Boxing Day Snow [Sharon Hollingsworth]

Here is North Carolina we have had a Boxing Day snow! (Not that the USA actually celebrates Boxing Day, but ones like me and my best friend Lilith with connections in Australia and the UK have adopted it.) We go some years without any snow at all, or if we get any it is a dusting or just an inch or two. Only a few times in my life have we had any really significant snow amounts..I can count on one hand the memorable ones (March of 1980 remains 'the big one' everyone still talks about, with 16 inches falling). We got 6 plus inches today, a drop in the bucket as compared to friends (like Lilith) up North who measure their snowfalls in feet, but enough to make this entire area basically go into shutdown mode.

As with almost anything else I am reminded of the Kelly Gang in some aspect. Looking at a bleak landscape like this behind my house brought to mind the time the Kelly Gang were on the run and endured snowy conditions in the winter of 1879.

In The Argus of August 6, 1880 there was this bit:

An incident has leaked out about the career of the gang. Kelly has stated
that they had been amongst snow, and that in fact they had to clear
several feet of snow off a hut they lived in, and the deduction is that
they have lived for some time amongst the Bogong Ranges.


Then in The Argus of August 9, 1880 this was said:

Kelly has been making a number of statements about his career, but many
of them are so contradictory that it is difficult to distinguish what is
true or false. This, however, is proved, that for some time the gang
lived in a house that was frequently covered with snow, and that Kelly
had to clear the snow off the roof to prevent it from falling in. The
conclusion, therefore, is that at one time the gang lived either in the
Buffalo or Bogong Ranges.

There are other mentions of bitter weather endured by those in the hunt for the Kellys, particularly in Superintendent Hare's writings.

He wrote of one of the times he fell asleep in his hammock:

When I awoke in the morning my rug was frozen, the country round me was perfectly white with frost, and the men told me the running water in the creek close by was frozen.

He also spoke of the time the possum rugs were so frozen that they had to hold them before the fire to thaw before they could fold them.

Constable Faulkiner, one of the men in Hare's party testified before the Royal Commission board:

 ...That evening we watched the place with Mr. Hare, Canny and I; we stayed up in a potato field till about 2 a.m. in the morning. The other men were all round the house. Then Mr. Hare instructed Canny and me to go to Wangaratta. We got a party of police, and brought them back. We met Mr. Hare coming back, and he spoke to me. I would not speak to him at first. I did not know him, because his whole face was covered with icicles from the hoar frost.

Hare also related this cold weather incident in his book:

Bushmen think nothing of camping out for months, but ask any of them in the winter months to camp out without a fire, and see how long they will stand it. I remember once, when I was searching the mountains at the head of the Broken river, the weather was terribly cold, and the men were getting very down-hearted at not having any luck. Mayes came to me and asked me to let the men have a fire for one night, as they were very low-spirited, and were feeling the cold bitterly. He said, "I am sure if we could get some quiet spot in the mountains you could let us have one good warm, and we shall be all right tomorrow." I agreed, and took them to a most retired gully, and told them they might light a fire that night. They were so surprised, it acted like magic on them. They selected a large hollow tree, set fire to it, and there was a grand blaze. They heaped up wood all round, and sat all night enjoying themselves.
After I had had a good warm I took my hammock and went about a hundred yards from them, and kept, as it were, watch over them, because I never knew when the Kellys might have crept on us, and without any difficulty they might have shot the whole of the men standing round the fire; so I thought if they were attacked I could have assisted them.