Ned Kelly a True Story (3)
'Our friends want to help,' Ned said. 'They have guns, and they want to fight with us. So we need to bring a lot of policemen to one place. How can we do that?'
'With a killing,' said Joe. 'We kill Aaron Sherritt. He's working for the police - he tells them everything about us! You know it, I know it, everybody knows it. He was a friend once, but now he wants to see us dead!'
'Yes, that's true,' Ned said. 'We hear it from everybody. So, you go to Aaron's house at Beechworth and shoot him. You and Dan.'
'Right,' said Dan. 'And then when the Beechworth police hear about the killing, they know it's us, the Kelly Gang. So they ask for help from the police at Benalla...'
'And the Benalla police take the train to Beechworth,' said Steve. 'Lots of police, all in one train.'
'And we', Ned said quietly, 'are waiting for the train at Glenrowan...'
The plan began well. Joe and Dan rode to Beechworth. When Aaron Sherritt opened his door on Saturday 26th June, Joe shot him at once. Then the two outlaws rode sixty kilometres across country to Glenrowan. News of the killing went down to Benalla.
Ned and Steve arrived at Glenrowan Inn on Saturday afternoon. They began to bring hostages into the inn - people from the railway station, railway workers, people from the town. Then Ned took some of the railway workers to the hill just past the railway station.
'Take up the railway line,' he told them. 'Go on!'
'We can't do that!' one worker said. 'Do you want to kill everybody on the next train?'
Then he saw Ned's gun, and asked no more questions. The workers took up three metres of railway line, and went back to the inn with Ned. Joe and Dan were there now, and some of the gang's friends. Other friends, about thirty men, stayed near the railway line. In the inn there was a lot of drinking that night.
On Sunday morning Ned found more hostages - the schoolteacher, Thomas Curnow, with his young wife, baby, and sister. There were now sixty-two hostages in the inn. And everybody waited for the police train.
The police moved very slowly. In Beechworth, Benalla, and Melbourne they talked, made plans, and talked some more. In the end, a police train left Melbourne late on Sunday evening. And that evening Ned told about twenty of the hostages, 'You can go home.' Later, the schoolteacher came to him.
'Can I take my family home?' he asked. 'Don't be afraid of me - you know I'm a friend of the Kellys.'
'Yes, you can go,' said Ned.
Thomas Curnow was a brave man. He took his young family home, and later went quietly out into the night and along the railway line. At three o'clock in the morning he heard the train, and held up a red light.
'Stop! Stop!' he cried.
*
At the inn, Ned and the gang heard the train too. They listened, but there was no noise of a crash, no train falling through the trees, no cries and shouts.
'What's happening?' Steve said.
'Nothing,' said Ned. 'Somebody stopped the train before it got to the broken rails. Put your armour on, boys, and get ready to fight.'
The gang went out to the front of the inn. They began to fire at the police, and the police fired back. Bullets went everywhere.
Three of the hostages inside the inn died. The police shot Ned in the arm and the foot, and Joe in the leg.
'Go back into the inn,' Ned said to the gang. 'I must find our friends. They must get away from here.'
The gang's friends were near the railway line.
'We want to fight, Ned,' they said. 'Take us with you!'
'No, no, you must get away,' said Ned. 'The plan for the train went wrong, and there are police everywhere. This is our fight. You can't help us! Go!'
Back at the inn, the shooting did not stop. The hostages, many of them women and children, were on the floor, their faces white and afraid. Joe was in the front room with a drink in his hand.
'I drink to the Kelly Gang!' he cried. Then a bullet came through the wall and hit him. He died at once.
The wounds in Ned's arm and foot were bad, and in the trees he fell to the ground. A friend tried to help him, but for some hours Ned could not move. Then, slowly, he stood up, and in his armour began to walk back to the inn. His brother Dan and Steve Hart were still inside the inn, and Ned went back to help them.
In the early morning light, he came slowly out of the trees, his gun in his hand. One man against thirty-four policemen. They fired and fired at him, but the bullets hit Ned's armour, and Ned laughed.
'Go on - fire! You can't kill me!' he called.
But there was no armour on Ned's legs. One of the policemen saw this, and fired - once, twice... The bullets hit Ned's legs, and he fell slowly to the ground.
At once the police were all around him. He was alive, but only just, and they carried him to the railway station.
Soon after this, the last hostages left Glenrowan Inn.
Only Dan and Steve were still inside, but the police did not stop firing at the building. Later on that Monday morning a second train arrived in Glenrowan, with more police, photographers, and newspaper men. There were now more than a thousand people in the town. And down south, in Melbourne, hundreds of people waited in the streets for news of the Kelly Gang.
On Monday afternoon Ned's sisters, Maggie and Kate, arrived in Glenrowan. They heard the news about Ned, and then asked for news of Dan.
'Maggie, tell your brother and Steve Hart to put down their guns and come out of the inn,' said a policeman.
'Tell them to stop fighting? Never!' said Maggie.
Maggie and Kate did not see Dan alive again. The police were afraid to go into the inn, but they did not want Dan and Steve to get away in the night. So they set fire to the building.
Old buildings burn fast, and when Maggie and Kate got to the inn, the sky was red with fire.
'Dan! Oh, Dan!' Maggie called out, again and again.
'My poor, poor brother!' Kate cried.
*
Glenrowan Inn burnt down to the ground. When the fire was cold, they took out the dead bodies of Dan Kelly, Steve Hart, and Joe Byrne. Ned was alive, but in prison. It was the end of the Kelly Gang.
CHAPTER SIX
Ned's Last Days
JULY, 1880. The police take Ned Kelly to Benalla, then to Melbourne prison. There is a lot of waiting, and talking, and more talking. The police talk, the judges talk, Ned talks - but the ending is always the same.
*
At the end of October Ned went before his last judge, Sir Redmond Barry, in Melbourne. For two days Judge Barry listened to the police, listened to Ned, read the police papers, and thought about it. But he didn't think long. There were a lot of dead policemen in Ned Kelly's life, and there was only one answer to that.
Ned Kelly must die. Hang him in the prison. Hang him by the neck until he is dead. A lesson to every outlaw in Australia.
*
Ned's mother Ellen was still in Melbourne prison. When they told her the news, she cried - she cried for her dead son Dan, and she cried for her son Ned, alive, but waiting to die. They took her to see Ned on his last day alive. What did mother and son talk about that day?
Ned's sisters and brother worked hard to help him.
'How can they do this?' said Maggie angrily. 'How can they hang poor Ned? What did the police do to him? Why don't the judges think about that?'
'Shh, Maggie,' said Jim. 'No time for that now. We must get out there and talk to the people in the town.'
And so they did. They went all round Melbourne, to all the hotels, talking to everybody.
'They're going to hang Ned Kelly. What do you think about that?' they asked.
'It's not right,' said one man.
'Why do they want to hang him?' a second man said. 'Because he killed a policeman? No. Because he helps poor people and gives them money, that's why.'
'But what can we do?' asked a third man.
'Put your names on our petition,' was the answer.
There were more than 32,000 names on the Kelly petition, but the petition changed nothing.
So the last visitors came to see Ned on the 10th of November, and he ate his last dinner. Then he sang for half an hour, and went to bed.
Next morning they took Ned across the prison to a room with a rope.
Outside the prison more than 5000 people waited - men and women, rich and poor.
'Where's the Kelly family?' one woman asked.
'Some of them are here, at the hotel,' was the answer. 'But Maggie went back to Beechworth yesterday. She wanted to be with her children. And there's Ned's poor mother - she's in the prison too, waiting for ten o'clock.'
Then the prisoners in Melbourne prison began to make a terrible noise, shouting and crying out and banging on their doors. And in her room Ellen Kelly cried quietly for her oldest son.
In the hotel Jim Kelly sat with his head in his hands.
'Poor Ned, this is the end of all his troubles,' he said.
And at ten o'clock, the prison officers put the rope around Ned Kelly's neck and hanged him.
*
Ned was dead - but in the north-east, life went on. Sixty-eight people got money from the Kelly Gang reward. Schoolteacher Thomas Curnow got 1000 pounds.
A new man, Policeman Graham, came to Greta. He was a good policeman, and Ned's friends listened to him. 'Don't make trouble, and then you can buy your farms,' he told them. He went to Eleven Mile Creek and had tea with Ellen Kelly. Everyone talked about that.
Slowly things began to change. The police tried to be more friendly, to help poor people, and not just the rich. Most of the young men stopped stealing and fighting the police. Soon it was quiet in the north-east.
The other Kelly children stayed out of trouble. Jim Kelly was a good son to his mother all her life. Ellen lived to the age of ninety-three, and had many grandchildren. But she never forgot her oldest son Ned.
*
Who was the real Ned Kelly? Did he fight for the poor, or just for Ned Kelly? Some people say he was a brave man. Some people say he was a fool. Some people say he was just a killer, just a wild man with a gun.
One thing is sure. More than a hundred years later people are still talking about him. There are books about him, and songs and films and websites. Everybody still remembers Australia's most famous outlaw.
- THE END -
