Mrs Kelly: The astonishing life of Ned Kelly's mother by Grantlee Kieza

Author:Grantlee Kieza [Kieza, Grantlee]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-02-20T05:00:00+00:00

The search for the gang continues in the rugged Wombat Ranges. (Illustrated Australian News. State Library of Victoria IAN21/02/79/21.)

62 single-shot Martini-Henry breech-loading rifles in .577 calibre

8 Spencer repeating rifles in .52 calibre

3 single-shot Snider-Enfield carbines in .577 calibre

62 double-barrelled shotguns

20 old muzzle-loading rifles13

Across Victoria, ‘700 or 800 calico posters’ declare that the price on Ned’s handsome head has been increased to £1000 dead or alive. His three mates are still only worth half that, making a total of £2500 for the set of four.14

AFTER LEAVING FAITHFULL’S CREEK, the Kelly Gang ride triumphantly through the night. Assistant Commissioner Nicolson endures a humiliating train journey back from Albury. He finally arrives at Faithfull’s Creek half a day after the gang’s departure, embarrassed and ailing.15 He’s in great physical pain from ingrown eyelashes and in mental agony after letting the quarry escape.

At about 8.30 a.m. on 11 December, Nicolson’s train stops where the telegraph line was broken and he walks over to the Faithfull’s Creek homestead to meet a seven-man police party led by Detective Ward and Senior Constable Johnston.

Ward has examined the bonfire of the Kellys’ old clothes and found a woman’s hat and fan only partially burned. He tells Nicolson that it’s likely Steve Hart dresses as a woman to evade his pursuers.16

With the station’s groom George Stephens helping, a black tracker at the front and a blazing sun scorching their backs all day, the searchers spend hours charging about the countryside following the tracks of the three bay horses and the one grey, but finding no satisfaction. That night at a hotel in Euroa, most of the men are so fatigued they fall asleep over their food without ‘drinking a drop or anything of the kind’.17 Johnston, ‘the strongest and hardiest man of the party, a most energetic man’, is sprawled out dead to the world on a sofa at the side of the pub and can’t be woken even though water is poured on him.18

Reports abound of the gang’s whereabouts. ‘Police in civilian clothes, bearded and dirty from camping out, riding around the country armed with rifles and revolvers, [are] often themselves mistaken for bushrangers.’19 The Chief Justice of Victoria hears that the gang have been sighted cutting cabbages at ‘Mrs Rowe’s cottage’ near Euroa, while a squatter near Benalla says he’s seen the four shooting parrots near his house.20

Certainly, the Kellys are nowhere near where Nicolson’s search party is looking.

After another fruitless search in the dark that finishes at first light on 12 December, Nicolson flops into bed at 6 a.m. but is ‘heart-broken’21 and cannot sleep. He is ‘suffering great pain’ and is ‘nearly blind’.22

At 10 a.m. Standish arrives in Euroa, furious that ‘a splendid chance of capturing the outlaws at Faithfull’s Creek was lost’.23 He finds Nicolson ‘very much knocked up in appearance, and his eyes bad’,24 so he sends him back to Melbourne and calls for his favourite, Frank Hare, to take charge.

A decade after the two men raced to capture Harry Power, Hare has hit the lead in this even more urgent pursuit.

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