National Network for Equitable Library Service

Historian John Molony here reveals the circumstance and details of the life and death of Ned Kelly, attempting to establish why Kelly became so important in the history of Australia. 'Mind you die like a Kelly, son.' In these words of Ned Kelly's mother, we hear the pride and despair of a dispossessed people. The Kelly clan had hoped for a better lot in Australia than in Ireland. In the new colony, however, they found themselves once again destined to lives of poverty, rejection and powerlessness. With their dream of dignity, freedom and land denied them, some succumbed, others rebelled. Since his death in the old Melbourne Gaol on 11 November 1880, Ned Kelly has become part of the land and its memories. In this evocative, imaginative recreation of the Kelly story, John Molony unravels the tangled skein of a life over which legend has cast a spell.