My good friend, SBC expert Bill Denheld is talking to members of the BBM Facebook page about his search for the site of the Police murders shown in a couple of very famous photos taken at the time by professional photographer Mr F C Burman. Many people are claiming it’s all too complicated and too […]
Author: David
Lets all Celebrate the Glenrowan Siege
For the last ten or twenty years, in late June, Kelly sympathisers have gathered at Glenrowan to commemorate and celebrate the Siege of June 1880, the focus being Ned Kellys menacing armour and his so-called ‘Last Stand’, a desperate 15 minute act of insanity Kelly sympathisers think was heroic. It used to be a highly-organised […]
Book Review : “I was at the Kelly Gang Roundup”by Judith Douthie. Publisher NCS 2007
The title of this very interesting little book, published in 2007, is taken from the banner headline of an article of the same name published in the Border Morning Mail (now known as the Border mail, published in Albury-Wodonga) on August 18th 1944. The article was based on an Interview with 82-year-old David Mortimer and […]
BBM FACEBOOK PAGE MODERATOR FLOUNDERING AND MISINFORMING AS USUAL…
I don’t really give a rats about what happens on the BBM Facebook page…. except for two things : firstly I dont like it when people are misled by buffoons pretending to be experts, and second, the fact that almost every day of the week someone on it will reference me and my Page in […]
Another look at Kate Kelly: a response to Dr. Dawson’s review : Guest Post By David Dufty
This isn’t a review, but a response to one. Dr Stuart Dawson wrote a scathing review of Kate Kelly by Rebecca Wilson, firing within me the primordial defence mechanism of one author seeing another author under attack. I wrote a long response to that review, which grew so long that I’ve asked the proprietor of this […]
‘Kate Kelly: the true story of Ned Kelly’s little sister’ by Rebecca Wilson – a review by Dr. Stuart Dawson.
Having admired Grantlee Kieza’s 2017 ‘Mrs Kelly’, I was keen to have a look at Rebecca Wilson’s 2021 ‘Kate Kelly: the true story of Ned Kelly’s little sister’, thinking it would likely model itself on Kieza’s well-researched approach to Kelly history, albeit from a different angle to focus on a child of the family. […]
THE ESSENTIAL DETAILS OF EXACTLY WHAT DID AND DIDNT HAPPEN AT 11 MILE CREEK 145 YEARS AGO TODAY …
The fake news about the so-called “Kelly outbreak” has been the dominant narrative for decades, so its not going to be enough to correct it once and expect that from that moment on everyone will know the true story. For one thing, there are the mobs of Kelly supporters on pro-Kelly FB pages who are […]
Lachlan Strahan – ‘Justice in Kelly Country: The story of the cop who hunted Australia’s most notorious bushrangers’ – a review by Dr. Stuart Dawson
This is the second review of the excellent ‘Justice in Kelly Country’ to appear on this blog. For clarity in reading, this review will use ‘Strahan’ to refer to Senior-Constable Anthony Strahan (the author’s great-great-grandfather) who was deeply involved in the Kelly hunt, and ‘Lachlan’ to refer to Lachlan Strahan, the book’s author. […]
Justice in Kelly Country
The Story of the cop who hunted Australias most notorious bushrangers For a few minutes on October 28th 1878 at Stringybark Creek Ned Kelly wrongly believed he had just shot and killed Senior Constable Anthony Strahan, the subject of this biography. At least, that is what Kelly later claimed in the Jerilderie letter, repeating an […]
The idiotic ‘Hero or Villain?’ question is only ever asked by Sympathisers.
In the grandly entitled “The Author Speaks: On Understanding Historical Figures” Aidan Phelan writes about the so called “Ned Kelly – hero or villain?” argument and returns to two pet themes of his, the first of which is that all human beings, Ned Kelly included, are ‘nuanced complex and multi-facetted’. There is absolutely nothing new in that […]