The Kelly business is all over, and the family have settled down quietly at Greta, and are likely to forget the past, and give us no more trouble.
Category: The Kellys
All about the Kelly family.
“For some time past very little news, if any, has come to hand in reference to the Kelly gang, and many persons, who are not fully conversant with Greta and its inhabitants, are under the impression that the Kellys have made their escape from the colony.”
“At last, however, a spirit arrived breathless haste at a sitting, and on being asked why the spirits had not come to the watchers before, said that all the good spirits had been busy for days making a net to spread over the precincts of the Melbourne gaol, in which to enmesh the spirit of Ned the atrocious when it should leave his body.”
“Kate Kelly and her brother, with Ned’s horse, &c., commenced to exhibit them selves in an old out-house up a lane in King-street, a few doors from Pitt street; Kate and Jim on horseback, the former on Ned’s grey mare, and the latter on Kate’s pony; Kate is dressed in deep black and Jim in bushranger’s attire.”
“Before Messrs. Charlton, Dean, Moses, and Carpenter, at the Water Police Court this morning, James Gregory Tompkins and James Pringle were summoned at the instance of sub inspector Anderson, for that on the 23rd day of November, on the premises at the rear of No. 128, Pitt-street, in Sydney, they did permit to be exhibited to the public a woman named Kate Kelly, and a man named James Kelly, relatives of the notorious criminal, Edward Kelly, who was recently executed in the neighbouring colony, to the great damage and common nuisance of all persons therein inhabiting and passing, to the evil example of others in the case offending, and against the peace of the Queen.”
“The exhibition of Kate Kelly and friends is exciting much indignation along respectable people on the one hand, and drawing large crowds of people of the lower order on the other. Arrangements are being made for showing the horses on which Ned Kelly and Kate Kelly distinguished themselves. A good deal of money has already been taken.”
Her residence, a four-roomed slab hut, with a bark roof, stands in the middle of a paddock comprising about 40 acres. It is within a short distance from a mountain called Quarry Hill, whence a good view of the surrounding country can be obtained. Within the paddock there were two or three horses and as many cows, and there were a few fowls and a tame kangaroo about the house. But the place presented a gloomy, desolate appearance. There was a very small kitchen garden, but there was no other land under cultivation. Some of the panes of glass in the windows were broken, and, excepting that some creepers had very recently been planted at the foot of the verandah posts, no attempt had been made to beautify the house, or make this home look homely.
A brief discussion on the difficulty in choosing what to keep or cut when writing a book based on fact.
An excerpt from chapter one: Loyalty concerning the outlaw Kelly brothers and their siblings.
An 1881 poem about Kate Kelly.
Glenrowan 