Gaming Ned Kelly

The Australian mateship myth had some usefulness when it was formulated in the 1950s by A.A. Phillips and Russel Ward, since it provided an alternative explanation to British-Australian perspectives on Australia at the time. But the time has long passed when it should be looked at uncritically and regurgitated in its original monochrome version.

Ned Kelly is an Australian folk hero who presses many buttons: anti-government, anti-British, popular leader, Irish rebel, tribune of dispossessed selectors, victim of partial justice and of an oppressive establishment—or so the received version goes. Just as it might have been fading between the wars, the Kelly saga was given another kick along by J.J. Kenneally’s book The Inner History of the Kelly Gang, by Max Brown’s biography of Kelly, and by Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series of paintings at about the same time. These widened the scope of Kelly’s reputation from local folk hero to large-scale mythic figure, fit for peoples of all times and places to admire.

In his two well-documented books the Victorian historian Doug Morrissey successfully punctures the prevailing narrative by offering a thorough-going revisionist critique. He was fortunate to have as the supervisor of his thesis on Ned Kelly and his wider family the late lamented Dr John Hirst, a valued figure in Australian history and social analysis. Like myself, Morrissey was raised in an Irish Catholic milieu which made him initially sympathetic to Kelly, more for Irish than for Catholic reasons. Even though I am persuaded by Morrissey’s demolition of the Kelly legend, I still treasure Ned’s Jerilderie letter as a wonderful example of deep underground tribal sentiments coming to the surface via snatches of long-remembered Irish rebel songs, whatever its truth.

In summary Morrissey argues, and documents, a number of propositions fatal to the received Kelly narrative. Kelly was not supported by neighbouring selectors, nor, with a few exceptions, by other locals, nor was he a spokesman for their grievances, which were relatively small. The small farmers of Kelly’s region of north-eastern Victoria were not, in the larger scheme of things, a distressed minority. Relations between Catholics and Protestants, selectors and squatters, police and citizens, and the struggling and the prosperous, were normal in this region, and relatively benign; they did not exhibit the high tensions and animosities claimed in the legend. As Morrissey discovered, previous accounts have wrongly named some of the key exploiting figures as squatters, which fits the Kelly claim, when in fact they were originally selectors who had accumulated multiple holdings.

Historians base success rates for selectors on the number of those who took out freehold titles after paying off their rent over the prescribed period, usually seven years. In Kelly country the success rate was around 80 per cent, compared with much less than 50 per cent in the South Gippsland hills where I live, where the pioneers had to contend with forest clearing, mountainous terrain and freezing weather and floods, which severely inhibited productivity. The selectors of north-east Victoria faced none of these drawbacks, and as a result were not as disadvantaged as the legend has it. We are familiar today with the advantages which accrue to those who dubiously claim victim status.

Ned and his brothers and gang were not themselves underdogs nor political rebels. They were not the social bandits beloved of progressive English social historians. Their activities were basically criminal, conducted under the cloak of a supposed political insurgency. There was no movement for a breakaway region of northern Victoria, which Ned claimed he was leading. The reality was that the colony of Victoria had, amazingly, been granted independence from Britain only two decades after Europeans had settled it, in comparison with Ireland which had not yet been granted independence though it had a documented history stretching over one and a half millennia. (This was because the British sensibly didn’t want to make the same mistake with their Australian colonies they had made with their American ones; but they couldn’t bestow the same favour to integral parts of the “United” Kingdom like Ireland.) So it was hard to claim Victoria was getting a bad deal from Britain, as Kelly and others asserted. Morrissey shows that most of the claims Kelly made in his pronouncements were similarly false and self-aggrandising, amounting to a considerable rewriting of history.

Morrissey establishes his case through a detailed sifting of contemporary records. Acting as forensic witness for the prosecution, Morrissey naturally digs up as many dubious activities of the Kellys as he can find, of which there were plenty, with the result that he doesn’t have many positive things to say about them. But because all accounts, including more recent ones like those of the novelist Peter Carey, the historian Ian Jones and the populariser Peter FitzSimons, continue to present an uncritical and hagiographic case, this is not a serious fault. Morrissey has built his case on extensively consulting the original sources: newspapers, police files, court cases, selection files, government Acts, and other documents in the Public Records Office of Victoria. Morrissey’s annotation of the famous Jerilderie letter, pointing out its lies, evasions and vainglorious claims as he goes, is a highlight of his work. 

The front covers of both Morrissey’s volumes are adorned with arresting images from Nolan’s Ned Kelly series, in which Kelly is the heroic figure in comparison with Constable Fitzpatrick and Judge Redmond Barry. This is inappropriate, as the iconography of the paintings perpetuates the distortion Morrissey is drawing attention to in his book—the covers contradict the contents.

The Eureka legend has many parallels with the later Kelly one. Both were Irish Catholic insurgencies, both claimed to be victims of government and police oppression, and both were crucial early events contributing to the founding of the Australian mateship legend. Both have recently had Peter FitzSimons as re-hasher. Eureka deserves a demyth­ologising similar to Morrissey on the Kellys.

The gold licence issue at Ballarat was the kind of normal minor dispute which occurs all the time in free societies. For the diggers to call an armed insurrection over it was a crazy and inexcusable escalation out of all proportion to the problem, even given the authorities had a tin ear and grievously mishandled their response. The Kelly “insurrection” was equally out of order and equally mishandled by the authorities, as Morrissey demonstrates. To claim, as Eureka supporters do to this day, that an armed insurrection was a foundation event in establishing democracy in Australia, is a contradiction in terms and self-evidently absurd. Eureka awaits a historian with the critical skills of Morrissey to retell its story.

Ned Kelly: A Lawless Life
and
Ned Kelly: Selectors, Squatters and Stock Thieves
by Doug Morrissey
Connor Court Publishing, 2015 and 2018, 256 and 374 pages, both $39.95

Patrick Morgan’s most recent books are The Vandemonian Trail and The Mannix Era: Melbourne Catholic Leadership 1920–1970.