Black Snake (5 page)

I knew something was wrong when someone knocked on the front door. No one ever knocks on the front door. People who come to visit just walk round the back and sing out. It was another trooper. Mother made me go out into the garden. I wasn’t supposed to hear, but I crept round and sat under the window. I heard everything.

“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, Mrs Kennedy,” he said. “But your husband is dead. He was killed in the line of duty.”

Ned Kelly killed my father. He shot him in the chest. He killed two other troopers too. Only one got away. That was Constable McIntyre. He found a wombat hole and hid in it all night. He was too scared to come out in case the Kellys were looking for him. My father was only doing his job. All he was trying to do was bring in the Kellys so that they could go to court. That’s a place where you go to find out if you’re guilty or not. If they were guilty of trying to kill Constable Fitzpatrick, they’d go to jail. If they weren’t guilty, then they’d be set free. That seems fair enough to me. It’s not fair that someone can be shot just for doing their job.

Who’s going to look after Mary and Laurie and me now? Who’s going to go out and earn the money for food? Mary’s the eldest and she’s only nine. She could probably do some washing or mind a lady’s babies. I don’t think she’d earn enough to feed us all, though.

Laurie says that when he grows up he’s going to be a trooper just like father. And if Ned Kelly is still alive then, he’ll track him down and shoot him. Laurie says I’m not allowed to tell anybody—not even mother. If the Kellys find out, they’ll come to the house and shoot him first.

What was that? There’s something out there, I’m sure there is. Something made the stars disappear. It could have been a cloud or it might have been one of the Kelly Gang.

“Mother, can I come and sleep in your bed? Mother!”

Rose Kennedy, seven years old.

Target Practice

The Kelly Gang had been hiding out in the Wombat Ranges for six months, keeping themselves busy panning for gold and distilling whisky. They also spent a lot of time practising shooting. The trees around their hidden hut were marked with targets and there was evidence that they had been shot at, with increasing accuracy, many times. Ammunition was in short supply, so the bullets had all been dug out of the trees, melted down and made into new bullets.

Some time after Mrs Kelly’s trial, the gang heard news that the police had started a campaign to capture them. There were at least two groups of police out in the trackless hills in search of them, maybe three. It was only a matter of time before the police stumbled upon their camp.

Search Party

One group of four policemen left the town of Mansfield with enough supplies to enable them to search for a week. On the first day out they set up camp on the banks of Stringybark Creek. Little did they know that they were less than two kilometres from the Kellys’ hideout. Constable McIntyre was given the job of cooking for the party. He thought it would be a good idea to shoot some parrots or perhaps a kangaroo so that the men could have fresh meat for their dinner.

The gang had been alone in the hills for months. Suddenly there was the sound of gunfire ringing out around the valleys. If the police were out in force looking for them, Ned decided they needed more guns and horses. Instead of waiting for the troopers to find them, they would go out after the troopers.

“We thought our country was woven with police, and we might have a chance of fighting them if we had firearms.”

Ned’s reason for attacking the police, Cameron Letter

The Hunters Hunted

It wasn’t hard to find the police camp. The gunshots had told the gang in which direction it lay and a huge campfire led them straight to it like a beacon. There were two policemen at the camp. They weren’t on guard, looking out for the gang. One was cooking dinner. The other was tending the horses.

Ned and his mates were not well armed. Finding only two policemen was a stroke of luck. Ned emerged from the undergrowth and told the policemen to “Bail up”. The others came out of hiding as well, to show the policemen that they were outnumbered. McIntyre raised his hands in surrender. The other policeman, Constable Lonigan, turned and dived for the cover of a nearby log, reaching for his revolver as he did. Ned fired. Lonigan was shot.

McIntyre stared in horror at his dead colleague. Ned questioned him while the others searched the camp. They discovered that there were two other policemen in the search party. It was late afternoon and they were due back at any moment. The Kelly Gang just had time to eat some of the food that Constable McIntyre had prepared before the other two policemen, Scanlon and Kennedy, returned.

Death at Stringybark Creek

McIntyre yelled out to his two colleagues that they were surrounded and they should give up their weapons. At first they didn’t take him seriously and kept riding into the camp. Then Ned came out of hiding, followed by the other three gang members, now all properly armed with police guns. The two troopers didn’t surrender though. Scanlon shot at Ned but narrowly missed him, the bullet singeing his beard. Ned shot back. He didn’t miss. Scanlon fell from his horse. Sergeant Kennedy jumped down from his horse and, using the animal as a shield, shot at the outlaws. One of his bullets grazed Dan’s shoulder. A second shot from Ned killed Scanlon.

The horses were frightened by the gunfire and in the commotion, McIntyre leapt onto Kennedy’s rearing horse, which galloped off. At the same time, Kennedy ran into the bush for cover. Ned went after him. He followed Kennedy for some time until the policeman came out from cover and shot at Ned. Kennedy missed. Ned, his aim sure after months of target practice, shot Kennedy in the armpit. The wounded policeman turned and Ned shot him again.

Things had not turned out the way Ned had planned. The gang had only wanted to take the policemen’s weapons. The shaken bushrangers took the dead troopers’ guns and searched the bodies for money and valuables.

Escape

Meanwhile, McIntyre was still clinging to Kennedy’s horse as it galloped through the bush away from the scene of the gunfight. McIntyre had no control over the panicked animal and eventually a tree branch hit him and knocked him from the horse’s back. McIntyre was terrified. At least two of his colleagues had been shot by ruthless bushrangers who, for all he knew, were right behind him with their guns aimed at him as well. As night fell, McIntyre scrambled into a wombat hole.

The next morning, once he was sure there were no bushrangers around, McIntyre headed for home. He took off his boots so that he didn’t leave any footprints. He walked barefoot towards the town of Mansfield. It was three in the afternoon before he reached the nearest farm.

Constable McIntyre didn’t have much of a chance to rest after his ordeal. That same evening he led a party of police back to the camp to find the bodies of their colleagues.

The police were so ill-equipped that when the police party left Mansfield to search for the bodies of Scanlon, Kennedy and Lonigan, they had to borrow guns from the townspeople.

Three Dead

Once again there were different reports of what happened at Stringybark Creek. McIntyre swore that Ned shot Lonigan as he was ducking for cover. Ned said that he didn’t shoot him until he had taken cover behind a log, and he raised his head to shoot him. Ned admitted that he had shot Kennedy as he tried to surrender. He had thought he was turning to shoot him with his revolver. When Ned knelt at the side of the dying policeman, he saw that he had been mistaken. What he thought was a revolver in his hand was in fact a clot of blood which had run down his arm from his first wound. Ned said he shot Kennedy again as an act of mercy because the dying man was in so much pain. McIntyre said Ned shot a wounded man who was pleading for his life.

Whatever the circumstances, the result was the same. Three policemen were dead. Two women were widows. Nine children were fatherless. Ned had previously been wanted for the attempted killing of Fitzpatrick and horse theft. Now he was wanted for murder.

“I called on them to throw up their hands. Scanlon slewed his horse round to gallop away, but turned again, and as quick as thought, fired at me with the rifle, and was in the act of firing again when I shot him.”

Ned’s version of the gunfight at Stringybark Creek, Cameron Letter

Outlawed

“This cannot be called wilful murder, for I was compelled to shoot them in my own defence, or lie down like a cur and die.”

Ned defends his actions, Cameron Letter

Early the next morning, the Kelly Gang left the place where they had been hiding for the last six months. They probably thought that McIntyre had already raised the alarm and search parties would be out in force, but that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t until Monday morning that word reached Melbourne and plans for a major manhunt got under way.

Once the police authorities heard of the deaths, things started to move faster. In three weeks a special act of parliament had been hurriedly passed. Known as the Felons Apprehension Act, it declared that Ned Kelly, Dan Kelly and two other men whose names weren’t known were outlaws and that anyone who came across them was entitled to kill them without question. The reward for their capture—dead or alive—had been raised to £2000—£500 for each outlaw.

If Ned had thought that killing the police search party would ease their situation, he had been wrong. Before, two parties of police had been after them—no more than eight men. Now the entire police force of Victoria was after them with a vengeance and any ordinary citizen could shoot them on sight.

The sawn-off shotgun used by Ned Kelly at Stringybark Creek was given to the Melbourne Museum of Applied Science. In the 1950s, someone decided it wasn’t worth keeping and threw it out.

Men at the site of the Stringybark Creek shoot-out a week after the event.

What if you were there...

This is my chance to become a hero. I’ll be remembered as one of the men who captured Ned Kelly. At least, I hope so. We haven’t captured him yet. I’m not sure who’s supposed to be in charge here, Superintendent Nicolson or Superintendent Sadleir. I don’t think they know either. If we caught the gang, I bet they’d both be shouting that they’d masterminded the whole thing. As we haven’t caught sight of any outlaws yet, they’re both hanging back and trying to get the other one to make all the decisions.

Superintendent Sadleir brought two native trackers with him. I’ve heard it said that they can track a rabbit in pouring rain and a fog. I don’t doubt it. This morning they said they could see horse tracks. I thought they were making it up. I couldn’t see anything more than the natural patterns of the earth. We followed them for three hours. I was sure that we were being led on a wild goose chase. Then an hour-and-a-half later they got very excited. They were jabbering away to each other in their strange native language, so none of us had the least idea what they were talking about. Then the old tracker, Doctor, they call him, said to Mr Sadleir that they’d found fresher tracks.

They were fresh enough that even I could see them. I couldn’t tell how many horses, but it could easily have been four. We followed them for over an hour over some open country. Even when we crossed a rocky outcrop the trackers didn’t lose the trail for a minute. The tracks led into some dense scrub. I could see the hoof prints disappearing into the trees. The trackers stopped dead and started jabbering to each other again. Then they suddenly turned away from the scrub and headed off down a slope to the east.

“Where are they going?” I shouted out, though it wasn’t my place to say anything. “The trail leads into the scrub. They’re following a different set of tracks.”

The natives tried to pretend they couldn’t understand me, though they both looked sheepish.

Superintendent Nicolson looked at the thick scrub nervously. “These men know what they’re doing,” he said. “We’re in their hands.”