Description

Jack Riley, the original man from Snowy River, was born in 1841 in County Mayo, Ireland, arriving alone in Sydney in 1854 on an indentured passage at 13. Ned Kelly, on the other hand, was the son of an Irish convict, Red Kelly, who was transported to Tasmania. Red Kelly and Ellen Quin settled in Beveridge, north of Melbourne, where Ned was born in 1854. Red died in 1866 when Ned was 12, compelling Ned to leave school and provide for Ellen and his siblings. So, both Jack and Ned’s circumstances dramatically changed as they entered adolescence, turning them into men overnight.

Whilst Jack Riley and Ned Kelly’s familial experiences of the law are contrasting, they both grew up in the marginalised Irish Catholic world of sectarian nineteenth-century rural Australia. They were both fully aware of the class distinctions in Australia, especially concerning land ownership and related privileges. Their perspectives on the later Gold Rush and Bushranger periods would have been similar. Both had run-ins with the law concerning the possession of stolen horses, and both served time.

Remarkably, both became eternal Australian legends and icons from opposite life choices in response to perceived injustice from the police, the courts and the squattocracy. Ned chose a life of increasingly violent confrontation. This confrontational modelling included: one, the murder of three police officers, partly in cold blood and partly in self-defence, and two, a revolutionary-inspired stand against the Victoria Police Force at Glenrowan in 1880. Ned was sentenced to death and was hung at the Old Melbourne Gaol at age 25. In sharp contrast, Jack retreated to Tom Groggin Station in the Snowy Mountains after his stint in jail in 1884, just a few short years after Ned died. Communing with the Victorian High Country, Jack found peace of mind and compassion for others, including the oppressed people of the First Nations. He died in 1914 at 73 having been the caretaker at Tom Groggin for 30 years, where his hospitality and guidance to travellers to the summit of Kosciusko were well known. One such traveller was Banjo Patterson, a close friend of the Mitchell family of Towong Station.

Location

Reviews

Comments

Share