December 1854
November 11, 1880
Robber and Bandit
The Australian equivalent of Jesse James, Ned Kelly was a bank-robbing outlaw who became a folk hero in his own time and after. Also likened to Robin Hood, his story lives on in art, literature, and film.
Kelly was born in December 1854 in Beveridge, Victoria, in the southeastern corner of the continent of Australia. Melbourne, then the capital of the colony of Victoria, lay 25 miles (40 kilometers) to the south. Also south of Beveridge was an area known as Van Diemen’s Land, also called Tasmania—a onetime penal (prison) colony where male and female prisoners were transported from the British Isles to live. Kelly’s father, John “Red” Kelly, a native of Tipperary, Ireland, was one such convict, having been transported to Van Diemen’s Land to serve a seven-year sentence for stealing two pigs. Transplanted to the British colony of Victoria, he remained fiercely loyal to his homeland and continued to nurse a hatred for the British legal system—which, in his eyes, upheld the oppression of the Irish and Ireland.
Kelly’s mother, Ellen Quinn Kelly, was also Irish.
This is a free page. This page contains 201 words. This
article contains 1,608 words (approx. 5 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our Ned Kelly Access Pass.
