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Sunday, December 5, 2010

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!

5 comments:

  1. Wild Wright..... he certainly was a character and a bloke I would have loved to have had a beer or two with.

    The last 11 months months I have been looking into the movements of Isaiah Wright & I must admit he has made tracking him down rather difficult, nevertheless I have managed to find.....what is believed to be his last resting place in the NT. Much work is still needed and obviously a field trip to the NT is in order, which I am planning for some time after the wet season next year.

    D. Rose has done a fair bit of work with the aboriginal of the NT and amazingly she has spoken to a number of aboriginal people who were able the tell a tale or two about gangs exploits during their outlawry days...... No doubt Isaiah Wright spoke highly about the boys as they sat around a campfire after a hard day work. Ned and the boys are forever remembered amongst the NT aboriginals.

    I'm currently piecing together something to upload on the net IE: photo of Isaiah's grave, site where he worked and died, etc.

    P.S.......Whist visiting the NT, I hope to include as part of my itinerary the Bojangles saloon and take a few pic's of the replica armour, which incidentally I think is that of Dans Kelly's!!

    Stay tuned!!

    www.kellyhaunts.org

    Joe.D

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  2. Joe, I am looking forward to your in the field research as relates to Wild Wright. Please let me know when you go live with anything at your kellyhaunts site so I can do an alert and post a link.
    It seems that Wild got just about as far away from Victoria as he could, doesn't it? That trip must have been quite arduous back in those days! I am still very interested in some of the Byrnes heading there, too.
    Oh, yeah, saw where you had given an article link elsewhere http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/18905412 concerning one of the many Dan Kelly imposters saying he had spent time in the NT, too! Gosh, how many fake Dans and Steves were there in total and why can none of them get their facts straight? ;)

    Bojangles looks like a fun place, be sure to get some snappies taken with you in them! :)

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  3. We can only wonder at what motivated Wild to move so far away from his family and friends so late in his life, when the trend for that mob (four in particular) seemed to be to stay in that locality and be near family.

    I had forgotten Barry McArthur's name, though not his furphy, a real corker, even in terms of Kelly furphies. I'd love to know which magistrate thought Ned had been substituted before they hanged the obliging chap who died in the OMG on 11 November 1880. Amazing that he didn't think of pointing it out to one of his mates in authority, or even writing a letter to the paper to complain.

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  4. Hi Shaz,

    Shall do.....looks like I'll put something up before the field trip to the NT. It's such an interesting part of Isaiah's life and I would like to uncover as much as possible.

    Yep I had such a good laugh with the newspaper article I posted on the forum! so many mistakes..... you see Shaz this is how so many of us that resort to the net looking for reliable info would get it so wrong. I have seen a number of these articles, but this recent one is a corker.

    bojangles! ohh yer! I'll take a few snaps but after a few cold ones ;-) seriously thou I'm really looking fwd to experiencing life in the NT.

    Joe.D

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  5. To one of the descendants who wrote in asking for more information on Stan Byrne....I tried to email you but the message came back as undeliverable. I will reply here and hope you see it. I am sorry to say that I don't have any further information on Stan or his station, I gleaned what little I found from the internet. I wish I could have been of more help. Maybe there is an historical society in the area that can be approached for information as the station was a rather large and important one?

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