Ambush at Stringybark Creek
By Quentin Cockburn and Paddy 0′Cearmada

Finding it isn’t hard.  11ks along a logging road past an orchard or two and a young pine plantation into a regrowth bush.  The signage is very clear, artfully incorporating the Nolan cliche in rusted steel.  Planned to be easy the bus park and car park has a neat little public toilet and the paths are carefully raked.  One sign leads to the Kelly Tree, a tall eucalylpt probably only 60 years of growth, left behind after the last clear-felling and surrounded by overgrown saplings.  One of the signs reassured the visitor that dangerous trees have been removed.

The Kelly Tree is the third of its species.  The first was so designated because of a bullet scar in the bark – it fell into decay and a second was later cut down.  The third has set into a split in the bark a metal relief of Kelly’s helmet – cliche again.

Back to the picnic ground – tables neatly arranged and we followed the path to the camp site.  We arrive to a reverential dead- end with a kind of podium from which you can read a summary of the tale and view some artfully primitive depictions of what was alleged to occur.

The overwhelming sense is of history sanitised and made easy.  Any connection to the desparate events that occurred quite possibly near the alleged site has been interpreted to such a degree that imagination is not required.  And truth is nowhere to be seen.

Four police, none trained in the use of firearms were sent in pursuit of what they thought were a pair of brothers on the run from a warrant for arrest on a largely trumped up charge of attempted murder.  They struck camp and with their horses, cutting of tent poles and fire lighting even the most unobservant would know they were there.  Two, Seargant Kennedy and Trooper Scanlon set off to shoot some dinner, while McIntyre and Lonergan settled in.

Not far away Ned Kelly, his violent younger brother Dan, Dan’s friend Steve Hart and Ned’s friend Joe Byrne were hiding.  Undetected they could have melted into the bush.  They chose instead to attack.

Lonergan reached for his gun, Ned shot him dead.  McIntyre surrendered and was held captive – bait in a trap.  On their return Kennedy and Scanlon were attacked and returned fire, Dan was wounded, Scanlon killed.  McIntyre in the confusion made a dash for it on Kennedy’s horse, Kennedy ran with him until wounded by Kelly he fell before being summarily executed.  It was cold blooded murder.

That of course is in dispute.  Those who want the myth to be reality don’t want the events to be murder because it denies the justice (awful as it is) of Ned at the Gallows.

Many years ago I met a wonderful man called John Ireland.  Descended from the lawyer who defended Lalor and the rebels of Eureka he had once been the Headmaster of the High School in Mansfield.  He told me how at School Assemblies he would look out across the pupils to the Wombat Ranges where the murders took place.  In front of him were the descendants of the Kellys the Kennedys, the Byrnes, the Scanlons, the Harts, the Lonergans.  All catholics of one kind or another.  Ireland, an Anglican had tried to encourage Ecumenism without success.  He said building the Catholic Church in Mansfield, a huge pile, had absorbed all the energy of the catholic community drawn together in unspeakable grief.  No-one spoke of the events, it wasn’t a topic of conversation.  And the monument in the centre of the town to the police was always called the Kelly memorial.

How many consultants and how much money has been absorbed in the interpretation of Stringybark creek is anyone’s guess, for all their efforts we are none the wiser.