Ned Kelly - Australia's beloved national icon - was once just a bushranger who had to be punished for his crimes. In 1880, everyone wanted him dead. There are many stories that form the Kelly myth. But the side of the story rarely told is what really happened in the 137 days between Ned's last stand at Glenrowan and the day the hangman's noose was placed around his neck. Who was with him in his last hours, and why did he have so many powerful enemies? Ned Kelly's Last Days exposes the blatant cover-ups, the corruption and the rampant press baying for blood that were ultimately Ned Kelly's deat... View More...
Most Australians know something about Ned Kelly – his gang’s final shoot out with the police at Glenrowan, Ned in his iron armour taken down by troopers shooting at his exposed legs, his subsequent trial and hanging in Melbourne – it’s a story often told. But did you know that Ned was planning a republic of north-east Victoria? That many of the settlers in the area were ready to take on the establishment and form their own independent state? That Ned’s ‘life of crime’ can be linked to the gross corruption of the colonial Victorian police force? Historian Brad Webb has written the... View More...
"Everyone looks on me like a black snake." - Letter from Ned Kelly 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? About the Author: Carole Wilkinson is an award-winning and ... View More...
Do we really need another Ned Kelly book? After all, his story is a part of Australian folklore and his legend has been captured in movies, books and paintings. The answer is yes, as this book is unique. It is a rigorous look at the forensic science behind investigations into Ned Kelly. In 2009 the remains of Ned Kelly were dug up at Pentridge Prison and identified after an exhaustive forensic analysis by the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine. Analysing a skeleton more than 130 years old involved processes such as DNA extraction, 3D facial reconstruction, and identifying the skeleton by... View More...
Originally published in 1894 and one of the rarest of all Kellyana, this has been out of print in any form for over 100 years. Fully illustrated with contemporary engravings and photographs, for the 140th anniversary of the events at Stringybark Creek. When Kennedy and Scanlon were gone the other two set about camp work. McIntyre, who had the cooking for the day in hand, had disembarrassed himself of his weapons, so when suddenly confronted by the Kelly Gang, and ordered to throw up his hands, he had no resource but obey. Lonergan, who was armed, instead of doing so, started running with appa... View More...
This is the true life story of Smokey, King of the horse-duffers. One hundred years ago, as the Boer War came to an end, the rugged Kimberley Range formed the roughest and most remote cattle-country in Australia. It was five days hard ride from the nearest township of Wyndham to Smokey's Kimberley Underworld hideout. The police patrols sent out to arrest King Smokey faced a daunting task. The few passes through the forbidding King Leopold Ranges were guarded by fierce Aboriginal warriors known as Munjons. The Munjons waged a bitter war with the white stockmen, but for every spearing of the cu... View More...
The Kelly Gang: Or, The Outlaws of the Wombat Ranges was produced by George Wilson Hall, the owner of the Mansfield Guardian in 1879. It is the first and rarest book on Ned Kelly, there being only four copies known to exist, with none in private hands. Hall was close to several informants and appears to have exceptional first-hand accounts of Stringybark Creek and other Kelly encounters. This new edition includes rare photographs of the participants from the period. View More...
The astonishing life of Ned Kelly's mother While we know much about the iconic outlaw Ned Kelly, his mother Ellen Kelly has been largely overlooked by Australian writers and historians - until now, with this vivid and compelling portrait by Grantlee Kieza, one of Australia's most popular biographers.When Ned Kelly's mother, Ellen, arrived in Melbourne in 1841 aged nine, British convict ships were still dumping their unhappy cargo in what was then known as the colony of New South Wales. By the time she died aged ninety-one in 1923, having outlived seven of her twelve children, motor cars plied ... View More...
The life and times of Australian Bushrangers has long been a fascination for many readers, both in Australia and abroad. Bushranger Tracks is possibly the most comprehensive record of bushranger sites ever published. The fascinating journey into Bushranger history begins at a farm at Boorolite near Mansfield in Victoria where the author came face to face with the Kelly story. About the Author: Greg Powell is a vice president with FMI Capital Advisors, Inc., FMI Corporation's Investment Banking subsidiary. View More...
'the best Kelly biography by a country mile' The Australian A bestseller since it was first published, NED KELLY: A SHORT LIFE is acknowledged as being the definitive biography. Ian Jones combines years of research into all the records of the era and exhaustive interviews with living descendants of those involved, to present a vivid and gripping account of one of Australia's most iconic figures. About the Author: Ian Jones is Australia's foremost Ned Kelly historian. A former TV and film producer, he was a producer of the film 'The Lighthorsemen' (he also wrote the script) and also created th... View More...
The story of Harry Readford, born in 1841 on the frontier of the infant colony of New South Wales, who became a proficient bushman, stockman, drover, explorer, pioneer and above all, a renowned cattle duffer, has passed into Australian folklore. The pivotal event in the story was the famous cattle theft in 1870, of 1200 head from the Longreach area of Central Queensland, and droving them nearly 1600 kilometres through virtually unexplored desert country deep into South Australia. This feat, and the subsequent "infamous" trial at the Roma courthouse in 1873, was portrayed in Rolf Boldrewood's... View More...
The story of Ned Kelly is also the untold story of Michael Kennedy, the police sergeant slain and robbed by the outlaw 140 years ago. Both Kennedy and Kelly were Irish immigrants struggling to make their way in the new colonies of Australia - Kennedy was committed to defending the law, while Kelly was hell-bent on breaking it. When their paths crossed one fateful day at Stringybark Creek, it triggered the end for one and the beginning of an incredible myth about the other. Author Leo Kennedy is the great grandson of Sergeant Michael Kennedy. He was raised in the shadow of his great grandfather... View More...
Introduced by Alex McDermott 'I have been wronged and my mother and four or five men lagged innocent and is my brothers and sisters and my mother not to be pitied also who has no alternative only to put up with the brutal and cowardly conduct of a parcel of big ugly fat-necked wombat headed big bellied magpie legged narrow hipped splaw-footed sons of Irish Bailiffs or english landlords which is better known as Officers of Justice or Victorian Police...... ' The Jerilderie Letter is Ned Kelly's manifesto, the story of a widow's son outlawed. View More...
When Ned Kelly fought his Last Stand at Glenrowan, he made his suit of armour and a tiny bush pub part of Australian folklore. But what really happened at the Glenrowan Inn when the Kelly Gang took up arms against the government? Who was there when the bullets began to fly and how did their actions help to set the course of history? Almost 130 years after the gunfight, a team of archaeologists peeled back the layers of history at Glenrowan to reveal new information about how the battle played out, uncovering the stories of the people caught up in a violent confrontation that helped to define w... View More...
THIS IS A NOVEL (Fiction). Carey explores the life and times of Australia's most enduring folk legend, Ned Kelly and his gang. Carey, using Ned Kelly himself as the powerful narrator of this novel, written for a daughter he will never seen, gives us an emotional life we could never imagine. A novel of the class-ridden society of colonial Victoria in the 1870s. View More...
Historians still disagree over virtually every aspect of the eldest Kelly boy's brushes with the law. Did he or did he not shoot Constable Fitzpatrick at their family home? Was he a lawless thug or a noble Robin Hood, a remorseless killer or a crusader against oppression and discrimination? Was he even a political revolutionary, an Australian republican channelling the spirit of Eureka? Peter FitzSimons, bestselling chronicler of many of the great defining moments and people of this nation's history, is the perfect person to tell this most iconic of all Australian stories. From Kelly's early d... View More...
Love him or loathe him, Ned Kelly has been at the heart of Australian culture and identity since he and his gang were tracked down in bushland by the Victorian police and came out fighting, dressed in bulletproof iron armour made from farmers' ploughs. Historians still disagree over virtually every aspect of the eldest Kelly boy's brushes with the law. Did he or did he not shoot Constable Fitzpatrick at their family home? Was he a lawless thug or a noble Robin Hood, a remorseless killer or a crusader against oppression and discrimination? Was he even a political revolutionary, channelling the... View More...
At the time, Ned Kelly's bushranging exploits were the biggest news story in the country. From 1869 through to 1910 numerous newspaper articles were published on him. The Reporting of Ned Kelly and the Kelly Gang is a compilation of these articles which retell this historic story as it was read by the nation over a century ago. Each article gives a remarkable insight into the world of Ned Kelly and the Kelly Gang. They also offer the reader a greater appreciation for what it was like for the men who had the arduous and often dangerous job of tracking them in the harsh and unforgiving Australia... View More...
![Image for True History of the Kelly Gang [used book]](/assets/images/product/070223236X_1)
