The Write Way

9 November 2001

Hanged and Hung

Greetings,

It's just one Occasion after another out here. Tuesday was Melbourne Cup Day (won by a mare called Ethereal, by the way. Ethereal also won the Caulfield Cup the week before, making it a double for her female trainer, Sheila Laxon - the first woman to train a Cup winner in its 140 year history, no less!) Next Sunday, 11 November is remembered for three reasons:

1. It's Remembrance Day (Armistice Day - celebrated on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month - to mark the end of the First World War).

2. It's also the day (in 1975) that the Governor General, John Kerr, sacked our democratically elected government, led by Gough Whitlam (Grrr ...)

3. And it's the day they hanged Ned Kelly.

Ned's father, John Kelly, came from Tipperary, Ireland and was transported to Tasmania in 1841 for seven years for stealing two pigs. When he'd served his sentence, he went to Port Phillip in Victoria and two years later married a girl from County Antrim, Ireland, called Ellen Quinn. Ned was born at Beveridge, Victoria, in December 1854, the same year as the Eureka Stockade uprising in Ballarat, and was the eldest of eight children. So he arrived amidst a climate of political unrest and outright revolution - no wonder he turned out the way he did.

In 1866, John Kelly died suddenly, leaving Ned as the bread-winner for the family. His mother moved the children to Eleven Mile Creek, 240 kilometres northeast of Melbourne, where Ned become a resourceful bush-worker while still in his teens. He earned money fencing, rounding up cattle and is rumoured to have sometimes worked on the principle of "one-for-you, one-for-me" when it came to the cattle.

In these days, the best land was owned by wealthy squatters and what was left was up for grabs by the 'selectors.'

Under the selection system, families could take up areas of land set aside by the government and pay them off. In return for this largesse, selectors had to "improve" the land by clearing it, building a house, putting up fences and growing a crop. If they didn't, the land could be taken away.

The trouble was, that the squatters had usually claimed all the decent land and any that was near water, so all that was left was often almost unusable. For many it was an impossible situation with the plots of land too small, and the soil too poor for them to make a living.

In these days, there was no other assistance available for the poor, so it became a case of taking what they could or watching their children starve ... can you start to see where the Kelly legend started?

Faced with poverty, selectors often stole horses and cattle from the wealthy squatters and our Ned was just 16 when he was convicted of receiving a stolen horse and sentenced to serve three years in gaol. 

From that point, it was a constant fight between Ned and his gang, and the police, who were determined to break the spirit of the local troublemakers.

When he was 25, Ned and his gang came upon a group of police camped at Stringybark Creek and, fearing that they were in the area to hunt down and kill him, Ned called on them to surrender. 

Yes, you know what happened next, don't you?

The police fought back and in the melee that followed, three were shot. The Kelly Gang were then really in the poo.

For two years, Ned and the lads managed to evade the long arm of the law and in their spare time, they relieved two banks of their filthy lucre. At each robbery, Ned gave one of his hostages a letter in which he explained to the government how he'd been persecuted by the police. In these years, there were no more killings and soon the image of this 'heroic' bushranger began to take hold in the local imagination. He was never really a Robin Hood character - admittedly he took money from the rich - but the only poor he gave it to, were members of his own gang and his family.

In 1880, Ned and his gang made their last stand at the Glenrowan Hotel. They made themselves suits of armour and took on the police - the result was a foregone conclusion - the other three members of the gang were shot dead and Ned was taken alive - after suffering a total of 28 gunshot wounds to his arms, legs, feet, groin and hands (the only bits not covered by his armour).

Ned was put on trial for the murder of one of the police and was sentenced to death ...

Ned Kelly is part of the way we like to see ourselves out here - free spirits who are always ready to take on the Establishment, always ready to stand up for their mates against all odds, and who don't like being told what to do.

"For I need no lead or powder
to revenge my cause
And if words be louder,
I will oppose your laws".

Ned Kelly, The Cameron Letter, 1878

You can read what Ned thought, in his Jerilderie letter .

I know some of you may still be twitching nervously after reading that Ned was hanged on 11 November. This isn't an Antipodean oddity - it's really the word to use to describe execution by hanging. Ned wasn't draped artfully over the mantle-piece - the poor chap was strung up by the executioner. Pictures and washing are hung, but Bad Boys are hanged.

But enough of the Dark Side ... you know Christmas is just around the corner (where does the time go)? If you're lucky enough to have some holiday time over Christmas, I have a great suggestion for you - why not spend some time writing a book?

Yes. You.

It doesn't have to be the Great Novel, it can be a book about anything. If you have extensive experience in a particular field, why not write a book about what you've learnt? 

Are you a keen collector of something? Write a history of whatever-it-is.

Do you live in an area that has a chequered past? Write a book about it.

I know that you'd secretly like to - that's why you subscribe to this newsletter. You enjoy the sense of achievement when you've taken those jumbled thoughts from your fevered brain and made some sense of them on paper ... don't you?

Well, I know I do.

If you (or someone you know) is about to retire, trying your hand at something creative would have to be a great way to celebrate the start of the rest of your life. When my dad retired, the first thing he did was to head to an art supply shop to buy up tubes of paint, brushes, canvases etc. He'd always wanted to try painting, but he'd never had the time, so he spent the first six months of his retirement playing with his paint set in his shed. He had a ball and we always knew where to find him!

Writing a book offers the same sense of achievement - without all the mess!

If you think writing a book is something that has to take years of agonising, I have good news. Author, Steve Manning has put together a kit that contains books, videos and audio tapes to show you how you can write your book. It will take effort on your part - you have to follow the directions, but if you do, Steve actually guarantees that you'll have a book published within 12 months of starting the process. And if you can take a sabbatical - he says you can write your first book in just 14 days. 

What a great idea for a retirement or Christmas gift for yourself or that secret scribe near and dear to you. It only takes a moment to have a look (and you help add to my Running Away Fund in the process):

http://www.writeabooknow.com/welcome/write368now

Subscriber, Jeff Franco, suggested I include some sort of Contents indicator, for those who are pressed for time (see the Latin phrase this week). I felt it would look a bit odd to have something like the following (for example for last week's newsletter):

Prattling on about cat and budgie  

Corny Pun  

Horse Race  

Some Horse Idioms  

Bits about Books  

Bits about Movies  

Quiz etc

So I've compromised, and in future I'll put a header that tells you the main focus (and I use the term loosely) of the newsletter.

This week's quiz:

Match the word with its meaning: obdurate, sophomoric, fatuous, maverick, enormity, insularity, abrogate, odium, untoward, conciliatory

If your education needs a bit of a nudge - here are some more things you never knew!

Last week's quiz:

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