Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 494 - Nothing Is Over! Ned Kelly and the Most Insane Shootout in Australian History

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

He was Australia’s most infamous bushranger - a working-class rebel to some, a violent murderer to others. This week on Timesuck, we dive into the brutal, myth-soaked life of Ned Kelly, his war with the police, and the armored showdown that sealed his place in history.Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm a bush ranger. The earliest words attributed to Ned Kelly in public record from 1869. Bush rangers were outlaws, and no Australian outlaw became more infamous in life or in death than Ned Kelly. Kelly was one of the last true bush rangers in Australian history, marking an end to a wild and lawless era that mirrored the American Wild West. Fellow Australian outlaw, Aaron Sherritt, once said about him, I look upon Ned Kelly as an extraordinary man. There is no man in the world like him. He is superhuman. And he really was. Love him or hate him. You couldn't deny that he was one tough son of a bitch, ready to die for his beliefs. Ned grew up mostly in poverty in rural Victoria. His father was an Irish convict who had been shipped off to a penal colony in Australia's punishment, a man who'd later purchased a small farm, but it never yielded enough to keep his family fed, and he resorted to more theft to make up the difference. There were also lawbreakers on his mother's side, a whole bunch of them.

who committed mainly crimes of theft as well. And Ned grew up believing that if Australia's government hadn't stacked the deck against so many of its recent immigrants, if it hadn't created a system of land-owning haves and have-nots, that his family wouldn't have had to resort to crime. He believed that the British colonial government's oppression and working-class immigrants in Australia was no better than how his Irish ancestors had been mistreated and oppressed by the British across the world. He would also grow up believing his family was especially persecuted by the police. Maybe for good reason.

Maybe not. Either way, he developed a deep hatred for both the government overall and law enforcement in particular. Then when he was a young teen, the infamous Bush Ranger Harry Power would take Ned under his wing and show him the ropes of the outlaw life. And once Ned had got caught a few times and spent some time in jail, he now really hated the government and the police. And there was no going back from the outlaw life. He was going to be a bush ranger until the day he died. He would join a gang called DeGretta Mob before forming his. his own gang of Bush Rangers, who became known as the Kelly Gang, a gang that would very quickly

become the most infamous gang of Bush Rangers in Australian history. After a violent confrontation with the police at his family's home in 1878, Kelly was indicted for attempted murder, and he fled into the bush with his associates, where they soon killed three police officers hunting them. And now the Kelly gang were declared outlaws by the government of Victoria legally, and a massive reward was offered for their capture and return, dead or alive. They could legally be shot on site. And this status would set up an infamous showdown that will go down as the craziest battle between bush rangers and law enforcement of all time. I can't wait to share it with you. This week we'll learn about the history of bush range in Australia, the tensions between squatters and selectors that led up to it.

We'll meet the infamous Ned Kelly and learn more about his short and brutal life as one of the last, bloodiest, and also most beloved bush rangers in Australian history in this historical Wild West, armored suits, nothing is over, blazing guns, addition. of TimeSuck. This is Michael McDonald, and you're listening to TimeSuck. You're listening. Well, happy Monday. Welcome or welcome back to the cult of the curious. Dan Cummins, a suckmaster. Man so goddamn proud of the brave, upstanding,

inspiring citizens of Minneapolis right now. It fucking hurts. And you are listening to TimeSuck. Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifina, praise be to Good Boy Bojangles, and Glory B to Triple M. I have been pushing ahead for months. to try and give myself some breathing room with all the curated content I kick out each week

between this show and scared of death. And this episode was recorded back on January 26. Before we get into today's episode, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge something very real and very heavy. I'd like to pay my respects to Renee Good and to Alex Preti. Like many of you, I've seen the videos surrounding their deaths. And once you have seen something like that, once you have watched human beings die at the hands of the state in your own country, you don't get to pretend you didn't see it. I refuse to reject the evidence of my own eyes. This is not about left versus right.

It is not about party loyalty or internet team sports. It is about whether we are okay with lethal force being used against citizens and protesters in ways that clearly escalate fear rather than protect human life. Alex Preti's final words were reportedly, Are You Okay, spoken to a stranger he was trying to help? Renee Good's final words were calm and forget

giving to the same ice agents that opened fire on her. Those details matter. They tell us something about who these people were in their final moments. The right to peacefully protest is deeply American. So is the idea that law enforcement exists to protect life, not terrorize communities. When government officials respond to videos like these by asking us to ignore what we can plainly see, to distrust our own eyes and ears, something has gone so very, very wrong. George Orwell wrote in 1984,

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final most essential command. So don't fucking do that. Don't let loyalty to any politician, party, or movement override your basic humanity or your ability to observe reality. To the people of Minneapolis and Minnesota, I see your courage. This city has meant a lot to me. Man, heavy stuff.

that city's meant a lot to me personally, you know, from recording my first comedy album at Acme Comedy Club, to recording the most recent special at the Parkway Theater, smart crowds, and fucking kind crowds. People who care so deeply about community. I also want to acknowledge the members of the Minnesota National Guard, seen offering coffee, donuts, and warmth of protesters. Right, that right there. Fucking right there. Treating people like people. That is how you deep escalate. That is how you show fucking strength. It's how you win hearts and mind. So kudos to those National Guard members. And I know a lot of Minnesota police officers have been very helpful as well. And kudos to them. Can't imagine what they're going through. I know speaking about this will surely

cost me some listeners. And that is okay. I don't wish harm or hatred on anyone who disagrees with me. I just hope that more of us can choose curiosity over reflex, over knee jerk, compassion, over denial. And that's it. So just want to fucking share some love for people in Minneapolis and Minnesota, to the families of the victims. And what a fucking terrible state we are in right now. But I do think we will get out of it in large part because of cities like Portland, cities like Minneapolis,

inspiring the rest of the world with their courage. Now let's talk about somebody that this actually kind of relates to, right? Somebody who was an outlaw, at least in their own mind, because, you know, they felt it was the only way to get by thanks to a tyrannical government. Let's get to some escapism. Time to wild west it. Let's get really, really west, like over 8,000 miles west to the most western portion of the American wild west. So fucking west, bro.

Back when it was equally, if not more wild. Nice little mash up of a little bit of yip, yip ya, a little bit of good day, mate. Coming up after I push this button. Okay, structure-wise. I'm going to start off today with the brief overview of Ned Kelly's legacy in Australia, followed by an examination of the historical context of bush ranging before dive it into a timeline of Kelly's life. Ned Kelly is one of the most famous slash infamous Australians ever, right up there with Margo Robbie, Hugh Jackman, Mel Gibson, Steve Irwin, the ACDC guys, the Beegeys, Silver Chair, don't forget about them. Men at Work, Oingo, Boingo, that one breakdancing lady from the Olympics, and Kevin Rudd, the former Prime Minister,

who was once caught literally eating his own earwax on camera. Academic Graham Seale, a professor of folklore at Curtin University and the director of the Australian Folklore Research Unit, wrote, Ned Kelly has progressed from outlaw to national hero in a century and to international icon in a further 20 years. The still-indigmatic slightly saturnine and ever-ambivalent Bush Ranger is the undisputed, if not universally admired, national symbol of Australia.

A seal argues that Ned's story taps into the Robin Hood archetype and the myth of Australian bushland is a place of freedom from oppressed or oppressive authority. Kelly's infamous siege and last stand, Glenn Rowan, which will cover extensively in the timeline because it was pretty

fucking badass and the main reason by far I chose this episode was a big international story. Ned's wild outfit of iron, bulletproof armor to weigh just a tick under a hundred pounds, looked like something out of a low-budget 80s action movie, something kind of like Bush League Robocop was unprecedented and sparked widespread fascination and secured his

international infamy. Kelly Asin's been featured in a great number of songs, poems, fiction, nonfiction books, newspaper accounts, magazine articles, documentaries, podcasts, and so much more. He's a subject of public fascination and artistic imagining even before he died at the young age of 25. In the midst of his crime spree, a play about him and his gang titled Vultures of the One Bombat Ranges. That's a great name. Already being performed in Melbourne. Another play, Catching the Kelly's, debuted the next year.

The first ballads about the gang appeared in 1878, becoming a popular subgenre and a form of protests. Roughly a century later, non-Australian musicians like Wayland Jennings, Johnny Cash, fucking love those guys, would still be singing about Ned Kelly. Kelly was also, or has also, been part of Australian cinema since the 1906 release of the story of the Kelly Gang, which was the world's very first dramatic feature-length film. So that's some cool trivia right there.

Kelly was and still is today pretty divisive figure. He quickly became a symbol of lower-class rebellion in the context of increased poverty in northeastern Victoria in the 1870s and land conflict between the selectors, small-scale farmers, and the squatters, wealthier pastoralists with a lot more. political influence and the money to bend the law in too many instances to their will. Since tensions between squatters and selectors is crucial to understanding the Ned Kelly's story,

let me explain these groups and their relationship with one another. Squatting, which occurred before during and after Ned's time, was the act of occupying tracks of crown, aka government land in Australia, typically to take shit on it, to squat, you know, and fucking unload. No, to Gray's livestock. kind of like homesteading here in the U.S. I mean, they could shit on their land. I mean, it was theirs.

No one was going to stop them. I'm sure they did. That's not what the term squatter comes from. Most squatters initially held zero legal rights to the land they took as their own. They just went out and grabbed that shit, often to the detriment of Aboriginal peoples already living there, often to their fatal detriment since they got fucking murdered left and right. Thanks to a lack of historical documentation,

we don't know exactly how many battles were fought with local tribes or exactly how many may have died. But the total is believed by most historians, who I've come across to be in the tens of thousands. The colonial government, happy to have colonists rather than the indigenous people occupying the land typically did very little to nothing to stop this. These squatters generally came from the upper echelons

of early colonial society, people with the money to buy a bunch of livestock and pay others to tend to them, and they first really began to push inland away from the coastal towns in the 1820s, just taking huge swaths or so-called runs of land to raise mostly cattle and sheep on. As wool began to be exported to England

and the colonial population increased and there were more and more people needing to eat more and more meat, the occupation of pastoral land for raising cattle and sheep progressively became more and more of a very lucrative enterprise, leading to the rise of what was called

a squatocracy, combination of the word squatter and aristocracy, nod to the immense socio-political power that this group came to possess. Also kind of sounds like a bunch of wealthy nobles taking shits out in the shits out in the woods together, doesn't it?

Just a squatocracy. I guess it doesn't have to be in the woods. Maybe just a bunch of people just, you know, I don't know in a fucking line, holding hands, taking shits. Maybe that's just me. These squatters controlled

so, so much land is insane. Sir Sidney Kidman, why are they considered the most prominent and largest landholder in Australian squatocracy history? No relation to Australian actress Nicole Kidman, it seems.

By this Kidman's death, by the time of his death, in 1935, he was born in 1856, he controlled and estimated 107,000 square miles or over 68 million acres of pastoral leases. That's fucking crazy. That's almost a full 4% of all of mainland Australia.

In Australia, the term of squad are still used today to describe large landowners, especially in rural areas with histories of pastoral occupation. And for a while, these guys didn't have to pay shit for all that land, water access, and livestock food that came with it. So their livestock profits were fucking immense. Then they built up vast fortunes rather quickly.

Right? It's a lot easier to make a lot more money ranching if you don't have to pay a mortgage or a lease fee. Or, you know, if the fee is just so nominal, it might as well not exist. And that's what happened in 1836. A small fee was required of squatters for grazing rights on a large run of land. But it was only 10 pounds a year. Nothing compared to what the biggest squatters were certainly making on their wool and beef and, you know, just the meat from the sheep. and soon many of these squatters used all their largely tax-free profits to either buy or lease gigantic tracts of grazing land, right?

Bigger, more tracks, often a combination of both, right? They'd be able to buy the best portions of the land with the best soil and water access and then lease the rest. In the colony of Victoria, where the story of Ned Kelly takes place, the 1860 Land Act was passed to combat this when Ned was six years old. You know, try and stop the growing class divide between the squatocracy. and everybody else, they wanted to let a bunch of other ranchers and farmers in on this action, not just in an effort to keep most of Australia from being a place where there were a handful of incredibly wealthy landowners in most areas and everybody else would have to feed off their table scraps, so to speak, but also to bolster the white non-Aboriginal population of inland Australia and

just have more ranchers living in there in the inland overall. The Land Act allowed free selection of crown land in theory, including land already occupied by massive squatter pastoral leases or land not leased to squatters but used by squatters nonetheless for their livestock. You can see how this would cause problems, big problems. People don't generally like to let go of some of their power and access to further wealth building once they've gained a taste for it. Similar land acts will be passed in Victoria throughout Ned's childhood in 1862 and 1869, and squatting landholders' reactions to these laws during Ned Kelly's childhood would definitely help push him toward being the bush ranger he was.

Squatters in Victoria marginalized poor selectors, like the Kelly family, for example, by, as I mentioned, monopolizing all the best fertile land and water access, which not surprisingly led to

a lot of violent conflicts. Right? Just, oh, congrats on your new land, Kelly family. Wait, what? I'm sorry? Wait, what are you complaining about? That it's damn near impossible

to grow enough to keep your dairy cattle fed? That there's not enough water for them to drink? Oh, dang it. That blows. I don't, I don't have that problem at all. I have like a thousand times a livestock you do and plenty of water for all of them.

That's bummer. The new law legally enabled selectors to buy small surveyed plots of 40 to 320 acres of land but again often on land already leased by wealthy squatters. This of course threaten the squatters, massive pastoral holdings, the legality of which was now obviously

in question. Selectors in theory and legally could pick the best well-watered parts of a squatter's leased run and runs were again giant tracks of undeveloped land, destroying the viability of a large portion of the land, but in practice, that didn't happen very often. Squatters fought back by doing something called dummying, hiring people to work around portions of the new laws, and buy important pieces of land in those 4, 320 acre plots on their behalf,

and or peacocking, purchasing key water sources and water access to make the surrounding land useless to selectors, but still valuable to them since their cattle, sheep, horses, et cetera, could still get the water access they needed. So, when Ned was growing up, when he was a child, teen, and a young man, he saw firsthand how these land acts put his and other selector families into direct conflict with the squatocracy. Still makes me picture. Big group of aristocrats taking shits together. Widespread fraud and intense legal disputes over boundaries and who really own what often led to violence thanks to the little guys. The selectors like the Kellys being coerced into pain for shitty land, they couldn't do much with and being pushed.

and being pushed off betterland by families who could afford to hire the muscle to enforce what was best for the squatocracy. While Kelly would be hated by the squatters he stole from, makes sense, found a lot of support, a lot of support for many of the other lowlier local selectors and poor and middle class Australians overall who saw him as something akin to the mythical Robin Hood. To them, Kelly would embody beloved Australian characteristics such as standing up to corrupt authority, siding with the underdog, fighting and fighting hard for your belief. Leaves. Kelly's scholar Ian Jones, author of the book Ned Kelly, A Short Life, wrote that after Ned's death, a Robin Hood-like figure survived, good-looking, brave, a fine horseman and bushman in a crack shot devoted to his mother and sisters, a man who treated all women with courtesy, who stole from the rich to give to the poor, who dressed himself in his enemy's uniform to outwit him. Most of all, a man who stood against the police persecutors of his family and was driven to outlawry

when he defended his sister against a drunken constable. Such was Ned Kelly the myth. Hard to ascertain exactly how much truth there is in all of that. Okay, now before we get into the timeline, let me talk about your mom for a little bit. What she went up to? How's her health? Blood work, been good?

Work going well? Does she seem more stressed than normal these days? She's been having to deal with menopause. On top of doing fucking everything for you and your family, but never getting recognition for being both the engine that keeps your family running and the glue that holds everything together that you feel unseen, neglected, ignored, taking for goddamn granted. Have you complimented her recently?

You know, her hair's different, look good. Do you even notice? Have you told her she's amazing? True boss, bitch? Have you thanked her for loaning you that money over the holidays a couple years ago? Or making you your favorite meal when you were feeling down about not getting that promotion or giving you unlimited hugs when you were dealing with your own shit, not even thinking about the kind of shit she has to deal with?

Do you even fucking realize how one side of this relationship has been, huh? Okay, now that that has been thoroughly addressed, let's talk about Bush Rangers, since Ned Kelly is considered Australia's most famous Bush Ranger. Bush Ranger, obviously, is somebody who likes a lot of hair down there and isn't afraid to really work with it. Try and tame it, you know, try and pound pleasure it into submission. Someone who explores that bush fearlessly.

Isn't afraid to get a hair stuck between some teeth, isn't afraid of a musky scent, getting trapped in that bush. I mean, it's fucking human. What do you expect? It's a jungle down there. But that's okay. Because some people, some fearless rangers, they like that jungle. They like to go on safari.

They want it rough. They want it wild and unkempt. Sorry, that was probably too much bullshit back to back. Allow me to refocus. If you will, kind, sir, or madam. Bush Rangers were armed robbers and outlaws who lived in the Australian bush between the 1780s and the early 20th century. And the Australian bush is the country's vast, untamed natural landscapes,

predominantly characterized by native eucalyptus forests, woodlands, and shrubs. In modern times, the term bush also frequently used to refer to communities, farms, and towns away from the coasts. Back in Ned's day, it was basically synonymous with wilderness. And so-called bush ranging had been long before, or had began, excuse me, long before Ned's time, soon after the British began to settle the continent with the establishment of New South Wales as a penal colony in 1788. Most of the early bush rangers were escaped prisoners or escapees from the properties of landowners. to whom they were assigned to be indentured servants. They were known as bolters.

Back then, men who preferred trying to survive out in the rugged bushlands, full of plenty of snakes and other critters that can kill, long stretches between accessible water and not always friendly indigenous peoples to prison life. The earliest documented use of the term Bush Ranger appears in the February 1805 issue of the Sydney Gazette, which reported that a cart was stopped between Sydney and Hawkesbury by three men whose appearance sanctioned the suspicion of their being Bush Rangers. English judge and royal commissioner John Biggie described bush ranging in 1821 as, quote,

absconding in the woods and living upon plunder and the robbery of orchards. Robbery of orchards. It's a very nefarious way to describe somebody just like, you know, picking some fruit for themselves. I mean, yes, theft if it's not your orchard, but still the robbery of orchards. These fruit pickers must be stopped.

Charles Darwin wrote in 1835 that a bush ranger was an open villain who subsists by highway robbery, and will sooner be killed than taken alive. By the 1820s, the term was being used to describe those who took up robbery under arms as a way of life and hid out in the bush. First notable bush ranger of this period was an African convict by the name of John Caesar, who stole food from settlers and briefly fought in what was called Pemlewoy's War. Pemelway was an incredibly brave and fearless Aboriginal war.

who tried to repel the British invasion of Australia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1790, he launched what would be a 12-year war. He would survive countless skirmishes and injuries during that time to the point that a legend grew that he had some kind of fucking magic about some, he was some immortal Highlander impervious to British guns or steel.

I'll share a bit of the story of one of his allies, Bush Ranger John Caesar, to illustrate how being an outlaw, not necessarily synonymous with being a bad guy. Right? Sometimes when the law is, unjust. Those who are the most just, actually, are the law's biggest breakers. One of the very first Africans to arrive in Australia, Caesar was born a free man on the island of Madagascar in 1763. He was then taken as a child, sold into slavery, originally taken to the American colonies. He first arrived in either Virginia or South Carolina in late

1770s. Identifying records are pretty sparse for slaves from that time. By 1786, at the very latest. He was definitely in England where he was still enslaved. His slave owner was a British loyalist who had returned to England during or directly following the Revolutionary War. Some historians think he most likely traveled to England in 1783, arrived in the area of Spithead, an area that took his name from a spit of sand off of the coast, but it sounds like a name for a pretty low-rent superhero. Right, fucking Spithead! Behold it is Spithead! Spidhead's power were cursed. I guess depending on how you look on it. it could be just having an excessive amount of saliva,

the ability to launch large amounts of it at his enemies, who then get blinded for a moment, struggle to breathe, but mostly are just fucking grossed out. Anyway, in early 1786, Caesar was charged with stealing 12 pounds from a local residence. Later that same year, March 13th, tried at Maidstone in Kent

for stealing another 12 pounds from another residence. His sentence was being sent to the brand new British penal colony of New South Wales for seven years. He arrived in Botany Bay with the first fleet. the fabled first fleet, but not totally fabled because it's definitely real. January 19th, 1788, and Caesar was sent to work at Garden Island, one of the harshest penal colonies in New South Wales. There he became known as Black Caesar for unknown reasons, and he gained a reputation as a conscientious and hard worker. And I'm being sarcastic when I say for unknown reasons.

Obviously he was called Black Caesar because he looked like Julius Caesar. And I'm guessing black was his favorite color. still being sarcastic. Convics at Garden Island were persistently malnourished, due shockingly to not being given enough food to eat. Garden Island was intended to provide fresh vegetables for the fledgling colony

but attempts to grow food mostly unsuccessful. The weekly allowance for convicts in 1790 was one kilogram of pork, 1.2 kilograms of flour, 1 kilogram of rice. That's just 2.2 pounds of meat a week. Another 2.2

pounds of rice, a little more than 2.5 pounds of flour. Caesar was six feet tall, muscular, doing manual labor out in the heat all day every day, and therefore, if you know fucking anything about how human nutrition works, that was not nearly enough food for a young, big, strong man working his ass off the after day. So, naturally, he was fucking hungry all the time, and he took to stealing more than his allotted rations. And I would have done that as well, right? Hunger pain sucks. I imagine most of us would have done the same. eventually he got caught And on April 29th 1789

Caesar was tried for theft and sentenced To a second term of indentured servitude In the colony this time for life Life in prison For trying to get enough to eat A little fucked up For all we know the money he stole earlier in England Was stolen in an attempt for him

Just to gather up enough money to escape enslavement Or buy enough food to not be hungry there either Caesar escaped Took to the bush a fortnight later Reportedly with rations An iron pot to cook some stuff with a musket plus ammunition stolen from a marine named Abraham Hand. Mr. Hand.

Sounds like a fucking clue character or something. British administrator, David Collins, the colony's judge advocate, responded by labeling Caesar, quote, an incorrigibly stubborn black. He's so stubborn! He just keeps wanting food when he's hungry. What the fuck? As he fucking then chomps not a big old turkey leg or some shit.

Caesar was then spotted steel in a brick making gang's rations. on May 26, right? That fucking stubborn son of a bitch Just won't stop trying to eat. He was pursued but not caught. On the night of June 6th, Caesar struck again. Stealing more food, what the fuck?

From the house of Zachariah Clark, the colony's assistant commissary for stores. And this time he was caught by a convict named William Saltmarsh. Oh, good job, Billy. Doing the Lord's work, you fucking bootlicker. Caesar was described by David Collins after his first recapture is, quote,

so indifferent about meeting death. that he declared while in confinement, that if he should be hanged, he would create a laugh before he was turned off by playing off some trick upon the executioner. Holding up such a mere animal as an example was not expected to have the proper or intended effect. Okay, David?

Yeah, what kind of animal keeps trying to get food when he's hungry? I'm sure you would have been way more noble than that, buddy. Instead of being hanged, she was sent back to Garden Island to work in chains now. and in addition to his rations, he was also supplied with some extra vegetables to appease him from the garden, keep him in line. After months of good behavior, he was finally allowed to work with his chains removed and he's off again into the bush. Sign our motherfuckers. December 22nd, 1789, Caesar escaped in a stolen canoe with a full week's provisions.

Then a few nights later, this bush ranger, this fucking outlaw, this hardened criminal, stole another iron pot to cook stuff with. and a musket and some ammunition to hunt and steal food with. And now for a few weeks, he sustained himself by stealing food from local Aboriginal people and robbing colonist gardens. But then during his scavenging, he struggled to survive after he lost his musket. During one subsequent food raid, without his guns, he got speared by an Aboriginal person, who I can't blame for depending their food. January 30th, 1790.

Badly wounded, he returned to camp the following day, surrendered to the authorities. Then he attempted to clear his name by explaining he had been wounded whilst to try trying to retake some cattle that the aboriginals had stolen from the colonists. The authorities were certain that Caesar had made up this story to avoid a lashing or worse, and he was sent to a hospital for his injuries. He healed. He was pardoned for his recent crimes. He was not freed. Sent to another labor camp, this time on Norfolk Island.

He would escape a few more times before redeeming himself in the eyes of his British masters by repelling an attack by Pemawoy. The guy talked about earlier and other Aboriginal warriors, even directly wounding Pemaway in hand-to-hand combat by cracking the man's skull. But still not actually freed for that because the system was stacked against him. And he would escape one last time before being shot and killed by some men hunting him down like an animal, February 15, 1796. Dead at the age of 32 or 33. So that's so-called Bush Ranger.

Doesn't exactly sound like an outlaw, does he? Doesn't sound like some hardened criminal avoiding an honest day's work. No, he was just a man living in the society where, where his primary crime was being black. And if he didn't want to work as a slave, if he wanted to eat more than a shitty allotted rations, being an outlaw, a bush ranger, a bush ranger, that was the only other option.

I'm sure it's fucking annoying to Australian listeners. How every time, or nearly every time an Australian topic comes up, at least for a moment, I feel like trying to have an accent, even though I know I suck at it. I don't know why I feel so compelled to him. Anyway, other bush rangers would fight alongside indigenous Australians in frontier conflicts.

The government tried to end this collaboration by rewarding Aboriginal people for returning convicts to custody, turning one exploited, marginalized group of people against the other classic power and control moved by the powers it be. Aboriginal trackers would play a significant role in the hunt for a number of bush rangers. Escaped convict bush rangers would become

particularly prevalent in Van Diemen's Land, the modern day state of Tasmania in the early 19th century. Van Diemensland. That's a fucking badass name. Sounds like something out of a video game. It sounds like a place where pirates live, or Dutch demon hybrid creatures. Infamous Bush Ranger, Michael Howe, the so-called lieutenant governor of the woods, led a gang of up to 100 members at one point,

engaged in what amounted to a civil war with the colonial government in Van Diemen's Land. Some referred to him as the Demon Bush Ranger, or the terror of Van Diemen's Land. It's fucking dope. Arrested for robbery in 1811. He was sent to the island to be an indebted. entered servant in 1812, but he declared, having served the king, he would be no man's slave. And he quickly took off into the woods. Rated for years along with some other Bush Rangers, even ran off a governor. Eventually in the fall of 1818, he was tracked down, killed, and

beheaded. And his head put on display to the public outside of the old Hobart Penitentiary and the intersection of Brisbane and Campbell streets. A bush ranger would thrive in many parts of Australia during the colony's mid-19th century gold rushes then. A whole bunch of outlaws, of all sorts, roam the goldfield. of New South Wales in Victoria. And these guys weren't all people who had basically been sold off into slavery and had resorted to crime in order to live free.

Some of these guys were truly outlaws in the sense of ruthless, unscrupulous men who would rather rob than work, men who would kill you not just for survival but for greed. Gold gave Bush Rangers access to easily transportable wealth and the isolated gold fields

were the perfect environment for crime to flourish. Right? Makes sense. There were several major gold robberies in Victoria, in 1852 and 1853. Three Bush Rangers would be hanged during that era in front of large crowds for their roles in robberies. Many of these new Bush Rangers were the sons of ex-convicts

who wanted a life with more excitement than farming or mining. These outlaws, Rob Banks, held up stage coaches, raided pastoral estates, the Gardner Hall gang, one of the most infamous groups of Bush Rangers operating in Australia in the mid-19th century, led by Frank Gardner and Ben Hall. And before I share a story of a big heist they pulled off, time for today's first to two mid-show sponsor breaks.

If you don't want to hear these ads ever again, please sign up to be a space lizard on Patreon. Help us make monthly charitable contributions, get the catalog, ad-free episodes, three days early, and more. Thanks for listening to our sponsors. I hope you heard a deal that makes sense for you. And now let's return to 1862 and hear about the Gardner Hall gang's Big Gold Heist. The Gardner Hall gang was responsible for the 1862 escort rock robbery, largest gold heist in Australian history. The plan for Australia's largest gold robbery was hatched over a bottle of gin in a small house near Forbes and New South Wales. Eight Bush Rangers would hold up a gold escort transporting a consignment from Forbes to Orange and then on to Sydney.

As they plotted, they had no idea they would soon make off with about 77 kilograms of gold and 10 bags of cash, a hall that would be worth over $10 million today. Forbes was the main town servicing the gold fields in the central west of New South Wales at the time. Frank Gardner was the brains behind this heist for weeks, Sunday after Sunday. Gardner watched from a butcher shop as boxes and boxes of gold were put into a wagon destined for Sydney. The shop he sat in with mostly a front for his cattle stealing operation, and it wasn't hard for Gardner to find recruits for this robbery. He was living under an alias, but pretty much all the people in the area knew who he was,

knew he was an infamous Bush Ranger. Some younger outlaws really looked up to him, wanted to get involved, and a few of them had done a few jobs with him here and there in the past. One of those younger men was Ben Hall, seven years Gardner's Jr. The two men knew each other because Hall's wife's sister was having an affair with Gardner. Gardner Hall and several others mapped out the gold routes

and places they could execute the robbery. The wagon was protected by just four officers with guns, and there were no forward or rear flanks. The gang of eight men at this point would carry out the robbery days after meeting up in a little shack and a gully known as Ugoa rocks. The plan was for half the gang to hide behind a boulder, about the size of a hut. Other half would hide inside a nearby creek bed. Their hope was that they would ambush the passing wagon and execute the heist without harming the victims.

They expected the officers to surrender the gold after they sprang from their hideouts, yelled bail up, but that didn't happen. With 77 kilos of gold on board, the officers were not going to give up easily. Right, not going to lose their jobs and risk being disgraced without a fight. They fired on the gang, sparking one hell of a Wild West shootout. The officers were outnumbered and two fled unharmed. Other two were badly injured. One poor bastard got shot in the fucking nuts. The Bush Rangers became the most wanted men in all of New South Wales for this.

You don't get a shoot a police officer in the nuts back then, but not get a wanted poster. The robbery became the biggest story in Australia. The press, for the most part, interestingly, sided with the Bush Rangers. I think it's interesting because Gardner wasn't somewhat forced into Bush ranging because of the actions of an oppressive government or some squatocracy. He just didn't want to work a straight job. But he'd had straight jobs. He was working as a stockman when he first started to steal. He did not come from an impoverished family.

His dad was not an indentured servant. He just knew he could make more money stealing than working and that's what he did. And yet the press still loved him. It just kind of captures, you know, the cultural sentiment of the time. Only four of the men involved in the big heist were caught in the, immediate aftermath. One of them was hanged. Ben Hall was shot and killed by the police in 1865. Frank Gardner had been arrested the year before in 1864, sent to 32 years in prison, but then would be pardoned after 10 years, thanks to a whole bunch of people signing a petition demanding

his release. He was still beloved. And then he left Australia for San Francisco, where he would own a few different saloons. Seemed to have himself a grand old time. The authorities never did recover all the gold that was taken, and he may have brought some. some of that gold with him to California, how he died, exactly when he died is a mystery. There are rumors he died in 1882, but not substantiated. No one knows what happened to him for sure in the end. Back in Australia, as Bush ranging escalated, the parliament of New South Wales passed the felons apprehension act in 1865, which allowed anyone to shoot Bush Rangers on site.

That's how big of a problem. The powers that were felt that Bush Rangers had become. In response, the number of Bush Rangers declined in the 1870s due to better policing and improvements in securing rail transport and sending telegraphs. The last phase of Bush Ranging peaked towards the end of the 1870s when Ned Kelly was doing what we'll get into here real soon. Most historians regard Kelly's capture and execution as the end of the era, although it did continue sporadically into the early 20th century even.

Bush Ranging was considered a bygone era by the 1890s, but there were a few notable cases towards the end of the century, one of which was the governor gang, a trio consisting of Aboriginal Jimmy Governor, his brother Joe, and their associate, Jackie Underwood. These guys, definitely not the good guys, and the press will not side with them. In July of 1900, they killed four members of the Moby family and a school teacher in what would become known as the Breed Long Massacre. John Moby had hired Jimmy to do a bunch of fencing on 1,500 acres of land the selector owned, and he'd hired his white wife Ethel to work in the Moby home as a domestic servant.

and apparently Ethel was mocked and ridiculed relentlessly by the mobby women for being married to an indigenous man. Sadly not uncommon for the time. And we don't know that for sure, but that is what she would claim later in court. She said her anger over this grew week after week, but her family needed money for the work that they were doing. So despite the harassment, she and Jimmy decided to fully settle in Brilong. They had a young baby. They hadn't initially brought with them, but now that they were settled, Ethel rode out to Dubbo on a borrowed horse to collect her baby. when she returned to Moby

to the homestead with the baby or to the Moby homestead I don't know why he referred to like it was a town It was raining out And the women took the baby to warm her by the fire While Ethel was unsaddling the horse She said she looked in through the window Saw the women ridiculing and laughing at her child

Ethel then ran into the house, grabbed her baby And then walked three miles to the camp Where Jimmy was working Seathing with rage Soon after that, Jimmy's brother Joe came to visit them As did their friend Jackie Underwood shortly there are some sources list him as being a cousin shortly thereafter mrs mabby supposedly

overcharged them for the rations then mr mobby rejected a bunch of their work which cost money and now jimmy began to fantasize about getting some vengeance about doing some bush ranging then on july 20th 1900 jimmy and ethel got into an argument at camp the argument turned to the mobbies and ethel basically told jimmy that he was a coward who wouldn't stand up to them and just let them walk all over him, his wife, and his daughter. And that was the last fucking straw. Now, Jimmy, Ethel, Joe, and Jackie, around 11 p.m., rode to the Moby home with a couple of rifles,

and shit got real crazy real quick. According to Jimmy's version of events, which he shared later trial, Mrs. Moby and Ellen Kerr, as a 21-year-old teacher living with the family, came to the door, at which point Jimmy asked, quote, Did you tell my missus that any white woman who married a black fellow ought to be shot?

did you ask my wife about our private business? Did you ask you what sort of nature I have? Black or white? The women, by Jimmy's account, responded, quote, with a sneering laugh. And he then, quote, struck Mrs. Moby in the mouth. Curse then allegedly said, Poo, you black rubbish, you want shooting for marrying a white woman.

Jimmy then hit Curse on the jaw, knocking her down. In his own words, he then, quote, got out of temper and got hammering them and lost control of myself. In the ensuing melee, a panel of the mobby's front door would be shattered by a fucking tomahawk indicating it had been closed against the assailants. Mrs. Mavi was mortally wounded by five gashes to her neck and head inflicted by Jimmy. Curse and 16-year-old Grace Moby retreated to an adjoining bedroom where 11-year-old Hilda Moby and 19-year-old Elsie Clark were in bed. Three boys, 14-year-old Percy Moby, nine-year-old Burt Moby, and their cousin, 13-year-old George, were sleeping in an enclosed veranda and woke up to the noise.

Jack hit under a bed, Percy went to confront the attackers but was, quote, chopped down by Jackie Underwood as he entered the front sitting room where his mother lay. Damn. The door to the bedroom where the women had retreated

was smashed in, but Kerr's and the two mobby girls managed to escape by climbing out of a window. However, Elsie Clark was caught and attacked with a club, receiving severe wounds to her face and head. And then after they had climbed out the window, Curze and the two girls

started to run towards the inn. Jimmy set off after them in pursuit, caught up with Curse and Grace, killing the former at the scene, mortally wounding the latter with blows from that damn tomahawk. Hilda was ahead of the other two, but stumbled and fell down the steep bank of the creek.

Jimmy caught up with her, hit her with repeated blows using a club, leaving her head, quote, completely crushed in. Amidst the chaos and the slaughter. Young Bert Mavi managed to slip out of the house. The terrified boy hid in the bushes near the creek for some time, before running to the old inn to tell his dad, dad. The men and women were staying in separate buildings. So he ran to tell his dad what happened.

Mr. Moby grabbed his gun, hastened to the house, closely followed by his son Reggie and brother-in-law Fred Clark. They arrived barely 10 minutes after the murders had begun, but the assailants had already left. My God, the fucking agony they must have felt. The only family members who remained on skate were Burt, his cousin George, who had taken under the bed again, and the two youngest children who had been sleeping in a separate building behind the house. Percy, Hilda, and Kerr's all dead. Grace hung on for two days, then she died as well. The children's mom, Sarah, also died from her multiple tomahawk wounds July 24th. Elsie Clark survived her injuries but was left permanently deaf from the blows she had received.

After the murderers fled, Ethel was told by Jimmy to take their child to Dubbo. They wouldn't make it. They were quickly caught by a posse looking for Jimmy, his brother and Jackie, and held at the Moby Homestead. The governor brothers, meanwhile, soon parted ways from Jackie Underwood, who was also quickly caught and he will be hanged months later in January of 1901. Jimmy and Joe now carry out more perceived vengeance following their initial massacre, settling old scores with people Jimmy felt had wronged him or them. Jimmy killed a 70-year-old man, Alexander McKay, with again a fucking tomahawk as he was

pruning a fig tree on his property before also attacking the guy's wife, Mary, before stealing their money and some clothes and then leaving on a stolen horse. Ethel said McKay had once accused Jimmy of theft and insulted him. Following day, the Governor Brothers headed further east. At mid-morning, they arrived at Selector Michael O'Brien's land, about 18 miles southwest of Merowa. O'Brien's wife, Elizabeth, her teenage son, James, and a nurse, Catherine Bennett, were sitting in the detached kitchen behind the house.

Elizabeth was heavily pregnant, and Mrs. Bennett was staying with her to assist with the birth. The brother suddenly appeared at the kitchen door. Mrs. O'Brien said, what do you want? and Jimmy replied, you speak civil, surrender, or I will shoot you. And he wasn't fucking about. Moment later, Jimmy started firing his gun. Elizabeth and Bennett were both shot several times. The former also struck by Joe's Tomahawk inflicting a fatal blow.

Jimmy then actually broke the fucking rifle stock by using it to beat James to death. The governors then ransacked the house, taking money, clothes, and some boots. Bennett was still alive shot with a bullet that entered her collarbone, passed through her chest. She was able to stagger from the kitchen after her assailants had left, and she found Michael O'Brien, who walked to a neighbor's home to send a rider to alert police in Maroa. But by the time they arrived at Governor Brothers again, gone, long departed. The supposed motive behind this attack is ridiculous.

Apparently years earlier, Jimmy and Michael O'Brien had gotten into a heated argument during a cricket match, and that led to O'Brien beaten Jimmy's ass in front of some witnesses. Holy shit. imagine getting into a fight in like a, I don't know, we're here like a fucking softball game or at the golf course, you know, bowling alley, wherever, and you end up beating some dude's ass. And then years later, he shows up at your house with guns and a fucking tomahawk and kills your family. Two days later, the governor brothers broke into an empty house belonging to Thomas Hughes,

stealing a Winchester rifle and ammunition. Now in the vicinity of Wallar, they headed to Kiernan Fitzpatrick's farm. Another bit of vengeance. Jimmy believed that Fitzpatrick had poisoned some of his dogs years earlier. So he's there to settle another score. Fitzpatrick was 74 years old, live with his 23-year-old nephew, Bernard. At mid-morning, after Bernard went to his brothers nearby,

the governor's moved in on the old guy. Jimmy approached the house, called for Fitzpatrick, who came out with his rifle ready, then Joe fired from a hiding place and hit the old guy in the shoulder. Then Jimmy rushed at him with a fucking axe now, struck him twice in the head, killing him. beat his head in with an axe because the guy might have poisoned his dogs.

And you know what? If the old guy did poison his dogs? Okay, that's fair. That feels fair to me. I am okay with dog poisoners, taking axes to the head. Bojangles very much on board with that. But we don't know that he did that.

Bernard heard the initial shot that had been fired, returned to see the governor still there and his uncle dead. He fired a shot at the murderers, then ran to alar for help, and the brothers once again bolted. A week after the murders at Brilong,

it was reported that considerably over 100 police officers, together with 12 trackers, Aboriginal trackers, were searching for the Governor Brothers. Settlers moved out of their homesteads in fear of the governors. Women and children were brought to towns for safety while many of the men joined in the pursuit. Over the next three months, the Governor Brothers, styling themselves as Bush Rangers,

carried on a series of additional break-ins, robberies, and assaults. The man-hunt that got underway to capture them was reportedly Australia's largest, estimated to have involved over 200 police officers and trackers and over 2,000 armed civilian volunteers. A reward of 1,000 pounds each was offered for the brothers, dead or alive. Crazy men of money in those days. They were also legally proclaimed outlaws,

which meant they could be legally shot and killed on site. In October of 1900, Jimmy was finally captured over two weeks after he got shot in the fucking face. A bullet passed through his cheek, knocked out like four teeth for exit the other side of his face. He still was on the lamb for another two weeks. Days later, Joe was shot dead by a guy tracking him. Jimmy will end up getting hanged four days after Jackie, his cousin or friend,

is hanged on the morning of January 18th, 1901. His wife Ethel would visit him in jail on a number of occasions before he died and would be pregnant with the couple's second child when he died. Within a year, she will marry another Aboriginal man who she will go on to have 11 kids with, and then she will live until 1945. Following the deaths of the governor boys, the last phase of bush ranging was sustained mostly by quote unquote, quote unquote boy bush rangers. You know, teens who sought to commit armed robberies and the style of their heroes, most of them captured alive. But a few did die in some shootouts with the police.

And I think that's enough for play. Now let's fuck. I've set the stage. We now understand the tension between the selectors and the squatocracy and how while some Bush Rangers certainly were bad men, not. All of them were. Let's now find out how good or bad Ned Kelly was. In today's Time Suck Timeline. Shrap on those boots, soldier.

We're marching down a time suck timeline. The exact birth date of Edward Ned Kelly is unknown, but most historians place it at some point during the 1800s. I will say he for sure, I feel confident, saying he was for sure born at some point after Julius Caesar. after Shakespeare, after Galileo and Moses. I can say that with 100% confidence. I can also say he was born in December of 1854.

Ian Jones wrote in his book, Ned Kelly, a short life. Ned Kelly was probably born on the lower slopes of an extinct volcano within weeks or even days of a bloody battle between rebel, Ballarat Gold Miners and the forces of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. Well, how fucking mythical! Ned was a second surviving child and first son of John Kelly, An ex-convict and Ellen Quinn, later Kelly, would come to the continent from Ireland.

John was nicknamed Red because his balls were the exact shade of red as a clown's nose. I mean, I am talking exactly. No, he was called Red because of his ginger hair. Ginger hair on his head. After leaving prison, Red made enough as a gold digger and horse dealer. He was able to pay 615 pounds for a 41-acre farm, overlooking beverage, a settlement 25 miles north of Melbourne,

This is where Ned will spend the first part of his childhood. Red never talked to his son about why he had been transported to Australia. But one of his brothers-in-law would tell the kids, Ned and his siblings, that he was a convict. Some claimed he was transported for sociopolitical reasons because of his views on Irish independence. Red would definitely pass on strong Irish pride to his kids. Many years later, a newspaper reporter who spoke to Ned's mom Ellen

claimed Red was transported because of a faction fight or some other affray at a fair in which a man had been killed. A royal commission recorded the crime as an agrarian outrage stated to have been shooting at a landlord with intent to murder. The phrase agrarian outrage usually applied to rebel activity. However, Irish and Australian documents will later reveal the truth about why Red was shipped to Australia and it wasn't that fucking cool. In December of 1840, John Kelly from Tipperary County stole two pigs worth six pounds from farmer James Cooney. John was 21 at the time, living with his parents, Thomas, and Mary Kelly in a small cottage. Red took the stolen pigs to the market

was later arrested in a lodging house. Police described Red as a notorious character who was involved with three men in a prior theft of seven cows. He received the minimum term of seven years transportation. That's fucking crazy. That was the minimum. Like you still something once

like, we're going to go easy on you. We're going to go easy. We're going to ship you across the world for a minimum of seven years where you will be enslaved. Right? We're not going to throw the book at you. Don't you fucking worry? His case papers were put into a crown witnesses file, meaning he had likely snitched on his accomplices to secure this deal. Otherwise, I don't know, I guess maybe it would have been hanged.

The three accomplices were arrested. One of them, Philip Reagan, shot to death when he then tried to escape. Red was sentenced on January 1, 1841, sent to Dublin, kept on a brig in the harbor until July. That sucks. When then he and 180 other convicts would set sail for a penal colony in Van Diemensland. July of 1841 was also the month, coincidentally, that the Quinn family arrived in Melbourne, his mother and her kin.

Quinn came from County Antrim in Northeastern Ireland. Ireland, James Quinn told the kids that they had moved to Australia to improve their position. Makes sense. James was 37. His wife, Mary, 32. At the time of the move, older son Patrick was 65 years old. Fucking have that makes sense to me.

I don't know how they did it. No, he was 15. Their youngest son, Jimmy, just six months old. They had six more in between. Jack, Mary Ann, Ellen, Kate, and Jane. Ellen was nine years old when they arrived in Australia, and one friend would later recall about her, quote, Some said there was a wild strain in her.

She loved to be free and hated restraint. She was sent to school, but was often missing from her class, when she would roam over the hills in the woods after birds' nests or wild berries. She would tear her clothes, hiding in some hedge when she saw someone she feared, would inform on her plain truant. That's awesome. Clearly she had a lot of spirit and personality. as a kid, and she will have so much as an adult as well.

Their journey to Australia was not easy. The ship experienced an outbreak of whooping cough that killed 16 kids and two adults on board. Little Ellen, despite the misery around her, said to have become a favorite of the crew regaling them with Irish songs. Adorable. Once they arrived in Australia, her dad James worked as a porter at quote different commercial establishments and earned enough to rent some land and purchase a few cows and steers. He settled on a small farm on Mooney Ponds Creek. near the village of Brunswick. Mary and the children milked the cows,

while James carded goods sold firewood in Melbourne. Young Ellen would soon go to work as well at a saddlery for a couple years until her dad rented a bigger property in Broad Meadows, the suburb of Melbourne. Around 1849, James was able to move near the settlement of Wallen-Wallin, where becoming a selector of sorts, he was able to rent 640 acres. Ellen was almost 18 by that time.

She was described as, quote, slim, darkly attractive, and as handy on the farm as any of her brothers, good with the cattle and a superb horsewoman. Darkly attractive, that's mysterious. The next year in 1850, when Ellen was 19, Red met her and started courting her. He definitely found her darkly attractive. Red was working as a fencer,

a dude who built fences, not a guy who fought with a tiny, skinny sword. When he met her dad, James Quinn in a pub, Red talked James into a scheme to make some extra money by setting up a still to produce some moonshine. But then after he sobered up, James was like, I don't want to do that. Still, Ellen found herself hot and bothered.

She was interested in the man who was, quote, six feet in his stockings, broad shoulders, strong and active. In fact, in every way, a fine type of athlete. He was fucking hot. According to the Royal Australian Historical Society, she, quote, felt an immediate and powerful hankering for a solid serving of hard ginger cock. I don't think that's a real historical organization,

by the way, so you might want to disregard that. Ellen's father James has not approved of the match. He hated Ginger's. I don't know if he hated Ginger's, but he didn't like him. And he refused Red's request to marry Ellen. Ellen didn't care. She left home and she started fucking. They really did.

Young couple moved to Melbourne with Ellen already pregnant in May of 1850 with a baby like all Ginger's that would have no soul. Six months later, they eloped November 18th, 1850. And Red's property and beverage wasn't actually too far from Ellen's family who remained in wall and wall about five miles away.

Seems like Red and James patched things up. February 25th, 1851. Redd and Ellen's daughter, Mary Jane Kelly, is born. She's baptized five days later, which is pointless for Ginger's, right? They don't have souls. That's what I heard on the internet. But then sadly, it's assumed that she did die soon afterwards. However, the first record of her death would not be made until 10 years later when a brother's birth registration noted that she was deceased.

In 1853, Red participated in. in gold mining now in the town of Bendigo in Victoria, failed to strike it rich, but did earn some money, so not a total bust. Return home in December of 1853, greeted by Ellen and new daughter, Anne, who had been born in November. Ellen then quickly became pregnant again,

and Ned, or excuse me, with Ned, when Anne was only four months old, Ned was named Edward after Red's closest brother. The Kellys were struggling financially when Little Ned was born because of a bit of recession in the town of Beveridge. After 15 months of this recession, Red was forced to take out a mortgage on the farm. He was in debt and falling behind on payments.

And when Ned was three years old, his parents were forced to sell the entire farm and three quarters of a one-acre lot they owned in town as well. They moved into a fucking shack now. Red had built on the remaining quarter of the acre and morale, understandably, pretty low. The month after they moved, their next child, Margaret, would be born and now they have another mouse to feed. February of 1859 when Ned was four, Red's fortunes had turned around a bit. He's able to purchase 21 acres at the southeast corner of town. He began building a house where three more children would be born, James in 1859, Daniel, in 1861, Catherine in 1863, so life was looking good mostly. But the Quinn's, Ellen's family.

And the Kellys had started getting in some legal trouble. Back in 1856, 15-year-old Jimmy Quinn was charged with possession of stolen cattle, but never convicted. four years later though back in court for assault and horse theft this time was found guilty of assault and spent six weeks in jail almost as soon as he was released he was involved in another horse theft case found guilty again would serve four months in jail 30-year-old jack quin charged with horse theft 1860 but not convicted he was acquitted that same year of cattle theft as well on 1861 jack was charged with robbery under arms again acquitted his brother-in-law, Jack Lloyd, went to court three times between 1860 and 1862 for assault, drunk and disorderly conduct and larceny. Luck was on his side as he was discharged each time before going to trial. Clearly Ned's foray into bush ranging did not come out of left feet. I had some characters, some outlaws, both sides of the family.

In 1862, Red's 22-year-old brother James twice brought to court for cattle theft, but discharged. April of 1863, James tried for theft of 13 cattle. Ellen and 8-year-old Ned were witnesses for the defense, claiming that James had been with him at the time of the theft, but it seems like that was bullshit because James was convicted and sentenced to three years of hard labor. Or, you know, who knows? Maybe he got fucked over.

I don't know. I wasn't there. Meanwhile, by this point, James Quinn's family had developed a reputation as stock thieves and brawlers. Two months after James was convicted, a new Catholic school opened up in town. And now Ned and his sisters, Annie and Maggie, would walk to school every day.

However, the Kellys never returned after their descent. break because Red had decided to move his family to the town of Avenel some 50 miles away. Redd sold all this property by January of 1864, firmly establishing the family in their new home. According to author Ian Jones, nothing could have been less like battling pub-borne beverage than the hamlet of Avonel. It lay in a broad basin of summer dry hills with stunted trees and rocks the color of ancient bronze, gathered around a six-arched brownstone toll bridge that carried. the main road across the two channels in broad white sands of Hughes Creek. A visitor described Avenel Station as having the character of a Ducal Park and the little

namesake settlement within its boundaries was very much an English village with its 30-odd houses and shops. With a small amount of money that he had after settling his debts, Red was able to rent a 40-acre farm on the edge of the little town. It seemed like they were off to a better start in Avanelle. Ellen was well-liked by the townsfolk because of her horsemanship. She was apparently always willing to ride out and help people in need. Ned, Annie, and Maggie attended the local common school.

Their teacher James Irving said to be a harsh disciplinarian. He would box the kids' ears and carried a leather strap. But Kellys were apparently well-behaved as they sat in a classroom of about 40 kids, children of various ages. One classmate later recalled that Ned was a very quiet boy, that he completed his lessons on time and frequently participated in class. One of Ned's classmates was Richard Shelton. Dick Quotamette, the son of local resident Esau Shelton. According to Ian Jones, the Shelton's most likely introduced Ned to the Aboriginal people of Australia. Esau was very interested in learning more about indigenous people.

And after he arrived in Avenel, he befriended members of a local tribe who lived near town and encouraged the women to sell baskets to coach passengers during their stopovers. Possible that Esau took Ned to their camp and introduced him to their way of life. Ned likely observed how they survived. off the land which may have influenced his future adventures out in the bush. During this time on the run, he was said to only be, or during his later time on the run, Ned was said to only be afraid of Aboriginal people who have a history in Australia as being the continent's most skilled trackers. He was only worried about them finding him.

Ned first showed the people of Avenel his mischievous side. When a stallion went missing, after the owner put up a reward, young Ned appeared with the missing horse saying, I found it up in the bush. Although the horse had been missing for weeks, it had clearly been fed and groomed. The owner gave Ned the benefit of the doubt, paid the reward, but thought he was likely the one who stole it. The Shelton's two believed Ned had either stolen the horse or found it and kept it hidden until the reward was offered. Ned had been in school for two months when a board of education inspector arrived and noted his presence in the third grade class. Ned passed reading and writing, but he did fail math, grammar, and geography.

however, only one other classmate received overall better marks than Ned did for context. That winner, James Quinn sold his land in Walden, purchased 20,000 acres in Glenmore, New South Wales on the King River for 2,000 pounds. Man, 20,000 acres. Not sure where he got that money. Instead of following Ellen's family, Rednow chose to keep the Kellys in Avonel, possibly because of the Quinn's pension for trouble. In March of 1865, 10-year-old Ned passed math, reading and writing.

So again, he was a good student. Late May of 1865, when Ellen was six months pregnant with the couple's last child, Red stole a calf that had crossed the low creek near their home. He skinned and butchered the calf so his family could eat, carefully cutting out the owner's brand, so he knew it was a stolen calf, and he burned the carcass. But then two days later, the calf's owner, Philip Morgan, brought the constable to Red's home where they found the meat.

Red claimed he'd killed an unbranded stray, but the constable found the hide with the piece missing. Red claimed he'd cut it out to make a green hide. whip and that the pigs had dragged away the head but then the constable found the burn pit and arrested Red for cattle theft. The cattle theft charge would be dismissed but Red would be found guilty of having illegally in his possession one cowhide. He was fined 25 pounds but if he wasn't able to pay the fine of 25 pounds he would have to do six months hard labor and the Kelly's had no money at that time no friends who could loan them that kind of money and Red was forced to serve his time.

and then three months later while he was away, Grace Kelly was born. As the oldest son, Ned took his dad's place in the farm while his dad was away, and it was during this difficult year, that Ned did something that later became a big part of his legend. Something good, actually. One morning, Ned's classmate, seven-year-old Dick Sheldon. Damn right, we got more dick in this story. Walking to school when his straw hat blew off his head.

I guess he's the same dick. Anyway, he's walking to school. When his straw hat blew off his head and caught on a tree branch, Dick climbed over a bridge really, to try and grab it, but then lost his footing, slipped, fell into the creek below, not good of swimming. Ned was walking into town, dived in after his friend who was drowning, he dragged him to shore and saved his life. And to express their gratitude, the Sheldons would give Ned a green silk sash that would be one of his most prized possessions for the remainder of his life.

Today, it is in the Banalla Museum in Banala Australia. He apparently wore it constantly, and for the first few weeks, he would ask people to touch it so they could see for themselves how luxurious and soft it was. Never heard of a kid being so excited about a sash. I'm guessing it was more about what the sash represented, right? He had saved a life. Kelly's, the kids did not return to school in 1866. The tuition, too much of a strain for the family. Red Kelly was back home now, but not doing well at all. Something happened to him during the six months stretch of hard labor that seemed to break his spirit. And for the short duration of the rest of his life, he would be a shell of the man he once was. He would be fine for being drunk and disorderly within a year of returning home in 1866,

and then by that November, he began to suffer from edema or fluid retention, and then just the following month, on December 27th, he would be dead. Two days after Christmas, just brutal for the family. A 33-year-old Ellen was now a widow with seven kids. Ned, who was only 12, the man of the house, like all the time. He was the one to report his father's death to the proper authorities, right? years old. Next year in 1867, the family moved to Greta in northeastern Victoria, near the Quinn family and their relatives by marriage, Deloids. And life here would be not exactly amazing. Ian Jones described Greta as a few shacks scattered among venerable red gums on the banks of 15-mile creek at the edge of the broad tree-shaded oxley flats.

Beyond across the eastern horizon, a chain of hills ran south to the ridges of the Great Divide and the blue haze grandeur of the Buffalo Massif with Mount Bogong and the Alps fading beyond. During the gold rush, Greta was on the route to Beachworth, a boomtown, but by the time the Kelly's moved there, there was only one hotel. Ellen and the kids moved into a de-licensed pub where her sister's Kate and Jane Lloyd live with the kids.

Ellen later moved the family into something called a slab hut. Sounds like a little bit less than luxurious. I don't think people are like, blown away. When you tell them that you live in a slab hut? Where are you live with your family? We live in a slab hut

outside of town. Oh my God, I'm so sorry. Then sadly, the Kelly's shitty little shanty burned down while they were sleeping, leaving them with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. So all their possessions,

their fucking slab hut is gone. Neighbors had to set up a collection, right? Like a go-fund me, essentially back then. To help Ellen and her family from becoming homeless. Like, truly homeless. The younger children were sent to

Wang Goretta while Ellen and Ned stayed in Greta and tried to get back on their feet. Ned, still not quite 13 years old, collected horses. Australia had a significant amount of wild horses roaming around, Brumbies, and he put together a small flock of unbranded sheep as well for the family and learned how to shear them. He's the breadwinner. After about six months, thanks in the large part to young Ned's hustle,

Ellen had saved up enough to purchase 88 acres on a creek in the valley below the Bald Hill near 11-mile Creek. It was the former home of a lone settler who had died a year, prior. So now the Kellys are trying to make a living growing crops, but the soil won't cooperate. Kelly's not very successful farming, and Ellen supplemented the income by rent rooms of travelers and selling slygrog, aka unlicensed liquor, possibly moonshine, and also probably through other illegal activity. Several members of Ellen's family were implicated in livestock theft, other crimes in Greta. In 1868, Ned's Uncle Jim was convicted of arson and set in fire to the rented property

where the Kellys and some of the Lloyds were staying. He was sentenced to death for that crime, but then a sentence commuted to 15 years of hard labor. Not sure why he fucking set that fire to the family's house. 1869, Ned gets a mentor of sorts that will take his life in the direction that will lead to his infamy. Before we hear about it,

time for today's second and two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for listening to those sponsors. Hope you heard, some deals that you liked. Now let's return to 1869. and meet Bush Ranger Harry Power. Fourteen-year-old Ned met Harry Power, born Henry Johnson. An Irish-born man transported convict who became a Bush Ranger after escaping Pentridge Prison in Melbourne. The Kelly family sympathized with Harry, and by May of 1869, Harry had taken Ned under his wings as protege.

Author Ian Jones described Power as the last of Australia's great highwaymen. He said Harry Power was an unlikely brigand, a rumbustious. a middle-aged Irishman with a grain beard, chunky build, and an awkward waddling gait caused by agonizing bunions in the need to wear boots several sizes too large. One man noted that they turned up fully an inch and a half at the toes.

An outlaw with the pop belly and bunions. God, hard to strut like a badass outlaw with those bunions, I bet, right? Probably fucks up your swagger. Ian continued, though, his appearance belied a formidable set of qualities, however. A contemporary considered him as fearless and daring a rider as ever lived.

lived and one of the best Bushmen in Australia. Certainly he could travel from place to place through trackless bush at such a bewildering speed that he baffled both pursuers and local experts, who insisted that no one man could have carried out some of his consecutive holdups. Covering 60 and 70 miles a day, he claimed to have held up 30 men, he claimed to have held up to 30 men within 24 hours. Wow, clearly wasn't letting those bunions slow him down. Good on him. Ian then added he had piercing blue eyes and a booming voice, which he used to great effect, easily intimidating the victims with dire threats of retribution against pursuers or betrayers. This meant that he never had to use a double-barreled shotgun he usually carried,

except for a shot at a farmer's dog which attacked him, but he missed. The Kellys were part of a broad network of friends who fed and sheltered power and other Bush Rangers. It was common for working class folks to side with Bush Rangers during this era. This obviously also would clearly help young Ned along his path to becoming a bush ranger himself. Power would always claim that he became a bush ranger by chance, said that a friend once gave him clothing, food, and a firearm. He was walking along the road the next day, heard the police were after him, needed to get away, so he robbed a man on a horse, then held a station and stole 70 pounds. Power said, I was in for it worse than ever, and in another day or two I was in for it altogether. And that makes sense to me.

Once the list of crimes you've committed, become so long that if you get caught, you're going to jail for life for getting hanged, you don't really have much incentive to ever try and walk the straight and narrow again. Power made his way up to northeast, committed a series of robberies. In May of 1869, he and young Ned

attempted to steal some horses from the Mansfield property of Squatter John Rowe, one of those squatocracy dudes, as part of a plan to rob the Woods Point Mansfield Gold Escort, gold escorts transported material from mines to banks and mince and were an important part of the Victorian gold rush. The duo would abandon their plan, though, because Rose shot at them, and Kelly temporarily stopped associating with power.

On his own, young Ned had his first official brush with the law in October of 1869 when he was just shy of 14. He was arrested for allegedly assaulting a street vendor. The hawker, a Chinese immigrant, named Afuk, would tell the authorities that, as he passed by the Kelly family home, Ned brandished a stick, declared himself a bush ranger, and stole 10 shillings from him. Kelly was arrested, charged with highway robbery.

He claimed in court that Fouk abused him and his sister Annie in a dispute over Fook's request for water. Family witnesses supported Ned's story, and the charge was dismissed 10 days later. But was Fook line? I mean, can we trust the Kelly family's version of events? Regardless of why they're committing crimes, they definitely were a family of criminals that, you know, stuck together. assuming when it came to being charged, they said whatever they thought would help one of them not go to jail. Ned and Harry Power reconnected in March of 1870,

and over the next month the two would commit a series of armed robberies. By the end of April, the press had named Ned Powers' accomplice. And now at the age of 15, Ned is already a proper Bush Ranger. Ned and Harry will split up for the second time shortly after the press release. They got into a fight. Ned later recalled that when they were riding in the mountains, Power swore at him to such an extent without giving him. giving him any provocation that he put spurs to his horse and galloped away home.

Funny. Ned went home to 11-mile creek to see his family. Seeing her son in such an exhausted state, Ellen declared Harry Power, quote, a brown paper bush ranger who could not make Tucker either for himself or his first friends. Okay. Ned was shocked when he woke up the next morning to a police party at the house. Police had surrounded the killy home during the night, seen two horses outside. They hoped to find both Harry and Ned, but discovered just one outlaw. The Benalla ensign reported, quote, The entrance of the escort into Banala was quite imposing,

the prisoner being surrounded by his captors. And every now and then a smile passed over his face as he recognized someone he knew. Once in jail, Ned was, quote, moody. He appeared quite exhausted and very pale. After being fed nothing but bread and water and sleeping in the cell day after day, Ned, quote, sang like a bird, and appeared in court charged with robbery and company and highway robbery under arms.

One memo from May 7th, 1870, noted that Ned was, quote, evidently fresh from a long and fatiguing journey. The young man seen with power in the Kyneton District is described to have the appearance of a half-cast. Kelly certainly does not, but he has the peculiarity of never washing himself. It's said to be one of the distinct-looking young men in the colony. Uh, what? The peculiarity of never washing himself, so he was fucking super dirty? is that peculiar or just kind of gross?

May 10th, Dirty Ned was interrogated by police, who convinced him, there was no use pretending he knew nothing about power. He admitted he was, quote, power's mate, said his friend had an ungovernable temper that he'd left him after his last outburst. Ned was informed that when he appeared in court two days later, he would face additional charges of prior robberies committed with power.

But then the victims of the robberies failed to identify Ned. However, prosecutors insist that Ned be tried. tried in the third charge, citing his resemblance to the suspect, but then after just a month in jail, Ned was released due to insufficient evidence. The Kellys had allegedly intimidated witnesses into withholding testimony. And another factor in Ned's release was likely that powers accomplice had been described as half-cast, a term at the time for a multiracial person, likely half-white, half-Aboriginal. Ned was not mixed race. He was just filthy. The police believed he had been described as such because he didn't bathe. Dude's skin was literally brown because it was just covered with, like just dust, just cakeed dust. That's amazing. How do you live like that? God, if he wasn't just ever taking a bath, you know, no way he was brushing his teeth either. Man, if I go more than one day without brushing my teeth, thanks to camping or something, it feels like my teeth are wearing sweaters.

I got to hate it. Sometimes I'll brush my teeth midday. I just like the way it feels. I also have to shower every day. If again, I'm out camping or something, you know, and there's not a shower. around okay then not on those occasions but if I go more than two days without showering it feels like somebody has lacquered my balls with bacon grease my skin starts to feel itchy sometimes things to like pollen just you know collecting on my

skin I have to wash my face midday after my morning shower again at night just to not get my eyes feeling all irritated and it's like sniffly and stuff I can't imagine how fucking gross I would feel just going week after week out in the dusty bush without cleaning any part of my body that's wild he lived like that um based on later photos, I think he eventually cleaned up. You know, later photos show a pretty handsome, clean-cut fellow.

Anyway, back to the story, Harry Power often camped at Glenmore Station on the King River, the property owned by Ned's maternal grandfather, James Quinn. And in June of 1870, while resting in a mountainside shelter overlooking that property, Harry Power was arrested.

Word soon got out that Ned had snitched on him, which he would deny for the rest of his life. In the only surviving letter known to bear Ned's handwriting, he would dictate other letters. he asked Sergeant James Babington of Kindon for help writing James Babington, 28th July. I write these lines hoping to find you, and Mr. Nicholson in good health, as I am myself at present. I've arrived safe, and I would like you. I would like you would see what you and Mr. Nicholson could do for me.

I have done all circumstances, would allow me, which you now know, try what you can do answer, letter as soon as possible Director letter to Daniel Kelly Greta post office That is my name no more at present Edward Kelly Everyone looks on me like a black snake Send me an answer me

As soon as posable Okay So you know what The fucking school system wasn't great over there That's fine That's fine Babington was one of the few police officers Ned was friendly with

And somebody he turned to when he was in trouble It seems as if he wanted to speak with him I know that was kind of gibberish but it seems as if he wanted to speak with him and clear his name as far as being a snitch. I think that's what that fucking babble was about. And he wasn't a snitch. The informant was actually Ned's uncle Jack Lloyd, who was paid 500 pounds for his assistance. Still, power would forever maintain that Ned had betrayed him.

The paper, the banal end sign, wrote about Ned's career with power. The effect of his example has already been to draw one young fellow into the open vortex of crime, and unless his career is speedily cut short, young Kelly will blossom into a declared enemy of society. Fair prediction. In October of 1870, a street vendor named Jeremiah McCormack accused a friend of the Kelly's Ben Gould of stealing his horse. What?

In response, Gould sent a profane note and a package that contained calves' testicles to McCormack's wife. Ned helped deliver it. God, I wish I knew what it said. Mr. McCormack, it has come to my attention that you are inclined to believe that Mr. Gould stole your horse. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you ever find out who really did it, but you don't have the balls to tell the police that you made a mistake in accusing Mr. Gould, maybe the enclosed balls will give you the courage to do the right thing. When McCormack confronted Ned about sending him a sack of severed nuts, Ned punched him in the mouth. and while that really sucks for Mr. McCormack,

if Ben had in fact stolen his horse, if he was an asshole, what a fun life moment for Ned. I mean, imagine sending somebody you really don't like a set of balls in the mail, and then when they confront you over it, you just fucking punch him in the face. But how ridiculously satisfying would that be? Ned was arrested for both the indecent note and the assault. He was found guilty and received three months hard labor for each charge. Ned was released from the Beachworth Jail.

May 27th, 1871, five weeks early, and he returned to Greta. He's now 16 years old. Soon after his return, a horsebreaker named Isaiah Wild Wright, rode into town on a horse he had borrowed. And then that horse went missing that same night. The stolen horse had been stolen again. While Wright was searching for his stolen horse, Ned found it and then took it to Wang Greta, or Wangoretta. He returned to Greta on April 20th, and Constable Edward Hall tried to arrest him. on a suspicion that the horse had been stolen again.

Ned resisted arrest, overpowered Hall, despite the constable attempting to shoot him. But then Ned was subdued with the help of some bystanders, and Constable Hall pistol whipped him until his head was, quote, a mass of raw and bleeding flesh. So this won't help his opinion of police officers. Ned was initially charged with horse theft, but that was downgraded to feloniously receiving a horse.

Maybe that was because the horse had been stolen. Nevertheless, he was sentenced to three years in prison. and then Isaiah Wright would receive 18 months for originally stealing the re-stolen horse. Pretty funny to be convicted for stealing stolen goods. Kelly served some of his time at Pentridge Prison and the rest of it on a prison ship called Sacramento in Williamstown.

And yeah, you heard right, served some of the sentence on a prison ship and I guess it was as terrible as that sounds. It was used started in the 1850s to manage the overflow of prisoners caused by the Victorian Gold Rush, housing inmates in floating, cramped, brutal conditions

before it was dismantled around 1885. During the day, men would work in hard labor on land, and then they would often be chained down in the gallows, primarily at night if the ship were to sink. I guess they would just sink with it. Ned was a little bit lucky. He got to stay in a tiny cell, so at least he didn't spend his evening in chains,

but still brutal. He was assigned to building a seawall during the day, carrying lumps of stone for constructing a barrier against the ocean in an effort to tame the waters. Instead of his time of the ship, making him rethink his life of crime, it hardened his resolve to just work harder going forward to not get caught.

He had a lot of time to think, and he thought a lot about his dad. Thought about his dad, you know, how he'd taken a single stray calf in order to provide precious meat that he could not otherwise afford to buy for his hungry kids, though he had tried to, you know, make money through honest means, but then failed. And for that crime, he'd been sentenced to hard labor while his wife and kids struggled to survive without him, and it just felt very unfair to net. He thought about how his dad had felt like such a failure at the end. end of his life. But in Ned's mind, it was a system that had failed him. As Ned now sought, rightly or

wrongly, his dad had been punished for having the good grace not to plunder and pilfer the gifts of the land like the squatters, the squattocracy before him had done, and in so doing had doomed his family to poverty and desperation. Ned's hatred of the squatocracy grew and hardened, who he felt had seized all the best land for nurturing stock and raising crops before his family ever had the chance to get a piece of it for themselves. He thought about how the squatters would never have to spend day after day churning up rock-hard earth with inadequate tools just to be able to plant seeds only to discover the dirt was infertile and nothing would sprout like it happened to his family. They would never have to worry about falling behind in their payments and losing their home

if the yield from their tiny harvest fell short. Ned wasn't merely jealous of the squatocracy. He became consumed with a deep festering hatred and resentment of them, and he would end his prison term filled with a lot more anger in his heart than he'd had when he'd started it. Ned was released six months early, February 2nd, 1874 for good behavior, returned to Greta, now 19 years old. According to one piece of Kelly lore, Ned, in order to settle the score with Isaiah Wright, the horse thief he had stolen a horse from and gotten in so much trouble over,

he beat Wright in a bare-knuckle boxing match. Despite that, Wright would later become a known Kelly sympathizer. Over the next few years, Nellie worked at sawmills, spent some time in New South Wales, living life as a quote, rambling gamble, likely committing a wide variety of crimes, we just don't have records for because he didn't get caught. During that time, his mom married an American named George King

and some of the other Kelly kids, not as good at him as evading criminal charges. Ned's brother James was sentenced to five years for cattle theft in 1873. He was out by 1877, went to Wagga Waga, where he quickly received 10 years for horse theft. After that, he lived a respectable life or at least didn't get caught again, died in 1946 at the age of 87. Ned's brother Dan sentenced to three months in 1877 for damaging property. In early 1877, Ned joined his new stepfather, George, in an organized horse theft operation.

Man, this entire family just made stealing horses and other livestock like their primary business. Ned would later claim they stole around 280 horses together. Jesus. And that his participation in horse theft, this operation, overlapped with the so-called Greta mob, a quote, Bush Lyrican gang. known for their flash dress. Lyrican was a term of the time for a mischievous young person

an uncultivated, rowdy, but good-hearted person or a person who acts with apparent disregard for social or political conventions. All right. This gang included Ned's brother Dan, his cousin's Jack and Tom Lloyd, Joe Byrne, Steve Hart, Aaron Sherrett, some future members of the Kelly gang

and again stealing horses, right? Just a family affair. September 18th. 1877, Ned is arrested in Banala for riding over a footpath while drunk. Old school DUI. I didn't know those kind of charges existed in the 19th century. The next day, maybe a bit hungover or still drunk, Ned fought with four police officers, escorting him to court, including a family friend named Alexander Fitzpatrick.

One of the officers, Thomas Lonnigan grabbed Kelly by the balls during the fight. According to lore, Ned vowed, well, Lonnigan, I never shot a man yet, but if I ever do, you will be the first. Kelly was fine and released for his drunken behavior. Jumping back a bit in August of 1877. Kelly and George King sold six horses they stole from pastoralist James Whitty to a horse dealer named William Baumgarten in Barnawatha. Three months later, November 10th, William Baumgarten arrested. Uh-oh.

Warrants for Ned and Dan issued in March and April of 1878. George King was able to disappear. April 11th, 1878, Constable Strachan, if Greta received word that Ned was in a shearing shed, New South Wales, and departed to arrest him. Four days later, Consul Alexander Fitzpatrick arrived in Greta for relief duty, went to the Kelly home to arrest Dan for horse theft. Dan's gone, so Fitzpatrick stayed, apparently talked to the mom, Ellen. Dan and his brother-in-law Bill Skillion arrived later that evening and Fitzpatrick informed him as you under arrest. Dan then asked to have dinner first, and Fitzpatrick kept watch while he ate.

That's hilarious. My how times have changed. You're under arrest. All right, all right, but mind if I grab dinner with my mom first? Yeah, that's fine. The nice cop, maybe nice cop, would regret being kind, though, because minutes later, Ned rushed in and shot at him. Luckily, he missed.

But then Ned's mom Ellen clocked Fitzpatrick in the fucking head with the shovel. A struggle ensued, I mean, kind of already began. Ned fired again, and this time he did shoot Fitzpatrick, hit him above his left wrist, then Dan's brother-in-law, Bill Scillian, and a man named Ricky Williamson. Oh, fucking Brickie's joined the fray. came in with weapons drawn. Dan disarmed the officer. Ned then supposed he apologized to Fitzpatrick for shooting him,

explaining he had mistaken him for some other constable he didn't like. Fitzpatrick then fainted. When he regained consciousness, Ned compelled him to extract the bullet from his arm, and Ellen dressed the wound. Ned then came up with a cover story, promised to reward Fitzpatrick if he stuck by it. They allowed Fitzpatrick to leave. But about one and a half kilometers from the house,

he noticed two horsemen followed him. He got worried. He escaped, went to a hotel, rebandaged his wounds, then rode to Benalla to report what happened. And this is all according to Fitzpatrick. The Kellys would tell the different story. Ned will claim he was not in Greta, and that if Fitzpatrick was injured, it was probably self-inflicted.

1879, Kelly's sister Kate will tell another story. She'll claim that Ned was there and that he had shot Fitzpatrick because the cop had made unwanted sexual advances torture. Ned called that a foolish story after his final arrest in 1880. Three police officers gave sworn evidence that Ned admitted he did shoot Fitzpatrick later. You know, later he would give that evidence or statement. 1881 inmate Bricky Williamson, who was seeking remission for his sentence in relation to the incident, claimed that Ned shot Fitzpatrick after the constable pulled out his revolver.

Years later, Ned's brother Jim and his cousin Tom Lloyd claimed Fitzpatrick was drunk when Ned showed up, that he pulled Kate onto his knee, right? A little sexual harassment causing Dan to throw him to the ground. Then Fitzpatrick drew his revolver in the struggle. Ned appeared, he and Dan seized, disarmed the cop, Fitzpatrick then claimed a wrist injury caused by a doorlock was a gunshot wound. So all sorts of stories. Well, regardless of what actually happened, Williamson, Scillian, and Ellen Kelly were arrested and charged with aiding and abetting attempted murder, and now Ned and Dan were on the run. The three defendants who did not get away appeared before a judge on October 9th, 1878, Fitzpatrick's doctor who attended to his wounds,

testified that the constable was certainly not drunk and his wounds verified his statement. The defense called on two witnesses who said Skilling was not present during the struggle which cast doubt on Fitzpatrick's account. Ellen, Skilling, and Williamson were all convicted. Ned's mom received three years hard labor. Skilling and Williamson received six years hard labor each.

And now Ned's going to be more committed to being a Bush Ranger than ever. Ned and Dan had escaped into the bush. We're joined by Greta Mob members Joe Byrne and Steve Hart and now the Kelly gang is formed, just four members. While hiding out in Bullet Creek in the Wombat ranges, the Kelly Gang earned money,

sluice in gold, and distilling whiskey. Their sympathizers gave him food and info about the manhunt so they could continually evade capture. Nevertheless, somebody tipped off the police on October 25, 1878, and two mounted parties were sent out to capture the outlaws. One party consisted of Sergeant Michael Kennedy and constables Michael Scanlan, Thomas Lonegan, and Thomas McIntyre, who camped overnight at an abandoned mining site at Stringybark Creek

in Tomb Bullock. The gang's hideout was just two and a half kilometers away. Ned got the jump on him, was able to observe the search party looking for him. Around 5 p.m. October 26, while Kennedy and Scanlon were out shooting or scouting, excuse me, the gang captured McIntyre and Loneganty at camp. McIntyre surrendered and was unarmed,

but Lonnigan moved to draw his revolver and ran for cover behind a log, and then Ned fatally shot him. And he would not regret this. He later called him the, quote, meanest man I ever had any account. against. Scanlon and Kennedy arrived back at camp around 530, gang hit in wait. Net advised McIntyre to tell his friends to surrender. As McIntyre did so, Kennedy reached for his gun and the gang opened fire. Scanlon dismounted and per McIntyre got shot while trying to unsling his rifle.

McIntyre claimed the gang continued firing at Kennedy as he dismounted and tried to surrender. Ned later claimed that Kennedy hid behind a tree and returned fire and then fled. Ned and Dan pursued exchange fire with him for over a kilometer before Ned shot him dead. dead. Kennedy turned to face him and Ned shot him in the chest, claiming to not realize Kennedy had dropped his gun was trying to surrender. McIntyre escaped during the shootout, made it to Mansfield. A search party was quickly rounded up and dispatched and found the bodies of Lonigan, Scanlon and Kennedy over the next few days. Ned justified the stringy bark killings as self-defense, citing reports of policemen saying that they would shoot him on site. These killings would, of course,

turn up the heat on Ned and his gang considerably. October 28, the Victorian government announced an 800-pound reward for the arrest of the Kelly gang. Three days later, the Parliament of Victoria passed the Felons Apprehension Act. This introduced a form of statutory outlawry, allowing citizens and police to shoot armed felons or suspected felons on site, a drastic departure from common law. The Bush Rangers were given until November 12th to surrender. When they did not, on November 15th, 1878, the government issued a proclamation of outlawry, offered a 500-pound reward for each member of the gang, dead or alive. Anyone who encountered the gang armed or had a reasonable suspicion that they might be armed

could kill them without fear of punishment. The act also penalized anyone who gave aid, shelter, or food to the outlaws withheld information or gave false information to the authorities punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The fucking heat is on. A gang now tried to escape to New South Wales but had to return to Victoria due to the flooding of the Murray River. They had several close calls with the police over the coming weeks, relied on their sympathizers who had a hell of a lot to risk now for helping them for their continued support. The gang quickly grew low on money. We're obviously not able to take an honest

job at this point, so they made a plot to rob a bank in the town of Euroa. On December 8, 1878, Joe Byrne did some reconnaissance in town. Around noon the next day, the gang held up the young husband train station just outside of town. This is wild the scope of this. 14, male employees and passers by were taken hostage, held overnight in an outbuilding at the station, female hostages held in a homestead. The next day, Dan guarded the hostages while Ned, Byrne, and Steve Hart rode out to cut, excuse me, Eeroa's telegraph wires. They encountered and held up a hunting party and railway workers, taking them back to the station as hostages as well. It's nuts. Then Ned, Dan, and Hart went to Eeroa, leaving Byrne to guard all of the hostages,

many of whom may have been sympathizers and not inclined to put up much of a fight. Around 4 p.m., the three outlaws held up the Eurowa branch of the National Bank of Australasian. Excuse me, Australasia, the National Bank of Australasia. They stole cash and gold worth 2,260 pounds and a small number of other valuable documents and securities. 14 staff members were now taken back to the young husband's station. As hostages, they have so many hostages. And then check this out. The gang then performed some horseback.

stunts for the hostages before departing at 8.30 p.m. giving parting instructions for their captives to stay put for three hours. What the fuck? I have never heard of anything like that ever. These guys took a whole bunch of hostages, pulled off a bank robbery, and then as a thank you for the hostas being good, they gave them a free show before they took off. I mean, can you imagine any form of something like that happening today? Just, this is a robbery. Keep your hands up, your mouth shut, your body's still, and you. Put the fucking money. in the bag. No one do anything fucking stupid. And not only will no one get killed, but you'll get a nice little show. I've gotten pretty good at magic tricks. I'm not going to lie to you. And after that,

my partners and I have worked out a few songs if you're into barbershop quartet kind of stuff. Guys, let's give them a little taste. And one and two and three. I want a girl. I want a girl. I want a girl. Just like the good old fancied girl That Mary Dee Now stay down on the fucking ground until this is over. Okay, moving on now. Apologies to anybody who's in a barbershop quartet.

I cannot take that music seriously. Whenever I listen to it, it just makes me laugh. After the raid, newspapers commented on the efficiency of its execution. And the inefficiency of the efficiency of the execution, police. Several hostages stated that the gang was courteous, not violent. However, some others did claim that the Bush Rangers threatened to shoot them and burn down the building they were held in if they fucked around and showed resistance. But they did get a show. Okay, sure, you were

scared. Your lives were threatened, but showbiz. During all of that, at Young Husband Station, funny name for a station, Burn wrote two copies of a letter dictated by Ned Kelly. These letters were posted on December 14th to Donald Cameron, a Victorian member of parliament, who Kelly mistook as a sympathizer and superintendent Jason Sadlier. Luckily, burn much better with grammar

and overall grammatical structure than Kelly. In the letters, Kelly gave his version of the Fitzpatrick incident and the Stringy Bark Creek murders. He described cases of alleged police corruption and harassment of his family, signed the letter Edward Kelly in forced outlaw. He expected Cameron to read the letter,

in Parliament, but that did not happen. Instead, the Argus newspaper would call Kelly's letter the work of a clever illiterate. On January 2nd, 1879, police obtained warrants for the arrest of 30 presumed Kelly's sympathizers, 23 of whom were held in custody. Dang, over a third of them released within seven weeks due to lack of evidence, but nine sympathizers had their hold renewed on a weekly basis for three months. However, the police failed to produce enough evidence on any of them for a committal hearing.

Still fucked up a lot of lives. In another letter to acting chief secretary Brian O'Logland, Kelly accused the government of, quote, committing a manifest injustice in imprisoning so many innocent people and he threatened revenge. On April 22nd, the police magistrate refused prosecution request to continue remands and discharge the remaining Kelly sympathizers. After the Eurowa raid, the reward for Kelly specifically increased to a thousand pounds, dead or alive. 58 police officers were transferred to northeastern Victoria, bringing the total, the total. there to 217 in the district. 50 soldiers also deployed to guard local banks. The Kelly gang, meanwhile, distributed most of their proceeds from the raid to their families

and to other sympathizers, acts that will add to Ned's legend and Robin Hood status. When they needed more money, they planned to rob the bank at Jerildery, a town 65 kilometers across the border in New South Wales, and supposedly a number of Kelly's sympathizers moved into town before the raid to help them. That's awesome. February 7th, 1879, the gang crossed the Murray River, camped overnight in the bush. On the 8th, they went to a hotel, three kilometers from gerildaree, where they drank, chatted with sympathetic locals to learn more about the town and the police presence there. In the early hours of February 9th, the gang broke into the gerildery police barracks

and locked up the two constables, George Devine and Henry Richards. They also held Devine's wife and young children hostage overnight, and then the following afternoon Joe Byrne and Steve Hart dressed up as officers and went out with their hostage Henry Richards to familiarize themselves with the town. Holy shit. 10 a.m. on February 10th, Ned and Byrne put on police uniforms. Took Richards with them, leaving Divine behind in the jail, warning the constable's wife they would kill her and the kids if they left the barracks.

Wow, they took the threat seriously. They stayed put. The gang robbed the Royal Mail Hotel now. While Dan and Hart controlled the hostages there, Ned and Byrne. took off also robbed the nearby bank in New South Wales, stealing over 2,000 pounds worth of cash and valuables, 2,141 pounds. Net also found it burned deeds, mortgages, and security, saying, quote, the bloody banks are crushing the life's blood out of the poor struggling man. That's pretty fucking awesome. The bank hostages were held in the hotel next door, and while they were detained, Byrne held at the post office and smashed the telegraph system, while Ned had several hostages

cut down their own telegraph wires. After giving the 30 hostas, a lecture on the corruption of the police and judicial system. I'm understanding why he's a legend to this day more and more to a lot of people. Ned released all but Constable Richards and two telegraphists. And then Dan and Byrne left town with the police's horses and all their weapons. Ned stayed while longer to entertain everybody with a little comedic mime juggling routine he'd been working on. No, but he did stay to talk to a group of sympathizers at the Albion Hotel. While there, he forced Hart to return a watch he had stolen from a local priest.

and that priest then persuaded Ned to leave a racehorse he had taken behind. Following this incredible crime spree, where the gang essentially took over an entire town like something of a movie, they went into hiding for a full 17 months. Prior to arriving in gerildery, Ned wrote a lengthy letter with the goal of explaining how he became an outlaw and outlining alleged injustice he and his family had suffered at the hands of the police. And he didn't actually write this, he dictated it. He asked squatters to share their wealth with selectors and rural poor.

He invoked the Irish history of rebellious. against the English. He threatened to carry out a colonial stratagem designed to shock not only the state of Victoria, but quote, also the whole British army. Excuse me, this letter was dictated to Joe Byrne. It was a handwritten 56-page document of over 8,000 words, became known as the gerildery letter. It was essentially a manifesto. A longer version of the Cameron letter sent to the Victorian Legislative Assembly and the police back in December of 1878. Two copies were made of this letter, one by a public in John Hanley. one by a government clerk. Byrne also rewrote the letter and need her handwriting later. It was not published in full until a half century later in 1930. Ned had intended to have it published as a pamphlet.

During the raid on gerildery, he tried to locate the town's newspaper, editor, and printer, and when he couldn't find him, he gave the letter to a bank accountant, Edward Living, demanding that he'd give it to editor Samuel Gill, and he warned, mind you get it printed,

or you'll have me to reckon with next time we meet. But Living ignored his demands, took the document instead 50 miles to Daniloquin, New South Wales, where he planned to get on a train to Melbourne. He was accompanied by bank manager, J.W. Tarleton, while Living stopped to rest at a hotel eight miles from Daniloquin. He gave an account of what happened as he allowed hotel owner, John Hanlon, to read the document and make a copy. Hanlon will title his copy, Ned Kelly's Confession. Next morning, Living and Tarleton take the train to Melbourne, where they delivered the letter to the office of the Bank of New South Wales. Wales, and there the police advised them against making it available to the public.

In July of 1880, a government clerk made another copy of the now infamous document when prosecutors were preparing their case against Kelly for his murder trial. The original letter includes an undated note written by Ed Wood Living that says, this is the document given to me by Ned Kelly when the bank at gerildery was struck up February 1879. Stuck up, excuse me. Kelly begins by writing, Dear Sir, I wish to acquaint you with some of the the occurrences of the present, past, and future.

Many pages later, the letter ends with a threat. Neglect this and abide by the consequences, which shall be worse than the rust and the wheat in Victoria or the druth of a dry season to the grasshoppers and New South Wales. I do not wish to give the order full force without giving timely warning, but I am a widow's son. Outlawed, and my orders must be obeyed. In the letter, Kelly admitted to certain crimes but claimed he was forced into life as an outlaw due to police persecution of himself and his family. He claimed he shot the officers at Stringybark Creek in self-defense, writing,

this cannot be called willful murder, for I was compelled to shoot them or lie down and let them shoot me. In his letter, he outlined numerous cases of alleged police corruption and called on corrupt officers to resign. He described the Victorian police as, quote, a parcel of big, ugly, fat-necked, wombat-headed, big-bellied magpie, legged, narrow, hip, slaw-footed sons of Irish bailiffs or English landlords. That is quite the description. This guy was one of a kind. He demanded justice for his family and other poor families in Northeast Victoria. He called again for squatters to share their land and their wealth.

He condemned the British monarchy and, quote, an escalating promise of revenge and retribution invoked, quote, a mythical tradition of Irish rebellion against the tyrannism of the English yoke. He added, it will pay government to give those people who are suffering innocence, justice, and liberty. If not, I will be compelled to show some colonial stratagem, which will open the eyes of not only the Victoria Police and inhabitants, but also the whole British army.

And no doubt they will acknowledge their hounds were barking at the wrong stump, and that Fitzpatrick will be the cause of greater slaughter to the Union Jack than St. Patrick was to the snakes and toads in Ireland. I get it now. I get why so many people saw it as a hero. When it comes to crimes of theft, right? Crimes committed during theft. Crimes committed trying to evade capture and punishment for crimes of theft.

I do think that these crimes are sometimes morally justified for sure, right? If the criminal is truly living inside a society where the deck has been unjustly stacked against them. Not saying that was the case with Ned Kelly, but like with John Caesar earlier, you enslave someone, you don't give them enough to eat, you label them a criminal, you punish them for stealing food, right? You're a piece of shit and their crimes are righteous. again, not as clear cut with Ned, but I empathize. If the government, we know, won't provide the legal means for the common man to build wealth and escape the trappings of poverty, can you really fault those who then say, fuck this system and operate outside the law and attack the system they feel is holding them not just down, you know, just them personally, but also generations of their family. Maybe the Kelly family could have put their heads down, abided by the lob and super frugal, slowly climbed ahead, but maybe not.

What if they couldn't? What if, uh, you know, they could have, you know, know, truly done things the right way, but because of the squatocracy, stranglehold on most means of wealth building, they were just going to be fucked regardless. You know, it reminds me of people like growing up in extreme poverty in the inner city who end up selling drugs, not so they can, you know, drive some flashy car or avoid honest work, but so they can help their family not end up, you know, being homeless and get enough to eat in some cases. You know, I just think we should have a soft spot for that type of criminal because not all crimes are crimes of cruelty or immorality. You know, sometimes they're committed out of a true desperation.

A struggle for basic survival. In response to the raid at Girildaree, the reward for the Kelly gang will increase to a total of 8,000 pounds, the largest reward ever issued for Bush Rangers. The Victoria Police received many reports of sightings and tips about the Kelly's gangs, their activities over the coming months, and police organized frequent search parties and surveillance for Kelly's sympathizers, but they just couldn't fine the men. In March of 1879, six Queensland police troopers and a senior constable under the command of sub-inspector Stanhope O'Connor were now deployed to Bonalla to search for the gang. Kelly feared the tracking abilities of the Aboriginal police officers, but Chief Commissioner of Police Frederick Standish and Superintendent Augustus Hare doubted their value and temporarily withdrew their services. Had they not, Kelly might not have ever had a chance to make his infamous final stand. In March of, excuse me, of 1879, on the advice of Commissioner Frederick Standish, the Victorian Land Board, blacklisted 86 alleged Kelly sympathizers from buying land and secluded areas of northeastern Victoria. The aim of the policy was to disperse the gang's network of sympathizers.

This move, unsurprisingly increased feelings of resentment towards the colonial government and increased support for the outlaws. Facing criticism from the media and the government over the failed search, Standish appointed Assistant Commissioner Charles Hope Nicholson as leader of operations at Benalla, July 3, 1879. Sandish reduced Nicholson's police forces, withdrew most of the soldiers guarding banks, and cut off the search budget or, you know, cut it down. Instead, he relied more heavily on targeted surveillance and a network of informers, and then that didn't work. After almost a year of unsuccessful efforts, Nicholson was replaced by Superintendent Augustus Hare. In June of 1880, informant Daniel Kennedy reported that the gang was planning another raid

and created bulletproof armor out of some farm equipment. Police Superintendent Augusta's hair dismissed that as ludicrous and fired Kennedy. Dude actually gave him credible information, and he got canned for it. Police watch parties monitored Joe Burns' mother's house in the Woolshed Valley near Beechworth. Police use the home of her neighbor. Aaron Sherritt, as a base of operations,

kept watch from some nearby caves at night. Sherrott, though, was a former member of the Greta mob, lifelong friend of Joe Byrne, you know, Kelly gang member. Sherrod accepted payments for camping with the watch parties and for being a police informant, but Detective Michael Ward suspected Sherritt was lying to the police to protect Byrne. Maybe he was for a little while. Back in March 1879, Byrne's mom had seen Sherrott with the police watch party and publicly denounced him as a spy.

Then over the following months, Byrne and Ned sent invitations to Sherrott to join their Kelly gang. They still thought he was. you know, on their side. But when he continued to be a police informant, the outlaws decided to murder him as part of a bigger plot, one that would quote, astonish not only the Australian colonies

but the whole world. And they weren't kidding. On June 26, 1880, Dan Kelly and Joe Byrne rode into the Woolshed Valley that evening they kidnapped local gardener, Anton Wick, took him to Aaron Sherritt's hut,

inside of which was Sherrett, his pregnant wife, Ellen, her mom, and a four-man police watch party. Burn forced Wick to knock on the back door, call out for Sherritt. When Sherrod answered the door, Byrne shot him in the throat and chest with a shotgun.

Burn and Dan then entered the hut while Sherret fell and the police hid. Byrne heard them scrambling to get their guns, demanded to come out. Now, when they didn't, he fired into the bedroom. He sent Ellen into the bedroom

to get the police out, but they kept her inside with them. The Bush Rangers then left the hut and threatened to burn it down with everybody inside. They stayed outside for two more hours yelling threats before finally releasing Wick and riding away.

They had other shit to get to. The gang estimated that the police at Sherrod's home would file a report with the Beachworth Police within a few hours, prompting a police train to be sent up from Melbourne. They also surmised the train would stop in Banalla to collect some reinforcements before continuing to the small town of Glen Rowan. At Glen Rowan, they planned to derail the train and shoot any survivors. Then ride to Banalla, where they would bomb the railway bridge over the river, isolating the town, giving them free reign to rob banks,

bomb police barracks, burn the courthouse, free inmates before returning to the bush. Holy shit. Those guys were not just planning some more heist. They were planning a fucking war. While Byrne and Dan were in Wollshed Valley, Ned and Steve Hart forced two railway workers camped at Glen Rowan to damage the track. They chose a sharp curve at an incline where the train would be speeding at 60 miles an hour before derailing into a deep gully. They told their hostages that they were going to, quote, send the trail. uh excuse me send the train and its occupants to hell the bush rangers took over glen rowan railway station

the station master's home and the anne jones glen rowan in across from the station they held workers passerby men women and children prisoner at the station master's home uh this uh they stabled stolen horses at mcdonald's railway hotel the second hotel in town horses carried a cake of blasting powder and fuses and four helmeted suits of bulletproof armor made from stolen plow mold boards weighing about 97 pounds each. Unreal they did that. Netta come up with the idea for the armor to protect them during shootouts with the police. He planned to wear it when inspecting the train wreckage for survivors. But by the afternoon of June 27th, the train is still not arrived. Police officers and Sherrod's hut remained there until morning for fear of the outlaws were still

outside. Meanwhile, the outlaws were holding a full 62 people hostage at the Glenrowing Inn. Amongst them were gang sympathizers who were supposed to help control the situation as the hours passed, the gang gave hostas drinks and organized music, singing, dancing, and games. But now more shows, right? Fun. One hostages will later say, Ned did not treat us badly, not at all. However, another hostage would disagree since Ned had threatened to shoot him dead. Fair. That evening, Ned allowed 21 hostages.

He deemed trustworthy to leave. Then he captured Hugh Bracken, the only constable in Glenn Rowan with the help of local schoolmaster Thomas Kernow, who sought to gain the gang's trust in order to ruin their plans, actually. Since Ned believed Kernan and his wife were sympathizers, he let him go, but warned them to go quietly to bed and not to dream too loud. But they will not heed his advice. Meanwhile, news of Aaron Sherritt's murder. Reach the outside world around noon on June 27th,

and at 9 p.m., a police special train left Melbourne for Beachworth. In addition to the crew and four journalists, the train carried sub-inspector O'Connor, his police unit, his wife, and his sister-in-law. Okay. The train then stopped at Bonal at 1.30 a.m. to take Superintendent Hare and eight troopers raising the total to 27 passengers. He ordered a pilot engine to travel ahead as a lookout. Hour later, as the pilot engine approached Glen Rowan Thomas Kernow, the teacher signaled it to stop, alerted the driver of their impending doom. He had foiled a huge part of Kelly's master plan. Meanwhile, Ned Kelly decided to free the remaining hostages and was delivering another lecture on the police when the train arrived. And now, the the gang is like, fuck, this train was not supposed to show up like this, but we got to go to war, they put on their armor, and they prepared for battle. Police constable Hugh Bracken escaped to the train station to explain the situation to Herr and O'Connor, who led their officers towards the hotel.

At 3 a.m. in the middle of the night, the Bush Rangers were lined up in the shadow of the hotel's porch when the police appeared and they opened fire. About 150 shots were exchanged, and then three of the outlaws, Dan Kelly, Joe Byrne, and Steve Hart, everybody but Ned, they were able to withdraw inside of the hotel. somebody shouted at their women and kids inside, which prompted a ceasefire. Hare had been shot to the left wrist, passed out from blood loss, forcing him to be taken to Bonalla for treatment. An Aboriginal officer named Jimmy sustained a glancing head wound

returned for the fight once he was bandaged up. Ned Kelly had been shot in the left hand, left arm, and right foot. Places where his body armor did not protect him, body armor that made him look like some kind of version of the militarized version of the tin man from the Wizard of Oz. Byrne had been shot in the calf. Several hostages were wounded by police fire. Two actually killed, 13-year-old John Jones and a railway worker named Martin Cherry.

Another hostess, George Metcalf, was either killed by the police crossfire or accidentally shot by Ned. A number of hostages, mostly women and kids managed to escape during the ceasefire. Ned, bleeding badly, retreated about 90 meters into the bush behind the hotel and laid down and hit. At 3.30 a.m., officers found his skull cap and rifle, but not Ned, who was quietly hiding nearby in the bush. A police surround of the hotel firing continued intermittently at 5.30 a.m. Joe Byrne fatally shot while drinking some whiskey at the bar. His last words were a toast to the Kelly gang. Like something out of a movie.

Over the next two hours, reinforcements arrived from Wangarretta and Banalla, bringing the number of police officers to 40 or round 40. Ned spent most the night hiding in the bushes. Despite his blood loss at 7 a.m., still in his armor. Armed with three handguns, he emerged from the, bush and attack the police from the rear. Nothing is over. Nothing.

You just don't turn it off. Officers returned fire. Their bullets largely pinging off a Ned's armor as he moved from tree to tree, blood loss be damned, 100 pound iron suit be damned, firing his guns as he staggered back towards the hotel. He had difficulty aiming, firing, and reloading, but he did. Witnesses struggled to identify the figure in the woods. One witness said that when Kelly appeared out of the mist shrouded bush,

clad in armor, bewildered police officers took him to be a ghost, a bunyip, or old Nick, aka the devil himself. Journalist Tom Carrington, who was there and witnessed this later wrote, With esteem rising from the ground, it looked for all the world like the ghost of Hamlet's father with no head, only a very long, thick neck. It was the most extraordinary sight I ever saw or read of in my life, and I felt fairly spellbound with wonder, and I could not stir nor speak. Nothing is over.

Nothing. You just don't turn it off. The final gun battle. A dawn lasted about 15 minutes. Finally, any when an officer shot Ned in his legs and thighs, his only unprotected, some of his only unprotected areas. He would later describe the impact of the bullets hitting the armor as, quote, like blows from a man's fist.

Ned was then disarmed, his armor removed, while his brother, Dan and Steve Hart continued firing at the police from inside the hotel. And then Dan was wounded by a police fire. Ned was taken to the train station treated by a doctor, later found to have 28 wounds, including serious gunshot wounds to the left elbow and right foot, numerous other flesh wounds caused by gunshots, cuts and abrasions from bullet strike in his armor,

which had a total of 18 bullet marks, including five in the helmet. Ned's bullet-scarred armor still on display today at the State Library, Victoria, and Melbourne. Also, Ned during his last stand was, according to legend, wearing that green silk sash. The Shelton should give him as a given him, given him as a boy when he was nine years old for saving their, you know, son's life, it remains stained with his blood to this day on display at the Bonalla Museum. The siege, meanwhile, still ongoing.

At 10 a.m., another ceasefire called, and the remaining 30 hostages leave the hotel. Two are arrested then for being known Kelly's sympathizers. By the early afternoon of June 28th, about 600 spectators had arrived in Glen Rowan. Dan Kelly and Steve Hart had finally stopped shooting, but they also refused to surrender. Superintendent Jason Sadlier ordered a cannon from Melbourne to now blast out the outlaws, but then decided to burn them out instead. Two 50 p.m., senior constable Charles Johnson set the hotel on fire. Catholic priest Matthew Gibney happened to be passing through the air around this time.

He gave last rights to Ned, then entered the burning hotel to rescue anyone inside, and he found the dead bodies of Joe Byrne, Dan Kelly, and Steve Hart. The causes of Dan and Hart's deaths, unknown, probably were shocked. bled out, or, you know, definitely damage shot. They probably both died from bullet wounds, but maybe also smoke inhalation. The fire died out at 4 p.m. allowing the police to recover the bodies. Other hostages wounded were Michael Reardon, his baby sister Bridget, who was grazed by a bullet. Jones and sister Jane suffered a head wound from a stray bullet, later died.

Ned was transported to Bonalla, where doctors determined that his numerous injuries were non-fatal. Outside the jail, Burns' body was strung up and photographed with cast taken of his head and limbs for waxwork or a waxwork. The police arranged for a hasty burial in an unmarked grave in Bonalla Cemetery so that sympathizers wouldn't steal the body. Dan and Hart's bodies were buried by their families in unmarked graves in Greta Cemetery. Meanwhile, Ned recovered at the Melbourne Jail Hospital. Four weeks later, he was transferred to Beechworth for a committal hearing. The committal hearing would start at Beechworth Court.

In August of 1880, MP David Gonson, represented Ned, later said, that he questioned Ned's mental stability, found him ineffective and justifying his shootouts with the police. Ned believed he was going to be found guilty, so his lawyer focused on his claim that the police persecution drove him to the bush-ranging life. He interviewed Ned, paraphrased his transcript for the paper, the age. Ned was committed for trial on charges of murdering constables Lonnigan and Scanlan at Stringy Bark Creek. Trial was transferred to Melbourne to protect jurors from threats by Ned sympathizers.

and then the trial started October 19, 1880, before Judge Sir Redmond Berry, who had sentenced Ned's mom over that Fritz Patrick incident earlier. A novice lawyer, Henry Bindon, represented Ned with David Gonson serving his counsel. Trial adjourned, October 28th, the prosecution chose to proceed only with the murder of Constable Lonegan. On October 30th, 1880, Bush Ranger Ned Kelly showed up in court wearing that metal suit again. Oh, fuck yeah, bro. Nothing is over.

Nothing. You just don't turn it off. He was able to shoot his way out of the courtroom. He was able to form a new gang, battle the colonial government, and win. He became king of Australia, dismantled the squatocracy, created a society where hard work and frugality allowed anyone to build enough wealth to live a nice, comfortable life, and not at the expense of anyone else. No, he was convicted, and he was sentenced to death by hanging.

At the end of the proceedings, Ned was asked if he had a statement. And he replied, Well, it is rather too late for me to speak now. I thought of speaking this morning and all day, but there was little use. There was little use blaming anyone now. Nobody knew about my case except myself, and I wish I had insisted on being allowed to examine the witnesses myself. If I had examined them, I am confident I would have thrown a different light on the case. It is not that I fear death. I fear it as little as to drink a cup of tea. On the evidence that has been given, no jurymen could have given any other verdict.

That is my opinion. But as I say, if I had examined the witnesses, I would have shown matters in a different light because no man understood the cases I do myself. I do not blame anybody. Neither Mr. Bindon nor Mr. Gansson, but Mr. Bindon knew nothing about my case. I lay blame on myself that I did not get up yesterday and examine the witnesses. But I thought that if I did so, it would look like bravado and flashness. When a judge Redmond Barry sentenced Ned to death, he told him, Edward Kelly, the verdict pronounced by the jury is one which you must have fully expected. The judge also said the facts were, quote, so numerous and so convincing that no rational person would hesitate to arrive at any other conclusion but that the

verdict of the jury is irresistible and that it is right. The judge ended by telling Ned, may the Lord have mercy on your soul, to which Ned immediately replied, I will go a little further than that and say, I will see you there where I go. Well, that's fucking badass. Tough as nails to the very end. Judge Barry will die of natural causes just 12 days after Ned Kelly will be executed. Or did a sympathizer poison him? I don't know. November 3rd, 1880, the Executive Council of Victoria, set Ned's execution for November 11th.

Just eight days later, thousands will come out to protest. Over 32,000 people will sign a failed petition for clemency. Right? They loved him. The day before his execution, Ned had his portrait taken as a keepsake for family and was allowed to meet with him. One newspaper reported that his mother told him, mind you die like a Kelly Well she was tough as nails too

Ned Kelly was executed as scheduled On November 11th he prayed that morning On the way to the gallows He passed a garden commented on the beauty of the flowers But said little else Seemed calm, didn't shake Didn't beg for his life

Seem resigned to his fate He was hanged at 10 a.m And his final words are reported to have been Nothing is! You just don't turn it off No for real no His final words are reported to have been such as life, or possibly, ah, well, I suppose it has come to this. Reports varied. One police officer later said that just before the cap was put over his head and had glanced up with the skylight and muttered something indiscernible. He was only 25 years old. In March of 1881, the Victorian government approved a Royal Commission into the conduct of the police during the Kelly Crime Spree.

The commission held 66 meetings, examined 62 witnesses, and visited numerous times. towns in so-called Kelly Country. The report found that the police had acted properly in retaliation to the crimes of the Kelly gang, but also exposed widespread corruption that ended numerous careers, including that of Chief Commissioner Standish. It concluded with a list of 36 recommendations for reform. The report was said to have stripped the police of, quote, what scanty rags of reputation that Kellys had left them.

Then Kelly's mother was released from prison in February of 1881. She met with Greta Constable, Robert Graham, soon after. afterwards they reached an understanding that helped reduce tensions in the community. She settled down to become for the first time in her life a respectable law-bodied member of society and one who would never rise, though, to even modest prosperity. Her daughter's Maggie and Kate died in the late 1890s, leaving Ellen to raise three of her grandchildren, helped by her son James. He continued to live with her, caring for her in her old age.

She died on March 27, 1923 at Greta West, was buried in Greta Cemetery with Catholic rites. of her 12 children, only one son and a daughter of her first marriage, and another son and two daughters from her second survived her. After all that, she had lived until the age of either 90 or 91. There was speculation that Ned Kelly's execution would lead to outbreaks of violence, but the police no longer denied Kelly's sympathizers' land and assured them they would be treated fairly if they remained peaceful, which did result in peace. And that is it for the Ned Kelly timeline.

Good job, soldier. Made it back. Barely. Well, Ned, motherfucking Kelly, one of the last true Bush Rangers of Australia. Born and raised in rural Victoria by a former convict father and a mom from a family who,

you know, saw laws as mere suggestions. Early on in life, he came to view the law as the enemy. As a teen, Ned started working alongside Harry Power, an infamous bush ranger. Later, Ned would join a local gang called the Greta mob before he started his own. The Kelly gang would go on the run in 1878 after a violent confrontation with the police.

Over the next two years, the Kelly gang committed a series of now infamous crimes and evaded the police. They are responsible for the murders of police officers at Stringybark Creek, though Kelly will claim self-defense. The gang raided Eurroa, gerildery, and killed sympathizer, turned in former Aaron Sherritt. In his manifesto letter, Kelly denounced the police, the government, the British Empire. He wrote his own account of events that led him to become an outlaw. He demanded justice for his family and the poor and threatened consequences for his enemies. And then he planned a fuck in war. Four armed men in iron suits, Ned, his brother Dan, their outlaw buddies, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart,

versus the entire British colonial government. In 1880, the gang attempted to derail and ambush a police train as a prelude to attacking the town of Bonalla of the base of police operations in the region. But the police were tipped off and confronted Kelly's gang at Glen Rowan with a lot more firepower than the men had hoped. Kelly was arrested after a 12-hour siege. Nothing is over. Nothing. You just don't turn it off.

That resulted in the deaths of his three accomplices. He was entried, convicted of murder, and executed in November of 1880. And just like his mother asked, he indeed did, quote, die like a Kelly. Such is life. Time shock. Top five takeaways. Number one. Ned Kelly.

was the son of John Red Kelly, an Irish convict sent to Australia for stealing pigs. His uncles on his mom's side were convicted in numerous crimes from horse theft to assault. With his family background, it seems Kelly might have been destined for a life of lawlessness. Number two, Ned Kelly got involved with the Bush Ranger, Harry Power, at the age of only 14.

Man, so young. That was the year he was first arrested for assaulting a street vendor. Power showed Ned the bush ranging life, but later accused his protege of betrayal after he was arrested in 1870. Number three, in 1878, Ned Kelly formed his own gang. With his brother Dan and associates, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart, with the help of their sympathizers,

the gang would travel through Victoria and New South Wales, evading police and trackers seeking a reward. During their time on the run, Kelly's gang committed the Stringy Bark Creek murders, killing numerous officers who were after them. Number four, Ned Kelly was arrested after the siege of Glenn Rowan, in which he donned 100 pounds of iron, bulletproof armor, survive multiple gunshots, his arrest, trial, and execution

marked the unofficial end of Australia's primary bush-ranging era. And number five, new info, Ned Kelly's remains. Ned Kelly was buried at the old Melbourne jail in the old men's yard. In May of 1881, there were reports that his body had been illegally dissected by some medical students,

which the jail's governor denied. In 1929, the jail was closed for demolition, and the remains of felons were exhumed, before being reinterred in a mass grave at Pentridge Prison Skeletal parts were looted by workers and spectators including one marked E.K. Situated apart from the rest of the

opposite, uh, situated apart from the rest of the remains on the opposite side of the yard. The skull was given to the police stored at the Victorian penal department. In 1934, it was sent to the Australian Institute of Anatomy in Canberra, went missing, was later found in a safe. In 1972, the skull was displayed

at the old Melbourne jail until it was stolen, December 12th, 1978. March 9th, 2009, some archaeologists announced they believed they had found Ned's burial site at Pentridge Prison among the remains of 32 executed inmates there. The skull that was stolen in 78

was given for forensic testing with the Pentridge remains. The Victorian, so they got it back. The Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine then concluded the skull was not Kelly's. So where is it? Well, he's still alive, motherfuckers. Nothing is over.

Nothing. He's still out there, somewhere. You just don't turn it off. No, Ned's skull and bones were identified among the penchage remains through some DNA analysis and comparisons to wounds he had received in Glenn Rowan. Most of the skull was missing, but the occipital

bone showed cuts consistent with some dissection in 2012, so he probably was examined by medical students. 2012, the Victorian government approved the transfer of the bones to the Kelly family who made plans for a final burial and appealed for the return of the rest of the skull. January 20th,

2013, after a final mass, Ned's remains, most of them at least, buried in consecrated ground at Greta Cemetery near his mother's grave. So this is a dozen years ago. Ned's original headstone along with the, well, I guess 13 years ago, Ned's original headstone along with the other inmates repurposed during the Great Depression to construct blue stone walls, protecting Melbourne beaches from erosions. It doesn't have a tombstone now, but there is a memorial stone at the cemetery, announcing that his remains are there somewhere. Exact location left unintentionally unknown or left intentionally unknown to prevent macabre souvenir hunters from further disturbing his remains. Time suck. Top five takeaways.

Nothing is over. Ned Kelly and the most insane shootout in Australian history. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all her help and make in time suck. Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic Lindsay Cummins. Thanks to Logan Keith helping him to publish this episode. designing merch for the store at bad magic productions.com. Thanks to Olivia Lee for her initial research. The All Seen Eyes for moderating the cult of the curious private Facebook page, the mod squad making sure Discord keeps running smooth.

And everybody over on the Time Sucks subreddit and Bad Magic subreddit. And now let's head over to this week's Time Sucker updates. Get your Time Sucker updates. First up, another message related to Ultra Running. Who fucking knew? A strong as fuck. Anonymous Sack. sent in the following heartfelt message with the following subject line.

Barkley Marathon Ultra Running Saved Saving My Life. To whoever ends up reading this, heavy story and sorry for emailing after so long after the Barclay episode, I wrote it all out for the first time and had to sit with it for a while. I'd like to keep this anonymous. I haven't told anyone this story in its entirety. I'm a firefighter in a busy city. I started in the fire service at 18, which comes with a massive list of pros and cons. I was much younger than everybody else in my first department,

and that gap meant I didn't really fit anywhere. I was exposed early to things I didn't yet have the tools to process, pronouncing a friend from high school dead, child abuse, violence, calls that stick with you. I didn't talk about it. I started drinking at 19 just asleep. No one knew, not my parents, not my crew, not my girlfriend at the time. I kept it hidden, but I was unraveling.

Year later, I got hired by the city I work for now. I passed the academy, was out on probation, when everything finally came to a head. After an especially rough shift, the kind where no one sleeps and everyone just sits at the table trying to process, the thought crept in, I can't do this for 30 more years.

That morning I made a plan. I went to my parents' house, opened the lock on the gun safe, took out an old browning high power, loaded a single round into the magazine, sat down in the bathtub trying to make the mess easier to clean. No note.

I just wanted it done. I put the pistol in my mouth, pulled the trigger, click. My first thought was, damn, that didn't hurt at all. Then I dropped the gun and realized it hadn't gone off. I started crying, really crying. For the first time since I got into this line of work, for the first time in years, I let everything out. While I was still sitting there, my phone rang. It was a friend of mine who was about to ship off to Marine Corps boot camp. Through my blubbering, he said in his usual loving asshole way, why do you sound like a little bitch? Want to go for a run?

I didn't know what to say. I just said, yes, I was too scared to be alone. Told him to pick me off at my parents' place. Before he got there, I checked the pistol. I ejected the round, a complete dud. No light primer strike. Just a bad round. A dud round saved my life. Over thousands of rounds, it is still the only dud round I've ever had.

We went for that run. I told him everything. The job, the nightmares, the drinking, the suicide attempt. He listened. We ran 10 miles. It was the first time I'd run since high school. That run changed everything. I started running every day.

I signed up for 100K just to give myself something to chase. I ran my first 100K before I ever ran a marathon. I ran through stress fractures and my feet and lower legs. I just didn't stop. Now when I have bad days, I run to reset my brain. When runs get hard, I don't run alone. I have ghosts and memories to keep me company. Listening to your Barclay Marathons episode hits so close to home.

Not because I'll ever run Barclay, but because for some of us running isn't just about racing or proving anything. It's survival. It's how we keep going when quitting, feels easier. Thanks for all you do with time suck and the STD. Only thing I'm planning on sucking is this beautiful show. Anonymous. P.S. Now I'm facing down the barrel of knee surgery. I've been running on some fucked up knees. The groove my knee cap runs through is too shallow so my knee grinds and is pulled off center by my quad. And to boot, I've got a massive tear in the meniscus.

So like the stubborn ass that I am, I'm running the Austin Marathon next month for my birthday. Fuck the surgeon. I've only got one body. I'm going to use it all up. Anonymous. Well, damn, anonymous. If that didn't hit me in the fields when I first read it, yeah, man, you made something that has made zero sense to me. You make a lot of sense. Running and running and running. The singular focus, the pain you must have to block out.

It's not about punishing yourself. It's about healing yourself, right? Over and over again. And that, my friend, is a fucking beautiful thing. So thank you for what you do. Thanks for sticking around. Seems like the universe has some special plan for you. That was one miraculous dud.

Hail Nimrod and best of luck in Austin, brother. next up sorry I keep swallowing by the way I'm fucking I'm on this like sugar detox and I do feel better after like two and a half weeks but I was reading about symptoms

I have never been so fucking thirsty in my life it's insane how much water I've been drinking every fucking day and no matter how much water I drink it's just like it's like a mild cold symptoms I was like god damn I was addicted to sugar uh anyway

next up is a kick ass sack Alex S He sent in a message with a subject line of lacrosse stereotypes. Three out of five stars wouldn't change a thing. Hey Dan, I know I haven't sent in in a long time. And man has shit changed since that time. Divorced, almost remarried, cocaine, wilderness treatment. You know how the story goes.

Anyway, I just wanted to reach out about the Duke lacrosse scandal and start up by saying, thanks for including male stats in the beginning. I think sometimes people can imagine and picture what rape is when they hear that word, but it isn't always penetrating in shit. I consider myself to have been raped as a male by a female when I lost my virginity. I'll explain. Classic high school popular guy stuff.

Throwing a lot of large parties because I thought that made me friends. Anyway, one night when I was putting on a real Midwest barn rager, a group of plastics, mean girls reference, showed up from one of the neighboring schools from word of mouth. One of them in particular was the type that wanted to get with every guy who was the host of the party. So while the night was going well, and it had a ton of fun. She had told her friends she was going to get me drunk so she could fuck me.

And after night of feeling like a super hot girl that everyone wanted was really into me, I eventually got very drunk and she guided me to the backseat of my vehicle. Unknowingly, she had given a heads out to everyone at the party that she was going to, quote, take my V card. Midway through my fish out of water, laying down and not completely knowing what was going on, the entire party came, opened the car door, began to take photos and videos. skipped the next day having no idea what happened the night before I was shown footage and felt pretty ashamed and lost

I know it's not common for a man to feel taken advantage of by a good-looking female and I'm not saying this for sympathy only saying this in case other guys have gone through something similar and didn't see the wrong in it and I don't know am I wrong for considering that to be rape either way I just wanted to say thank you for all the content and information over the years

I've been loyal since the start got to even find myself in the crowd while rewatching get out of here devil I'll send you a picture You helped change my views, expand on my brain. Sorry for the ramble, probably shit grammar. You're down for the cause meat sack, Alex. Man, damn, Alex. That was brave to share, man.

So thank you. Thank you for including that picture as well. That's awesome that you were sitting next to a few people wearing the lizard masks. That was so fun. Yeah, you know, I'm not positive if what happened to you was rape because, you know, not sure what you consented to or did not in your drunken state. that is the problem, you know, with too much alcohol. But, but yes, something bad happened for sure.

All the people taking photos and videos, that was definitely a fucked up violation. You know, depending on what was captured in those videos and pictures, sure seems like a type of sexual assault. And yeah, and she may have raped you as well. Sorry that happened because it is fucked up and doesn't get talked about much.

And yes, it can happen to dudes. I had a girl I was friends with in college when I was near blackout drunk, tried to sleep with me, definitely told her no. Many times she kept turning. trying to get my pants off. I literally pushed her out of bed. She forced her way back on to bed.

It was like one of those collars like where you kind of like lifted up, like a like a bunk bed missing the bottom bunk. If that makes sense, you have like your desk under it. So when she climbed back up. Had to yell out. Some friends walking down the hall happened to hear. Last thing I yelled before I threw up. Again, I was so fucking drunk. I used to drink so much in college.

And before I blacked out. Last thing I remember saying was get her the fuck out of here. Never hung out with her again. she also never apologized. Instead, she acted like I must have been gay since I didn't sleep with her or didn't want to. So good on you for sharing that. And I hope you, you know, are through with that rough transitory life phase you described. Yeah, I've used cocaine plenty of times. Been lucky to not get addicted. It is a hell of a drug, as Rick James has said. I hope you've said goodbye to it. And hail Nimrod, man. And now one more from a really kind sack, from a really kind state. Lizzie S. sent in a message. with the subject line of team mates sack Minnesota needs your help and for the record this was sent in just for context before Alex

Alex Preti's murder. Hi Dan and everyone at Timesuck. A long time listener here writing in for the first time. I was hoping my first time writing in would be something funny or witty but sadly I'm asking for help to spread the word via a platform much larger than my own. I'm sorry for the length but fuck it because I feel

like there's got to be something more I can do. I was born and raised in Minnesota and I love my state. Sure we may be consider to fly over a state. It's cold enough to freeze a tit off in the winter. Our trees can explode. It's so cold. No shit. Not even kidding. But I love that we take care of one another. Many people know what's going on in Minnesota with ice raids. So there's no need for me to explain that cluster fuck. My whole Facebook feed is pretty much about the protest going on in Minnesota and ice. And my feed used to be about dogs and food. Isn't that some bullshit? We all know the story of

the shooting of Renee Good at this point, but there's so many other stories that are out there. An older mung man was taken out of his house and well below freezing temperatures and just shorts, crocs, and a blanket over his shoulders after agents stormed his house. After being detained, they found out he was a citizen, and they released him. Maybe just because I'm a Minnesotan, and I know how cold that day was, but damn, if someone didn't cut onions in here. A white man who has a purple heart and is a veteran of the war in Iraq was detained for eight hours without access to a lawyer before being released. Agents are not just taking illegals. They are taking everyone. no due diligence on ICE's part and seemingly no repercussions for their errors are happening.

Kids are missing school, businesses are closing all because people of color are afraid to go out. Citizens are disappearing off of the streets. Not everything is bad here, though. There's a group of people who wait outside the ICE detention center for those who are released so the group can bring people back to their houses safely and most importantly warm. Communities have donated food, time, resources, and peacefully protested, minus the water balloon toss at Jake Lang. the government just wants us to become violent and selfish, so their methods can feel vindicated. Thankfully, we're too damn stubborn to let the government win. After all, we're too damn stubborn to leave this frozen hellscape.

We go out and below freezing, oftentimes below zero temperatures, protests, blow whistles, honk horns to alert people of ice presence and take care of each other. That's just what we do. It's who we are. I don't know how else to explain it. If you need comedic relief in all these dark news, there's plenty out there, thank God. It's really the only thing keeping me going along. with comment sections from people out of state, sometimes out of the country,

sending kind words of support to me and my fellow Minnesotans. We have probably all seen the ice agent running and slipping flat on his ass like a cartoon character. But there's other ones like guys who walk around in onesies with speakers, skiing slash sledding downhills with protest signs. Oh my God, some of those are so good. A street full of people singing together.

Yep. Or my recent favorite, a guy walking around in a Pikachu onesy, and the crowd yelling, don't fuck with Pikachu. Online people are asking, people are asking how to help and we need it. If you want to get more info,

testimonies, or find ways to help and donate, go to standwithminnesota.com. If you read this on the podcast, can you also give a shout out to my boyfriend of four years, Jake? He introduced me to Timesuck years ago, and I thank him for it. Can you also give a shout out

to my Minnesotan listeners and tell them that I'm proud of them and that we will come out of this stronger than we were before? I've got a lot of love for my state, the people in this state, and feel bad for wherever ice targets next. With appreciation, Lizzie S.

Stover, Meat Sack with both her tits for the time being. Oh, thank you, Lizzie, man. Hail you. I love hearing from somebody there, right? Stand with Minnesota is a great organization. Thank you for sharing that. Thanks to Jake for sharing you with time suck or time suck with you. I hope nothing else terrible happens between this recording and the episode's release,

but if something does, I know the spirit of Minneapolis and Minnesota will not be broken. Special shout out to some Black Panthers in Minneapolis. Fuck you. Exercising their Second Amendment rights in the best way, truly embodying what the don't tread on me ethos is actually about. Keep going, Lizzie. It means so much to so many of us keep helping, keep fighting. Hail Nimrod, abolish ice.

Time suckers, I needed that. We all did. Well, thank you for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast. Be sure in rate and review time suck. if you haven't already. Please don't build your own 100-pound iron suit. Try to wage war with three buddies against the entire government. I like your spirit, but you're going to need a lot more people and planes and helicopters.

And, well, a lot more rifles and tin. Instead, maybe protest. Speak your mind. Vote your conscience. Don't give up. And keep on sucking. And magic productions. And now let's have somebody else tell you about Ned Kelly.

iconic outlaw musician Johnny Cash recorded a song called Ned Kelly on his iconic album 1971's Man in Black. In Australia, a bandit or an outlaw is called a Bush Ranger. One of Australia's most infamous Bush Ranger was a man named

Ned Kelly. Ned Kelly was a wild young bush ranger out of Victoria he wrote with his brother Dan he loved his people and he loved his freedom and he loved to ride the wide open land ned kelly was a victim of the changes that came when his land was the sprouting seed and the wrongs he did were multiplied in legend with young Australia growing like a weed Ned Kelly took the blame

Ned Kelly won the fame Ned Kelly brought the shame and then Ned Kelly hanged Well he hid out in the bush and in the forest and he loved to hear the wind blow in the trees while the men behind the badge were coming for him Ned said they'll never bring me to my knee was change and running cycles

and Ned knew that his day was at an end he made a suit of armor out of flower shed. But Ned was brought down by the trooper's men. Ned Kelly took the blame. Ned Kelly won the fame. Ned Kelly brought the shame and them Ned Kelly hang.