The Hunt for Ned Kelly

by Sophie Masson

  ‘Journalists,’ says Mrs Pickett. ‘Unreliable souls.’ I think she’s afraid he’s going to break Ellen’s heart or something, though Ellen’s never said she’s sweet on him. But then she wouldn’t, not to me at least.

  I have started back at Mr Ingram’s. He was pleased to see me. He showed me a new book that has come in from Melbourne, Cole’s Funny Picture Book, it is full of puzzles and riddles and pictures and stories. I spent a bit of time leafing through it. It is quite fun. I think I’d like one for my 13th birthday, which is a few days away. I will drop a hint to Ellen.

  This afternoon I saw Tom Lloyd. He was coming out of one of the hotels with Aaron Sherritt. They were deep in conversation and did not see me. But an hour or so later, when I went on an errand for Mr Ingram, I saw Sherritt talking with someone I was sure was Detective Ward, though he had his back to me.

  November 11

  Ellen developed one photo today. She caught the expressions of the girls well. Grace looks quite sad. It struck me that in a way she is like me, orphaned (well, more or less—her father is dead but her mother is in the living death of prison) and managed by a headstrong older sister. But I do not have brothers with a price on their heads and blood on their hands, or the dread of the police bursting in any time they want to do so. What must it be like to know the ones you love are being tracked like animals through the forest and offered up for sale to the highest bidder and there is nothing you can do about it?

  November 14

  I read something startling in one of the illustrated papers today. It was about that reformed bank-robber, Scott, that the professor told us about. It seems he has announced his intention of joining the Kelly gang! I wonder what the Kellys will think of that—if it is true of course and not just a figment of the reporter’s imagination, which is more likely. There is a letter in the paper too, expressing disgust that the public would actually pay money to go and hear a criminal like Scott speak, even if he says he has reformed. They say that the example of the Kellys has quite taken proper shame away from all criminals so that now they boast of their doings. When they read what Scott is supposed to have said, that person will be even more disgusted now!

  November 16

  My birthday. I got Cole’s Funny Picture Book! Not from Ellen but from Mrs Pickett, what a surprise! Also another book—Dumas’s The Black Tulip—from Ellen and a pen-wiper from Mr Church and a pack of cards from Mr Jardine and a set of bookplates from Mr Ingram. Tonight we are all—except Mr Ingram—going to one of the eating-houses and having a slap-up meal. Mr Jardine says he’s planning to get one of the Miner’s Specials down me, chops, bacon, sausages, gammon and more! A far cry from Mrs Pickett’s cabbage soup and watery stew. Not that I’m complaining. She has been very good to us.

  It is funny to think I am now thirteen. I am officially in my teens. Like Ellen. Though she is at the end of them, of course. But now she cannot boss me around as much. I am nearly grown up.

  November 19

  Amazing news! Three days ago, Andrew Scott, now calling himself Captain Moonlite, went with a gang of youths to a station near Wagga called Wantabadgery and held it up, taking many people hostage! It seems he does want to copy the Kellys, but everyone says he has not the brains for it. They are still holding the station. The police are going there in force, we will have to wait and see what happens. It has pushed news of the Kellys off the front pages for the moment, which maybe is what Captain Moonlite wanted!

  Ellen has finished a sample of the photographs. She has sent a message to Eleven Mile Creek.

  November 24

  The police siege at Wantabadgery has ended with several of the gang killed and the ringleaders, Scott and a youth called Rogan, captured. The hostages had terrible stories to tell about Scott, who they said was a maniac who had mistreated them, something the Kellys never did at Euroa or Jerilderie. Captain Moonlite’s career is over before it even really began. The preacher at church said it is a sad case, that the man had a chance of reform but that a mad desire for fame as big as that of the Kellys had tempted him back onto the evil path and tempted other lost souls into following him. We had to think about that, he said, and not make heroes out of desperate men like the Kellys, who would surely one day come to the same fate as Scott.

  November 29

  Mr Turner is back. Turned out he had been following the Scott story in New South Wales and had filed a number of stories with a newspaper in the United States about it. He said that he’d heard that when Scott said he wanted to join the Kelly gang, Ned, who despised the man, sent him a message saying that if Scott ever came anywhere near his sight, he’d kill him! The would-be Moonlite had been so stung, said Mr Turner, that he decided to show Kelly what was what by staging his own hold-up and proving he was just as good. Ellen says that if it’s true it is simply pathetic and that as far as she is concerned she has heard more than enough about the Kellys and does not care if she never hears about them again. Mr Turner looked surprised by this sudden change of mind, but I know what the matter is.

  My sister got a message today from Tom Lloyd to say his cousins had changed their minds about the photographs and no longer wanted them. I have never seen Ellen so angry as when she got that note. She went completely wild! She tore it into little pieces and then she tore up the photos she had already developed and she took the glass negatives and would have smashed them if I had not stopped her. It was all I could do to persuade her not to go to Eleven Mile at once and give them all a piece of her mind for wasting her time and trouble. I told Mr Turner about it in confidence a bit later and he shook his head sadly and said it was a shame, but I could not help noticing there was a little gleam in his eye as though secretly he was glad our plans had come to nothing and we had not stolen a march on him. He still has an ambition to talk to Ned Kelly himself, but he will not mention it in front of Ellen if he is wise. She has taken against all bushrangers and their families right now. It is best to let her simmer down.

  December 3

  The police have been camped out in caves near the Byrne homestead, as they have ‘reliable’ information Joe might be coming to visit his mother soon, or so Mr Jardine says. He heard it from one of the troopers who drinks at the same bar as he does. Also, apparently some days ago Dan Kelly was spotted on his way to Aaron Sherritt’s house. It seems the gang are back in their old haunts. No wonder the girls are not interested in the photos anymore. They have too much to think of if their brothers are really about, and surely do not want strangers buzzing around their homestead. I do not say this to Ellen, for she won’t hear the name of the Kellys mentioned. She is concentrating fiercely on her next batch of commissions. Mr Ingram will be one of her subjects!

  December 6

  Saw Aaron Sherritt in town with his fiancee, Ellen Barry. They are to marry later this month. She was looking tired and wan. Everyone says Aaron has a double life, caught between the Kellys and the police, and she must worry every day whether it will catch up with him. He does not look worried however, but his usual swaggering self.

  I was thinking about Captain Moonlite and his accomplice Rogan today, awaiting their fate in prison, for they will surely hang. A person never knows when they are going to die—except a condemned prisoner, who knows the exact day and hour. No matter what they have done, it must be a frightful thing.

  December 12

  A startling letter from Uncle Will today. Aunt Julia has been unwell with heart problems and he thinks we should come back to Melbourne. He says Aunt Julia wants us to as well, she has been calling for us. Apparently she feels guilty that she did not try to give us a home before! Well I suppose wonders never cease.

  Not so long ago Ellen would have scoffed at the idea. Now she talks about nothing else. These last few days there has been a positive chill between her and Mr Turner. I am not sure why, but am not game to ask. She says she is sick and tired of Beechworth, it is small-town and boring. Oh, she is so like Pa sometimes! He would get enthusiasms and then drop them and go on to the next,
and each time it was like the most perfect thing, but then it was all awful once he’d turned against it. But I am not too much against the idea of leaving. I like Beechworth, but things are a little dull at the moment and I would like a change.

  December 14

  We have said goodbye to Mrs Pickett and Mr Ingram and Mr Turner and all our friends in Beechworth, and are setting out tomorrow for Melbourne. The camera and tripod and boxes of plates have all been packed away for the journey, with a stout picnic box full of food that Mrs Pickett and her lodgers presented to us, most unexpectedly. I have taken all my new books, and my old favourites too, as well as a book Mr Ingram gave me to present to Uncle Will and Aunt Julia. It is a history of Beechworth, and very nicely bound. Everyone said they would miss us and hoped we would soon be back, but I suppose they knew it was likely we would not.

  On the road, December 15

  We started out late-ish and did not get very far today. Tonight over the fire, with our bellies full of good food, Ellen finally told me what had caused the coldness between herself and Mr Turner. After she had got the message from Tom Lloyd, Elijah Turner had confessed that he thought he’d succeed where we had failed, and had tried to speak to the Kelly girls himself, but had been told in very rude terms to go on his way. Upon which he had retorted he had heard they were vain enough to have their photo taken and why could they not spare a few words for him? Well, of course, said Ellen, that meant the girls immediately thought we were in league and that we had just been an advance party for one of those scribblers they hated. So they wanted nothing more to do with us. She asked him then if he’d gone before too, and he swore blind he hadn’t, that it was some other reporter, but that when he’d heard about it from us, it had given him the idea to go up there and try his luck.

  ‘I could have brained him then,’ she said cheerfully, ‘for ruining our chances, but now I’ve forgiven him. He was only doing his job I suppose, he is a fine man and I would be glad to see him in Melbourne.’ She blushed suddenly as she said that and I stared at her and asked her point blank if he had asked her to marry him. She told me crossly not be such a great lummox, and that if I said anything of the kind to Uncle Will and Aunt Julia, she would brain me and not regret it at all!

  Wangaratta, December 19

  Here I am sitting in a hotel room in Wangaratta and it feels unreal to be here, more unreal than the extraordinary event of yesterday, the strangest experience of my whole life.

  Yesterday morning we got up with the birds, harnessed up Laddie, re-secured all our belongings and started out on the road again. Around lunchtime we had stopped for a rest when Ellen suddenly decided that the spot we were in, with its tall trees, gentle slopes and mountain rearing in the distance, was just right for a photo. So we took the camera out and she set it up on its tripod and took a picture. She said we might take several views of the country along the way and see if we could sell a series of them to a postcard company or some such.

  Well, she had finished and was just shouldering the camera to take it back to the buggy (my job was to pack up the tripod and negative box) when suddenly Lorna growled, deep in her throat. We looked behind us and saw three horsemen coming down the slope in single file. They were all hatted, bearded and sunburnt. Two of them were strangers to us. The third, unmistakably, was Mr Thompson.

  He recognised us too. ‘Well and if it isn’t my young friends.’ As he drew level with us, I noticed he carried a bundle wrapped in a blanket. I could see the barrel of a gun sticking out. The other two carried similar bundles. One of them I did not know at all. Closer up I saw that the other wasn’t actually a stranger, but the man who had been with Mr Thompson when we’d seen him on the Yackandandah road. ‘And where are you off to this fine morning?’ Mr Thompson said.

  ‘To Melbourne,’ said Ellen, putting the camera carefully down. ‘For Christmas.’ Seeing the direction of his expression—the tripod leaning against the tree—she added, ‘We stopped to take a photograph. It is a picturesque spot.’

  ‘So it is,’ he said, smiling.

  It was then I opened my mouth and made a fateful clanger. ‘But with human figures to add perspective it would be even better, wouldn’t it, Ellen?’

  She looked startled, but saw the possibilities at once. She said, ‘Oh yes, it would.’ She smiled winningly up at Mr Thompson. ‘We could do it at a little distance, sir, so no-one would see your faces if you did not want it.’ He raised his eyebrows. But the other two looked startled, and then hostile. Ellen said, quickly, ‘I only meant, Mr Thompson, that I understand it may not be suitable for—for a policeman to be photographed in plain clothes—but with the shadows of the hats over your faces it will be easy to obscure the features and—’

  She did not get time to finish. The other two men gave a great shout of laughter, and Mr Thompson smiled broadly. Then he said, ‘Sure, and why not? Anything to oblige a lady. And a lady who needs to make her fortune, at that. But only one picture, mind. We have no stomach for standing about for more.’

  I couldn’t understand what it was they found so amusing. I had a strange little feeling creeping up my spine then, a sense that something was amiss. Ellen must have felt it too, for she was so flustered she even forgot to ask me to fetch the tripod, but simply hoisted the camera onto the buggy and hurriedly took the photo from there, with the background of the trees and the mountain in the distance. The men sat perfectly still on their perfectly still horses—the horses were very well trained—and when it was finished, Ellen put the camera away and the negative in its sleeve in the box and I packed away the rest of the equipment.

  Meanwhile, despite their professed hurry, the men dismounted and calmly went about preparing lunch, taking corned beef and bread out of their saddlebags and settling down to eat on a fallen log. Mr Thompson offered us some, but Ellen thanked him and said we should press on. ‘If you give me an address, sir, I can have a copy sent to you if you would like,’ she said.

  Mr Thompson smiled and said he’d like that very much. And then he looked directly at us with a funny gleam in his hazel eyes and said we should send it to his family. He believed we had met them already, they lived at Eleven Mile Creek!

  I have never before known the truth of the expressions ‘his heart stood still’ or ‘his blood ran cold’ that you see in books, but now I do, for both those things happened to me at that moment. I stared dumbstruck at Mr Thompson, and suddenly several things shook down in my brain and made sense and I knew why the Kelly girls had seemed vaguely familiar to me. Not because of an image on a poster but a living man.

  I dared to glance at Ellen and saw that she had gone completely white.

  ‘You can’t be …’ she stammered, but couldn’t get any further.

  ‘Sure, mates,’ said one of the others, grinning, ‘You are in the presence of Ned Kelly himself.’

  I cannot describe what I felt at that instant. I looked into the smiling eyes of the famous outlaw and I bleated the first ridiculous thing that came into my stupid head. ‘But you … you said Lorna Doone was your favourite book, the first time we met you!’

  This silly remark was met with the shouts of mocking laughter it deserved, even from my nervous sister. I could feel hot tears stinging at my eyes and wished the ground would open up and swallow me. But Ned Kelly didn’t laugh. He said softly, ‘And so it is. It has kept me company many a lonely time. Are you surprised at this taste in an outlaw, Jamie Ross?’

  I gulped. ‘I … oh no, sir.’ (Not that that was strictly true.)

  ‘I felt so close to John Ridd … so close. I have read the book so often I have worn out the pages,’ he said quietly.

  I nodded eagerly. ‘Me too! I know some of it by heart, sir—like that first time John sees the Doones coming down the mountain—do you remember?—Heavy men, and large of stature, reckless how they bore their guns, or how they sate their horses, with leathern jerkins and long boots—’

  ‘And iron plates on breast and head,’ he broke in, with a faraway look in his eyes
, ‘plunder heaped behind their saddles, and flagons slung in front of them; more than thirty went along, like clouds upon red sunset.’ He sighed. ‘They were bad men, the Doones, but they died well.’

  There was a silence. Ellen stared at us, astounded; but the other two men ate stolidly, apparently unmoved, as if nothing he did or said surprised them.

  ‘So you are a reader. Like me. And like Joe,’ remarked Ned Kelly. He jerked his head at the younger man and said, ‘Dan thinks we are both mad to love reading so much.’

  By that I knew that the younger man was his brother and that the other one could not be Joe. So it must be Steve Hart, I thought, though he did not at all look like his photos. Then suddenly something clicked in my brain and I blurted out, ‘Then Joe must be Mr Cook!’ I went bright red, for I had not meant to say it aloud.

  But Ned nodded and said that was so. ‘When you saw him in Beechworth he was meeting a Chinese friend of ours. We have our own spies, you see. And Joe has great contacts in the Chinese camp. He can even speak their language, you know.’ He smiled. ‘As to the names of Cook and Thompson, we used them in better times, when we did not have a price on our heads. It was merry work to use them again.’

  Later (I got called to dinner)

  Then it happened. Stupidly lulled into confidence, I dared to say, ‘It must weigh on you so, Mr Kelly, what has happened.’

  He looked at me and his face changed suddenly, and there came that hard shine in his eyes that I’d seen in Tom Lloyd’s, only much fiercer. He spat out that he had wanted none of it, if it wasn’t for those blanky-blank dogs of police none of them would be in this strait. ‘First there was that liar Fitzpatrick and my mother locked up for nothing and then the police hunting us as though we were mad dogs. We acted in self-defence at Stringybark Creek,’ he said savagely, ‘for never ever would I have committed murder, I am against taking life, always! But those men had come into the forest ready to shoot us down. Yet if Kennedy and Lonigan and Scanlon had thrown down their guns like McIntyre had, they’d still be alive today, as he is—we didn’t want to kill them but we had to, we had to! We killed them in a fair fight. They did not want to surrender. They kept shooting at us: were we to stand still and be shot full of holes? If the police had killed us without warning, they’d be heroes,’ he snapped. ‘We kill them in self-defence—and we’re fiends. But are policemen not men as we are? Are we not made of flesh and blood as they are, with families like they have? What makes them so much more important than ordinary men?’