necked wombat headed big bellied magpie legged narrow hipped splaw-footed sons of Irish Bailiffs or English landlords” —inspired Carey to write his novel using ‘Ned’s” voice. ‘The language is just amazing,” he says. ‘It’s of an uneducated man but he’s very passionate, he’s very Irish, he’s very funny.”
Cathrine Harboe-Ree, Victoria State library’s director of collections, accepts that Ned Kelly was an ‘awkward” subject in the past. ‘There is a growing awareness that we need to act now,” she says. ‘It’s 120 years since Kelly died and the public domain is in danger of losing some of these valuable resources.” The library will establish a permanent Kelly exhibition by 2003.
The failure to preserve many Kelly relics has fuelled the mix-ups and myths that envelop the Kelly legend. Ned Kelly’s skull was stolen from Old Melbourne Gaol in 1978. His gang’s iron suits have been ‘bashed around and ridiculously mixed up”, says Jones.
The Kelly legend is swathed in conspiracies. Picking over the bones of the Kelly case, amateur historians have hypothesised that Ned never died and his brother Dan stood in for him at the gallows. Gary Dean has another theory: ‘I’ve pretty well proven now that Dan and Steve never died at Glenrowan.”
Two weeks ago, Dean and a scientist exhumed the body of Charles Divine Tindale in Toowoomba, Queensland, hundreds of miles north of Kelly country. They are DNA-testing it, and hope to prove it was the body of Dan Kelly. They are examining another grave in Coonabarabran, in northern New South Wales. Jones and other mainstream historians give his theory short shrift.
For Jones, the holy grail is not bones, but the Declaration of a Republic of north eastern Victoria, a missing document which could conclusively prove that Kelly and his swelling band of supporters were attempting to break free from British rule. Paul Keating, the former Australian prime minister and avowed republican, has urged any private collector to give up the document, which was sighted in London’s public record office in 1962 before it mysteriously vanished.
‘When you examine the events of Glenrowan the whole republic is just like a black star,” enthuses Jones. ‘Everything is revolving around it but this thing isn’t there. If it didn’t exist, you would have to hypothesise such a plan to make it all add up.”
Jones is torn between wanting to preserve the physical legacy of the Kelly period, and the knowledge that in doing so, something is still destroyed. Few people visit Stringybark Creek, and the site of the Kelly gang’s murder of the policemen is only marked with a simple plaque embedded in the trunk of a gum tree. ‘The sense of presence is remarkable and fragile,” says Jones, ‘Inevitably more and more people will find out where it is, and it will be destroyed.”
Some old relatives of Kelly still live in the remote area where Ned roamed. Their attitude to the growing Kelly legend is ‘a strange mixture of pride and privacy”, says Jones. The owner of Kelly’s home once swore that if the smallholding gets turned into a private heritage monument, someone would burn it down. ‘They are not ashamed, and they don’t want to destroy Kelly’s history, but they don’t want to see it preserved,” Jones says.
While Jones sympathises with those who want Ned to rest in peace he knows that ‘history isn’t like that”. It won’t leave this ‘admirable and very complex man” alone.
Kelly is ‘one of those people who helped Australia define itself”, he says. Dean agrees: ‘He stood up for his rights as an individual. He had a dream that people should be free from persecution by the authorities. He believed in the ideals of a republic. Ned was a gentleman and very protective of his family. But he was also a born leader and that’s what brought the police to his attention.”
Jones adds: ‘Part of Ned Kelly’s tragedy is that he was remarkable, and that he just attracted trouble when all the indications are that he wanted to live a quiet life.” Australia’s most infamous outlaw still can’t today.