The Northern Territory and Ned Kelly [Sharon Hollingsworth]

In a previous post I had mentioned Wild Wright who in the latter part of his life had gone to the Northern Territory where he died at Newcastle Waters. That got me to recalling that one of Joe Byrne's many cousins, William Joseph Byrne, had gone out to the NT to settle, starting out as a butcher and later acquiring more property and eventually starting the well-known Tipperary Station. I wonder if Wild happened to stop by the Byrne's place by any chance during his sojourn in the NT? Then, again, the NT is a pretty large place! (It is like how anytime some news from North Carolina makes international headlines everybody thinks it practically happened in my backyard even if it is hundreds of miles away!)

Another thing to do with Joe's cousin is how two of his sons fathered children by Aboriginal women. One of them, Stan, was the grandfather of former Essendon football star, Michael Long. (Long has said that his parents were 'stolen' and raised by missionaries on Melville Island.) We always keep hearing about (and from) all the modern day descendants of the siblings of the Kelly Gang members or others in the saga but never hear anything about the Byrne family descendants. Long was the first I had ever read of in that regard.

Author Graham Seal has said that "Ned Kelly is a hero to many Aboriginal Australians. Aborigines have adopted Ned Kelly into their cultures, in some cases conflating him with Jesus, other biblical figures, and Captain Cook."

Deborah Rose Bird wrote an interesting essay called "Ned Kelly Died for Our Sins" which can be found at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3654/is_n2_v65/ai_n28650374/?tag=content;col1  in which it tells about the Aboriginals in the Victoria River District of the NT and their myths and legends about Ned Kelly which seem to be what Seal was referring to.

And yet another Northern Territory connection I ran across during research is about a new play called "The Cook, The Queen, And The Kelly" in which the oral history/stories/myths about Ned escaping the noose (shades of the same furphy that was the premise for Barry McArthur's work of fiction "Out, Out, Brief Candle") and heading to the NT where he married a Chinese woman and had "Irish Chinese" children is explored (never heard that one before!). The website for it gives some background.

 From one of the producers:

...Later I read writings by my Dad’s eldest brother, (a collector of family stories), of how my great, great, great, grand father (a blacksmith) helped make the Kelly Gang’s armour. (This had been hushed up, as our family didn’t want to be seen as Kelly sympathisers.) From his wife we heard that her great, great, grand father, (a magistrate), believed that Ned had been substituted by another at the gallows and it was not he who had been hanged.....

Have a look as it sounds like a really intriguing bit of theatre:

http://tracksdance.com.au/html/work_2010_cook_queen_kelly.html

And last, but not least, if you ever make it out to Alice Springs, NT, stop in at Bojangles Saloon & Dining Room where a life-sized cut out of Ned Kelly "stands guard" at the door!