GLENROWAN may be just a small township sandwiched between the two larger
towns of
Benalla and Wangaratta - off the motorway and where trains stop only
occasionally- but it
has a gigantic place in Australian history.
To faithful followers of the Ned Kelly story, including me DON FARMER, the
author of this narrative,
it is mecca. No research on the Australian icon and his gang can be complete
until a pilgrimage
is made to Glenrowan, home of the siege.
I lived in north-east Victoria and was a regular visitor to Glenrowan. A New
Zealander I am
now back home in the Shaky Isles where I am the chief reporter and deputy editor
of a daily
newspaper. The call of the Kelly Country is very strong however and, along with
my wife Kate,
I am planning a permanent return to the north-east where the ghosts of the Kelly
Gang have
lingered for 125 years.
When it comes to the siege of Glenrowan I doubt whether there is a Kelly buff
anywhere who
has not at some time asked himself - or herself- what if? What if the train had
been on time?
What if Ned hadn't trusted Curnow? What if Ned, Joe and the boys had chosen to
flee and not
to fight against overwhelming odds? What if they had shot their way clear and
ridden off in triumph?
It's all academic of course, because none of the above happened and no amount of
wishful thinking
can change history, but being able to mull over these things helps keep alive
our interest in the
greatest story on earth - the story that shaped an entire nation, that
broke the yoke of "old dart"
domination forever and left a legacy of courage and daring that served Australia
well in two
World Wars. Ironically the manner of the gang's demise has done more than any
other part of
their story to write them into the history books and into legend.
Four young men, outlawed and elusive and finally bailed up in a tiny pub, under
siege, outfitted
in cumbersome, home-made armour - and defiant! When all is lost the gang's
leader who had
somehow escaped the besieged inn, supposedly to stand down an army of
sympathisers poised
to help out, comes staggering back to the fray rather than dessert his mates. He
is gunned down
and wounded, taken into custody, nursed back to health only to be later hanged.
Its the stuff of
legend, a scriptwriter for a fictional drama couldn't ask for more. But the
siege of Glenrowan is not
fiction, it was fact and it left us many things to ponder.
Was the gang so tired and worn out from being hunted that they failed to heed
the warning signs
that heralded their downfall, were they over-confident of their ability to
master any situation, had
booze consumed their thinking or did they share a death wish that had taken them
beyond caring
of the outcome.
The police train was ridiculously late ( due in no small part to the cowardice
shown by the troopers
hiding in the Sherritt house), the carousing and drinking at the inn had
progressed to the stage
where alarm bells would normally have rung in Ned's head, keeping a watch on
hostages was getting
harder as time went by - it was a recipe for disaster. What if Ned had called a
halt to it all?
The Kelly Gang for sure would have lived to fight another day. Perhaps they
would have been captured
within a week. They may have stayed out of the reach of the law for a further 20
months, robbed a couple
more banks, left the state or "immigrated" to New Zealand. History
would have been changed, and the
Kelly story would most likely have been greatly weakened. What an impotent end
to the Kelly story it
could have been. Dan and Steve herding cattle in Queensland. Ned and Joe using
false names
fossicking for kauri gum in New Zealand's far north. All four never discovered,
never heard from again.
Just another band of outlaws! Instead - for whatever reason - the Kelly boys
went out in a blaze of glory
and Glenrowan took its place on the world stage. What intrigues me as much as
accounts of the actual
siege are the peripheral stories, and theories. I must confess its my opinion
that the lack of action from
sympathisers was greatly disappointing. Okay, so Ned may have struggled away
from the battle to warn
them off, but didn't they have a sense of deep conviction to the cause?
They had been very willing to pledge their allegiance when the money from Euroa
and Jerilderie was
being divvied up! They gathered at Greta after the event - to weep and wail,
drink and swear revenge.
All too late I'm afraid, but then maybe common sense won out. There could be,
after all, only one Ned Kelly.
No one was big enough, bright enough or charismatic enough to fill his shoes and
if a gang had been
re-organised it would most likely have been all over in a puff of smoke, the quintessential
poor relation.
When Ned, at trial, hinted that the Kelly's were not all done for he was either
clutching at straws, or bluffing.
In reality the fight had been fought. Didn't the police at Glenrowan show an
appalling lack of concern for
innocent people. Many of those trapped inside the inn were not there of their
own making, despite a liberal
sprinkling of sympathisers. In their haste to knobble the gang and to try and
win back some much needed
respect from the long, botched pursuit of the Kelly's the police were content to
pour lead at anything that
moved. The men, women and little children inside the inn had every reason to be
terrified and to carry
into later life an absolute distrust of the law.
Another vexing question is how to view Thomas Curnow. Being an unabashed
supporter of Ned I can't
help but curse the memory of the man. But, in reality did he do the right thing?
Curnow managed to
hoodwink Ned with a plausible story as to why he had to go home only to alert
the police train of imminent
danger. History has it that he saved many lives - maybe. What he did do was to
alter the ending, that's
not debatable. We will now never know if the train would have come to grief or,
if it had, how the Kelly Gang
would have behaved. Some would have it that Ned, Joe, Dan and Steve were all
geared up to take part in
a mass slaughter of the crash wounded. I doubt it. Ned Kelly was ahead of his
time when it came to enlisting
the support of the press and public. Would he have sacrificed any vestige of
support for his cause by a horrible
act like that? I can accept the train tracks were pulled up, likely to bring a
cautious train full of troopers to a
screeching halt at a spot where they could be bailed up at gunpoint by gang
members and their supporters,
or even forced into a full scale gun battle in the open air. The thought of Ned
moving among a writhing mass
of bleeding wounded and giving them the coup de grace - never! We have all read
of rockets, explosives,
concealed supporters and of proposals to establish a republic of north east
Victoria. Was Glenrowan intended
to be a blood bath or the start of a new beginning?
Was it Ned's intention to embarrass an already embarrassed police force by a
mass capture of troopers
to be used as a bargaining chip for a pardon for gang members and an end to
witch hunts and hostility.
A starting point for a republic, if that was truly ever a real intention.
In spite of all that has been written much of the reason for the showdown at
Glenrowan remains
unexplained. We would have to be inside Ned's head to get the answers and that,
unfortunately, became
impossible when the trapdoor opened under his feet on November 11, 1880. So, the
siege of Glenrowan
was a sad ending to a great story and the wonderful beginning of a legend. THE
END
