Stringybark Creek is a small creek in the Wombat Ranges, Victoria, Australia. [1] It is famous for the place where three policemen were murdered on the 26th of October 1878. The policemen, Sergeant Michael Kennedy, Constable Thomas Lonigan, and Constable Michael Scanlan were searching the forest for the Kelly brothers, Ned and Dan Kelly. They were wanted for the attempted murder of another policeman, Constable Fitzpatrick.
The creek is in the Toombullup State Forest, 50km from Benalla and 36km from Mansfield. [2] The area has been developed for visitors and includes picnic area, camping, toilets and walking tracks. [2] A memorial stone was put in place in 2001. It is near the remains of the hut. A tree near the site of two of the murders (Lonigan and Scanlan), the Police/ Kelly Tree, was scarped by a farmer in the 1930s. He carved the names of the three murdered police into it as a memorial. It has had a small copy of Ned Kelly's helmet attached to it. This caused great upset to the families of the murdered policemen. The other murder site (Kennedy's) is approximately 400–500 metres north west. It is across the Stringybark Creek Road. [3]
A group of three policemen from Mansfield set out to search for the Kelly brothers who they thought were hiding in the bush near Mansfield. They set up camp at Stringbark Creek on 25 October 1878, not knowing that the Kellys were living in a small hut on Bullock Creek, less than 1km away. The next day Kennedy and Scanlan went to search the nearby forest, while Lonigan and Constable Thomas McIntyre stayed at the campsite. The Kellys heard noises from the police camp and went to investigate. Ned Kelly decided to try and capture the policemen and take their guns, horses and food. He called on the two policemen to give themselves up. McIntyre raised his hands, but Lonigan attempted to run and reached for his gun. Ned Kelly shot him in the eye.
The bushrangers then waited for Kennedy and Scanlan to return. When they rode into the camp, McIntyre warned them that the Kelly brothers were there, and to give themselves up. Scanlan went to unsling his rifle and was shot dead immediately. Kennedy jumped off his horse, and while shooting at the Kellys ran into the bush. Ned and Dan Kelly chased after him, shooting him twice as they hunted him for over 800 yards. Kennedy surrendered. Kelly walked up to him and shot him again in the chest and killed him. [4] : 97 During the earlier shooting at Scanlan and Kennedy, McIntrye was able to get onto Kennedy's horse and escaped. [3] He reached Mansfield on the next day to report the deaths.
Ned Kelly, Dan Kelly, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart were made outlaws, and a large reward was offered for their capture, either dead or alive. [5] : 95 The three murdered policemen were taken to Mansfield and buried in the cemetery. A large memorial, funded by public donations, was built in the main street of Mansfield.
In 1879, G. Wilson Hall printed a book in Mansfield called The Kelly Gang, Outlaws of the Wombat Ranges. [6] It included a song called "Stringybark Creek" which is believed to have been written by Joe Byrne. [6] It described in verse the story of what had happened. [7] The first verse is:
A sergeant and three constables
Rode Out from Mansfield town,
Near the end of last October
For to hunt the Kellys down.
So they travelled to the Wombat
And they thought it quite a lark,
And they camped upon the borders
Of a creek called Stringbark.
The song has been recorded many times, including the Australian folk-rock band the Bushwackers on their 1979 album, Bushfire.
Waylon Jennings recorded Shel Silverstein's song Lonigan's Widow for the 1970 film Ned Kelly.
Benalla is a small city located on the Broken River gateway to the High Country north-eastern region of Victoria, Australia, about 212 kilometres (130 mi) north east of the state capital Melbourne. At the 2021 census, the population was 9,316.
The Story of the Kelly Gang is a 1906 Australian Bushranger film directed by Charles Tait. It traces the exploits of 19th-century bushranger and outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang, with the film being shot in and around Melbourne. The original cut of this silent film ran for more than an hour with a reel length of about 1,200 metres (4,000 ft), making it the longest narrative film yet seen in the world. It premiered at Melbourne's Athenaeum Hall on 26 December 1906 and was first shown in the United Kingdom in January 1908. A commercial and critical success, it is regarded as the origin point of the bushranging drama, a genre that dominated the early years of Australian film production. Since its release, many other films have been made about the Kelly legend.
Edward Kelly was an Australian bushranger, outlaw, gang leader and convicted police-murderer. One of the last bushrangers, he is known for wearing a suit of bulletproof armour during his final shootout with the police.
Mansfield is a small town in the foothills of the Victorian Alps in the Australian state of Victoria. It is approximately 180 kilometres (110 mi) north-east of Melbourne by road. The population of Mansfield was 5,541 at the 2021 census.
Ned Kelly is a 1970 British-Australian biographical bushranger film. It was the seventh Australian feature film version of the story of 19th-century Australian bushranger Ned Kelly, and is notable for being the first Kelly film to be shot in colour.
True History of the Kelly Gang is a novel by Australian writer Peter Carey, based loosely on the history of the Kelly Gang. It was first published in Brisbane by the University of Queensland Press in 2000. It won the 2001 Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize in the same year. Despite its title, the book is fiction and a variation on the Ned Kelly story.
The Walsh Street police shootings were the 1988 murders of two Victoria Police officers: Constables Steven Tynan, 22, and Damian Eyre, 20.
Joseph Byrne was an Australian bushranger of Irish descent. A friend of Ned Kelly, he was a member of the "Kelly Gang" who were declared outlaws after the murder of three policemen at Stringybark Creek. Despite wearing the improvised body armour for which Ned Kelly and his gang are now famous, Byrne received a fatal gunshot during the gang's final violent confrontation with police at Glenrowan, in June 1880.
The Kelly Gang is an Australian feature-length film about the Australian bush ranger, Ned Kelly. The film was released in 1920, and is the second film to be based on the life of Ned Kelly, the first being The Story of the Kelly Gang, released in 1906.
Catherine Ada Kelly was the younger sister of famous Australian outlaw Ned Kelly.
Greta is a district in Victoria, Australia, located east of Benalla, in the Rural City of Wangaratta. At the 2016 census, Greta had a population of 107 and Greta West had a population of 162.
Aaron Sherritt was an associate of the gang of outlaws led by Ned Kelly in Victoria, Australia.
Daniel Kelly was an Australian bushranger and outlaw. The son of an Irish convict, he was the younger brother of the bushranger Ned Kelly. Dan and Ned killed three policemen at Stringybark Creek in northeast Victoria, near the present-day town of Tolmie, Victoria. With two friends, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart, the brothers formed the Kelly Gang. They robbed banks, took over whole towns, and kept the people in Victoria and New South Wales frightened. For two years the Victorian police searched for them, locked up their friends and families, but could not find them. Dan Kelly died during the infamous siege of Glenrowan.
Stephen Hart was an Australian bushranger, a member of the Kelly Gang.
The Jerilderie Letter is a handwritten document that was dictated by Australian bushranger and outlaw Ned Kelly to fellow gang member Joe Byrne in 1879. It is named after the town of Jerilderie, New South Wales, where the Kelly gang carried out an armed robbery in February 1879, during which Kelly tried to have his document published as a pamphlet. It is one of only two original Kelly letters known to have survived.
When the Kellys Were Out is a 1923 Australian feature-length film directed by Harry Southwell about Ned Kelly. Only part of the film survives today.
Ned Kelly was a 19th-century Australian bushranger and outlaw whose life has inspired numerous works in the arts and popular culture, especially in his home country, where he is viewed by some as a Robin Hood-like figure.
J. J. Kenneally was an Australian journalist and trade unionist. An early populariser of Australian bushranger Ned Kelly and his gang via his book The Inner History of the Kelly Gang and Their Pursuers (1929), he was also one of the original members of the country's Labor Party and later formed his own party.
True History of the Kelly Gang is a 2019 bushranger film directed by Justin Kurzel, written by Shaun Grant, and based upon the 2000 novel of the same name by Peter Carey. A fictionalised account of the life of bushranger and outlaw Ned Kelly, the film stars George MacKay, Essie Davis, Nicholas Hoult, Charlie Hunnam and Russell Crowe.
In 1879, Australian bushranger and outlaw Ned Kelly devised a plan to create bulletproof armour and wear it during shootouts with the police. He and other members of the Kelly gang—Joe Byrne, Steve Hart, and brother Dan Kelly—had their own armour suits and helmets crafted from plough mouldboards, either donated by sympathisers or stolen from farms. The boards were heated and then beaten into shape over the course of four to five months, most likely in a crude bush forge and possibly with the assistance of blacksmiths. While the suits successfully repelled bullets, their heavy weight made them cumbersome to wear, and the gang debated their utility.