In Honour of Australia Day, January 26th

In honour of Australia Day, forthwith a poem about one of our national anti-heroes, Ned Kelly.

Famous for his suit of metal forged from the farming implements largely given to him by his struggling Australian peer group, Kelly was of Irish heritage, born to a father who had himself been sentenced to penal servitude in Ireland and deported to 'Van Diemen's Land', now Tasmania, Australia's smallest state. It was here that Kelly was born and lived the first 12 years of his life before moving with his mother and siblings to Victoria after his father's death.

After falling out with a neighbouring pig farmer (tho Kelly claimed this was over an argument about Kelly's sister), Kelly was declared a 'juvenile bushranger', despite the previous charges being dropped. From there Kelly went on to 12 years of law evasion, cattle theft, and, later, bank robberies. Disagreement amongst historians continues over whether Kelly was a common criminal, or the victim of police harrassment and the champion of an underclass uprising. Many see him as the defining figure in selector/squatter conflicts of this era of Australian history. Despite Australia's self-chosen identity as 'the lucky country', the holy grail, if you will, for those looking for equality and a new frontier, its settlement brought with it the old British conflicts of class, and Catholic vs Protestant.

With the lengthy Jerilderie Letter (1879), Kelly sought to define his grievances and defend his position as one common to the Irish Catholic selector. Currently in the State Library of Victoria, the Jerilderie Letter is considered one of the most extraordinary documents in Australia's history. Jerilderie was also the site of one of the Kelly gang's most notable robberies. Having broken into the local police station, overcome the police and imprisoned them in their own cells, two members of the Kelly gang, then dressed in the policemen's uniforms, rounded up various townspeople and kept them hostage in the local hotel, where they all passed the time with 'drinks on the house'. In the meantime Ned Kelly and Joe Byrne broke into the local bank, stole 2,000 pounds, and burnt the townspeople's mortgage deeds. It was acts such as these which added to the gang's popularity and notoriety.

The irony, of course, is that, although embraced as an Australian icon, Kelly's issues were largely those that related to his Irish heritage and that of his father. Despite being seen as quintessentially Australian, and even romanticized by some in the same manner as the swagman in the famous song, 'Waltzing Matilda', Kelly saw himself specifically as an outcast and a man on the run.

When Kelly was eventually captured by police, over 30,000 signatures were submitted demanding his release and the reversal of his death penalty. But the penalty was upheld and Kelly was hung on November 11, 1880. He was 26 years old.

The final stanza of the poem is written in the sing-along, heavily rhythmic style of the Australian poets of the 1800’s, such as Banjo Patterson. The fifth line, out of rhythm and rhyme, is as a theatrical ‘aside’ to the reader; ie although we’ve made of Kelly, with all his moral and legal dualities, a sort of anti-hero, Australia will always prefer their heroes, anti or otherwise, cut down to size. In Australia this is known as ‘tall poppy syndrome’ and is part of accepted Australian culture. In the case of Ned Kelly, we’ll accept him as an inherent part of our historical culture and laud him as such, but we still prefer him ‘dead and buried’.

Despite his death over 100 years ago, the issues of class struggle, land ownership, especially as it affects Australia's aboriginal people, the morality of the legal system, religious conflict, and issues of immigration are still alive and well in Australia. As such, this poem asks:


How Dead Is Ned

They say he hid to dodge the bullets
But I wonder if it’s true
That he hid to dodge adoring fans
The 30,000 signatures
That clasped unwilling Irish hands.

Was his last view a policeman’s gun
A harbinger of death?
Or a hazy shroud of eucalypt
The tightening weight upon his chest
As Australia’s favourite wayward son.

He saw himself the outsider
A hostage to his breed
Yet he became iconoclast
A symbol greater than himself
That held a nation’s essence fast.

Wrapped in metal, slits for eyes,
No billabong, no Matilda air,
His coffin, responsibility,
His heritage his father’s rage
Long doomed before Jerilderie.

Too many lies confuse the tale
Of that which died behind the mask
Did he willing go to an unmarked grave
Tired of an unfinished task
Uniting two sides of a broken grail.

“We don’t know what to think of you,
But we’re glad you’re one of us
We’ll overlook your shortcomings
And share Australia’s secret trust;
We like our poppies dead and buried.”