ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

Ned's Body

© Stephen Whiteside 01.09.2011

They've found Ned Kelly's body, but they haven't found his head.
A hundred thirty years it is since Kelly has been dead.
They hanged him, then they took his head, to make of it a mask.
"What makes a man a killer?" was the question they would ask.

They sought to get some answers from the curving of the chin.
Did the arching of the eybrows hold the secret to his sin?
Or the sloping of his forehead? Or the angle of his nose?
Eventually they tired of their musings, I suppose,

And drew no firm conclusions, for his head is who knows where?
Someone tossed it to the side, with little thought or care.
His body fared no better, but at least it has been found,
Thrown with other miscreants, and buried in the ground.

It now has been identified, all thanks to DNA,
But what about the others in that pit, I want to say.
They all were once a mother's son. They were not born to sin,
In spite of how their eyebrows arched, the contours of their skin.

They all once dreamed of happy lives till fortune crueled their pitch,
And left them lying naked in a cold, uncaring ditch.
So let's identify them all - don't let it rest at Ned.
Let us strive to find a gentle resting for each head.

No doubt they did some dreadful things by force of head or hand,
And if we can't forgive, we can still try to understand.
Their children's children's children likely labour with us yet.
They surely yearn for closure. It's unlikely they'd forget

That an ancestor was buried like a bullock or a horse,
No sympathy, no dignity, compassion or recourse,
And while we're laying all these other dreadful ghosts to bed,
Let's see if by Ned's body we can lay at last his head.

Excellent Stephen - it is great to tell history in this way, makes it more interesting to learn and I was unaware of this fact...you would think that with the notoriety he had the whereabouts would be known. Seems at one time they had it and then it was stolen in 1978 from the gaol . Pretty bloody sad when you think of it isn't it?

Thanks, Maureen. Actually, the skull that was stolen in 1978 is now known not to have been Ned's after all, so it's back to the drawing board!

Yes, that's fair enough, Marty.

I guess the only reason they were able to do the DNA match with Ned's body is that they were fairly sure one of the skeletons belonged to Ned. They knew what they were looking for. Without some sort of similar clue, it would be impossible to identify any of the other bones with the same technology. Of course, this brings my whole poem down in a screaming heap.

Never mind. I was just trying to express some sadness for all the other unidentified skeletons, and the hope that they will not be forever be forgotten, just because they once belonged to people who lacked Ned's notoriety.

Maybe one day, everybody's DNA will be on a central register somewhere. All we'll have to do is enter a code, press a button, and the match will come up. But will the bones last this long? How patient does a skeleton have to be? And is this a good or a bad thing anyway?

Good point, I hadn't thought of that. These are obviously far too old for that, though.

Interesting poem and interesting discussion. Got a bit of a science background myself - many moons ago, plus an interest in history and archaeology. An archaelogist that lives in our local area was on the "dig" at the Old Melbourne Gaol for skeletons and the like before they built over it. I think they were buried under what became the garage.

Heather

I friend of mine was a prison warder many years ago, he told me that in the prison yard there was a place where it was believed that executed prisoners had been buried.

He said that if it were to happen that the aborigine prisoners were rampaging, fighting and beating all the guards up, he would have stood over the "burial" place, it would have been perfectly safe because there was no way that they would go anywhere near that spot.

Hi Stephen,

I always believed that history and geography should be taught in rhythm and rhyme, it is so much easier to recall and remember the events and the people in past time.
A part of remembering you portray in your words and lines, is to understand how it all came to be.
How all the family suffer through generations, until the vine grows strong enough; the truth to see.

Thank you Stephen

That's interesting, Neville.

Thanks, worddancer and Heather.

This might be of interest Stephen taken from our local paper the Queensland Times


Ipswich's links to the Kelly Gang could rewrite history after confirmation that the remains of Ned Kelly have been identified through DNA testing.
Doctors and scientists at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine have confirmed the find at Melbourne's Pentridge prison.
Ipswich historian and councillor Paul Tully said that in 1933, a man claiming to be Dan Kelly walked into the offices of Brisbane's Sunday Truth Newspaper and said he and fellow bushranger Steve Hart had escaped the hotel fire at Glenrowan in 1880 and made their way to Queensland.

Cr Tully said the man appeared at the Brisbane Exhibition in 1934 in Sideshow Alley and displayed an intimate knowledge of the Kelly Gang and family and noone ever succeeded in exposing him as an impostor.

He lived for a time under the old railway bridge in suburban Toombul and at Ipswich, Rosewood and Fernvale.

In 1948, on the day he had been released from the Brisbane General Hospital, he was hit and killed by a coal train at the end of Wharf St, in Ipswich.

He was buried in a pauper's grave at the Ipswich General Cemetery on July 31 1948 under the named of James Ryan, which he adopted after coming to Queensland.

Cr Tully said former Moreton Shire deputy chairman John Harris, who still lives at Fernvale, recalled sitting in his lap as a young boy and said he had large burns and scars on his back which the man claimed he got in the fire at Glenrowan.

Cr Tully said the man had the initials "D.K." branded on his buttocks and John Harris swears to this day he had met the real Dan Kelly.

Cr Tully who has been following the Queensland connection to the Kelly Gang for more than 20 years said the DNA confirmation of the Kelly Gang leader brought forward the possibility of the remains at the Ipswich Cemetery being exhumed.

Cr Tully said the two bodies which came out of the fire at Glenrowan had been burnt beyond recognition and were never identified by the family.

He said it was possible the pair had escaped the fire in the smoke and confusion and that two of the townsfolk who had been taken hostage in the hotel by Ned Kelly had perished in the inferno.

"The final resting place of Ned Kelly's younger brother Dan could well be in the pauper's section of the Ipswich Cemetery where the Ipswich Council has erected a memorial to this man who died penniless and without any family or friends.

"Victorians have rejected the Queensland connection to the Kelly gang in the past but they have never been able to disprove it."
Cr Tully said if DNA testing proved it was Dan Kelly, Australia's history books on the Kelly Gang would have to be re-written.