Ned Kelly, Irish-Australian Outlaw
The Irish in Australia have made great contributions, much like their cousins in North America. The Irish-Australian heritage, however, is tinged by the slightly different way that many of them got there — as prisoners in English transport ships.
The most famous Irish-Australian outlaw was Edward “Ned” Kelly (1855–80). Ned's father was a “selector,” a criminal who had been transported to Australia, served his time, and then was allowed to select a plot of land to farm. Ned came from a large family that occasionally supplemented its meager income with horse rustling and cattle stealing.
The family legend is that the Kellys were constantly persecuted by the police because they were Irish Catholics in a land dominated by English Protestants. When Ned was in his early twenties and on the run from a horse-rustling charge, his mother was sentenced to three years hard labor on a fabricated charge of attempted murder of a policeman. Ned and his three followers, called the “Kelly gang,” swore revenge.
Today, many Irish-Australians look back on convict ancestry with pride, because it means that their ancestors were willing to stand up to unjust English laws. In reality, the majority of transported convicts were common criminals, not revolutionaries, but contemporary folklore tends to put them all in the same boat.
The Kelly gang ambushed a group of policemen, killed three of them, and then disappeared into the bush (the vast Australian wilderness). The gang lived on the run for two years, robbing several banks in the process. The government offered increasingly large bounties for its capture, eventually reaching the astronomical sum of £8,000 each for Ned and his brother Dan, but no one turned them in. In the bush, the Kellys were treated as heroes for their bold defiance of the law.
Shoot-Out at the Glenrowan Hotel
Eventually, however, a group of 200 police officers surrounded the gang at the Glenrowan Hotel. The final shoot-out has become the stuff of legend, much like the shoot-out at the OK Corral in the American West. The policemen fired on the hotel and set it on fire. Ned came out wearing a fantastic suit of thick iron armor. At first it repulsed all the bullets, but eventually someone shot him in the legs and he went down. His gang members were killed by gunfire, and Ned was hanged a few days later.
In Australia, to say that someone is “as game as Ned Kelly” means that the person is tough, resourceful, and maybe just a little wild. These frontiersman characteristics are still very much valued in Australia, as personified by the character of Crocodile Dundee.
Today Ned Kelly is Australia's most popular folk hero, with dozens of books and museum exhibits dedicated to his exploits. Many aspects of his story appeal to the popular imagination: his desperate attempt to help his mother, his conviction that an Irishman like himself couldn't get justice from the law, his almost miraculous ability to live off the land, and his final, ironclad defiance of unbeatable odds.
To Australians of today, who actually have one of the lowest crime rates in the world, Ned Kelly represents a side of themselves that they've left behind but aren't ready to forget.
