ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

My great grandfather (my mother's grandfather) was living near Beechworth around the time of the Kelly Outbreak. He had emigrated from Germany, and did not relate to the Kellys or their grievances. My mother has told me of the fear they felt on hearing the news of the shooting of Aaron Sherritt.

While I have always been pretty much on Ned's side myself, this poem is an attempt to view those events from my great grandfather's point of view.


Two Shots

© Stephen Whiteside 05.10.2012

I didn’t hear those shots ring out,
But the message they carried was clear,
And everyone stayed near their hearth, near their home -
Well, those to whom breathing was dear.

The Kellys were back. They had turned on their own.
Keep your head down, and pray hard
That you didn’t look out of your window one night
To see bushrangers out in your yard.

The Kellys were back. It had all been so quiet;
Tempting to almost forget
Of the violence and fear of the preceding year.
They were set for their greatest scene yet.

Murdered, he was, at the door of his hut,
With his pregnant young wife at his back;
She was splattered with blood, and her heart seemed to stop
In the face of this sudden attack.

She lost the poor baby. That’s no surprise.
Yes, two were murdered that night -
One for each bullet. Say two and a half,
For she never recovered from fright.

Never recovered. Not fully, I mean.
Her life, it was blighted thereafter.
Two shots rang out in that small, cosy house,
And they echoed from floorboard to rafter.

The police weren’t much use. They were frightened as us.
No chance, then, for Law and for Order.
The Kellys were king, and their rule stretched out far,
From down south to away past the border.

All we could do was keep quiet, and pray,
And even then, comfort was scant.
Kelly believed he had God on HIS side.
It was clear from the tone of his rant.

Not that most heard it, but word got around.
Many fell under his thrall.
We simply worked to keep out of his sight,
For we had no defences at all.

Time seemed to stop for a moment or two.
Everyone fell back aghast,
And then came the siege at Glenrowan of course,
And the Kellys were conquered at last.

But I’ll not forget the sheer terror, the fear,
That swept through the township that time
When two shots rang out, fired in coldest of blood,
And struck down a man in his prime.

Love it Stephen - now if they had only taught history like this when I was at school it would have been a joy.

Cheers

Maureen

Big compliment, Maureen! Thank you very much.

I suppose you could argue that all criminals are unique in their own way. Personally, I'm reluctant to demonise anybody. Nobody is born bad, and there are two sides to every story.

There's no doubt that Ned was sick of running. Life was getting tougher and tougher, especially after the introduction of the Queensland black trackers.

Ned was keen to bring things to a head - one way or another. Ned and Joe had lost faith in Sherritt - probably unfairly. He was doing a pretty good job of keeping the police off his case without actually providing much useful information, but they lost patience - and they wanted something dramatic to lure the police into their trap. Shooting Sherritt allowed them to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

Even after the arrival of the police at Glenrowan it seems pretty clear that the Gang could have slipped away into the night. Indeed, other Gang members tried to talk Ned into doing just that, but he was sick of the twilight world into which they had all been reduced. He just wanted a resolution one way or the other.

The eleven year old boy that saved the drowning Richard Shelton from the waters of Avenel Creek was not a bad person, and not a criminal. Something happened after that time to turn him into what he eventually became. That 'something' is a very long story, the details of which will never be fully known.

I'm not trying to 'excuse' Ned, but all things happen for a reason. People don't just get out of bed one morning and decide to be a criminal.