145 years ago today saw the destruction of the Kelly Gang. After Thomas Curnow warned the police train of the sabotaged rails, Ned Kelly’s plan had well and truly failed. What unfolded was a tragedy brought about by numerous bad decisions on both sides.
The police surrounded the Glenrowan Inn after Constable Bracken escaped from the building to tip Superintendent Hare off. The outlaws were ready and waiting in their armour. A short volley of gunfire saw Hare injured, and out of the fight, Joe Byrne shot in the leg and unable to walk, and Ned Kelly injured in the foot and left arm. The gang retreated to the back of the inn when they had exhausted their ammunition. The police continued to fire.
Ned then decided to look for an escape route behind the inn, and after failing to mount a horse in the paddock, he wandered into the bush where he fell unconscious.
Johnny Jones was wounded and carried to safety by a labourer named Jack McHugh, but Martin Cherry, who was also hit by a police bullet, had to be hidden under a mattress in the kitchen until he could be carried to safety. Both would die from their wounds.
Some of the women and children were able to escape, despite being shot at, and the stationmaster simply walked home to his house next to the train tracks where his family was waiting.
Joe Byrne was killed by a police bullet while toasting his comrades around the time that reinforcements were arriving from Benalla and Wangaratta.
Several hours after disappearing, Ned reappeared behind the police lines and had a brief gunfight before being captured alive. Dan Kelly and Steve Hart took shots at the police as they carried their comrade away. Ned was badly wounded and took questions as he was being treated. He would survive to be executed for murder.
Kelly relatives and sympathisers arrived after Ned’s capture, and the remaining prisoners were let out at 10:00am. Some were arrested as sympathisers. Shortly afterwards, the police set fire to the inn to smoke out the bushrangers, but they were already dead. Joe’s body was retrieved, but Dan and Steve’s bodies were watched by onlookers as they were effectively cremated. Martin Cherry was rescued from the kitchen just in time to be given the last rites and die.
There was no glorious rebellion, no great victory, just misery, death, and destruction.
One of the reasons I wrote Glenrowan as a novel instead of a history book is that over and over I was seeing people reading “non-fiction” books about Ned Kelly and coming away thinking that Glenrowan was some big adventure and Ned was a hero fighting crooked cops. They didn’t seem to comprehend the human cost of what happened that day. By dramatising it, I could demonstrate why it was a tragedy and help people to understand what kind of mindset a person would have to have to even consider such a plot as Ned Kelly apparently did.
So many still view it as a tragedy because it was the end of the road for Ned Kelly. Ned lost his freedom, yes, but it was due to his own actions and after a long and deadly criminal career. Regardless of his motivations, there was a trail of homicide and robbery leasing to his capture. His decisions around Glenrowan also caused the deaths of no less than six other people as a direct result. Aaron Sherritt, Joe Byrne, Steve Hart and Dan Kelly all died violently, as did Johnny Jones and Martin Cherry who were hit by police bullets while sheltering in the inn because Ned refused to leave before the police arrived. His decision to linger until the train showed up meant the civilians were trapped when the police surrounded the inn. If not for Ned making everyone listen to him rant after Dan had told them to go home, the story would be a very different one.
Ann Jones lost her home, her business, and one of her children because Ned Kelly decided to use her inn as a prison for the weekend. Furthermore, she was arrested and charged as a sympathiser for being forced to wait on the outlaws, then later the police denied her a liquor licence when she was trying to reopen her business. The Curnows moved to Ballarat to avoid reprisals for Thomas stopping the train before it crashed and his wife, Jeannie, suffered from a pervasive fear that eventually one of the sympathisers would track them down and exact revenge for her husband foiling Ned Kelly’s plans. Michael Reardon lived the rest of his life with lead lodged in his chest from being shot in the back by Sergeant Steele. Rifts formed in the Glenrowan community from the scars formed by the consequences of Ned Kelly’s failed plot. There was no happy ending.
There were also obvious consequences for the Kelly, Hart, and Byrne families, as well as the police who were involved in the siege. Constable Bracken was reputedly bullied by his colleagues for having intervened to prevent Steele murdering Kelly, which contributed to his mental health issues. The trauma became intergenerational in some cases.
Glenrowan provides us with a perfect illustration of how these huge crime events have ripple effects beyond the headlines that most people can’t even comprehend. As exciting as the gunfight is, the reality is that it was terrifying and deadly and should not be celebrated. My novel was an attempt to illustrate that in a way that people could experience more vividly than by reading a history book and gain a deeper appreciation for what the event really was. Whether or not I succeeded is down to the readers.
Glenrowan 