True History of the Kelly Gang

According to a Sydney tour guide, a fifth of Australians are descended from convicts who arrived from England in the 19th century. Thefts of food often led to "transportation," and being Irish didn't help. This history helps explain the pride in convict ancestry today, and makes sense of the the folk hero status achieved by the bush ranger Ned Kelly, who was hanged in Melbourne Gaol in 1880, aged 26.

Peter Carey's novel about this revolutionary outlaw affords fascinating insights into colonial Australia. The novelist has researched contemporary writings by and about the real Ned Kelly to create the voice that describes "a colony made specifically to have poor men bow down to their gaolers." The fictionalized Kelly also describes his relatives as "Irish and therefore drunk with land and horses, all the old hardships soon to be forgotten."

As the story unfolds, new hardships pile up around him. With his twice-jailed father dead, twelve-year-old Ned tries hard to be be the man and protect the family. Living in a settler's hut where "the smallest flutter of a mother's eyelids are like a tin sheet rattling in the wind," he feels angry and powerless when she takes up with the outlaw Harry Power.

Looking back on his earlier self years later, Ned feels "great pity for the boy who readily believed the barefaced lie" designed to manipulate him into abetting Harry's crimes. Recalling his earlier naivete, he remembers the Harry's eyes "alive with emotion I mistook for sympathy."

Early in the book, Ned Kelly is portrayed as a sensitive and intelligent boy born into deep poverty and a troubled family and community. He saves another child from drowning without thought of danger to himself, and later, works to save his mother's land. Sadly, his honest efforts to raise and trade in cattle and horses avail him nothing. His decision to turn against the law is a conscious one, taken after many incidences of unfair accusations at the hands of the police.

Meanwhile, the new colony is poisoned by ancient tribal roles and enmities. Superstition persists, with the banshee "thriving like blackberry in the new climate." Old feuds are passed on to new generations: British against Irish, cousin against cousin, police against settlers, and "wild colonial boys" holding up trains, coaches and banks. Forced to fight another bush ranger, Ned wins, only to discover that he is now popular, which is "even worse than being hated as a traitor" although the conditions are much the same -- "every drunken fool" wants to fight him. Kelly also sympathizes with the misfit Steve Hart, whose father "filled his head with all them rebel stories."

Ned also understands "the agony of the Great Transportation that our parents would rather forget what come before so we currency lads is left alone ignorant as tadpoles spawned in puddles on the moon." He is cognizant of the sad truth that "poor people's love is cupboard love and all it took were £500 for the police to be led to the outlaw's secret door."

When his destitute mother is put in jail and her youngest baby taken, Ned resolves to get her out. The depth of the injustice around him results in a political awakening. In the doomed hope of staying on the right side of the law, he reports police corruption and misconduct to the powers that be, believing they will see justice done. The betrayal of this hope turns him into a revolutionary as well as an outlaw. Helping the disadvantaged gains him the admiration of a Robin Hood figure.

The voice Carey has created for Ned Kelly is rustic and untutored, nuanced and poetic. Reading this remarkable book is like hearing an actual voice from the past. In some respects, the history of the Kelly gang seems quaint and distant; at the same time, we see parallel conditions today. Tribalism, religious and ethnic prejudice, poverty and social disadvantage are still very much present in society, and they still lead to violence.

Below: Memorabilia of Ned Kelly are sold as souvenirs at Melbourne Gaol, now a museum.