ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHS: PICTORIAL PRESS LTD/ALAMY
The hanging beam at Old Melbourne Gaol, where Ned Kelly was hanged almost 140 years ago. Opposite: The iconic photograph of Ned Kelly taken the day before his execution
Atfirst glance, the face looks peaceful, its heavy brow and strong features relaxed as if in sleep, but the neck is engorged, the head oddly angled. This is not sleep, but death. It’s a plaster mask cast from the head of a criminal executed here in Old Melbourne Gaol almost 140 years ago. It glows white in a glass box at the end of the very cellblock in which he was hanged.
It’s early and the only footsteps echoing round these cold stone walls are my own. Soon, this eerie space will be ringing with the chatter of visitors as they press in to see this last frozen moment of one of the most famous igures in Australian history: the notorious 19th-century bandit, Ned Kelly.
Kelly was a bushranger – the Australian name for a rural outlaw. When he was at large in the 1870s, Kelly robbed banks, took hostages and killed three policemen, becoming the most-wanted man in the British Empire. But he was also a hero to the rural poor, a Victorian Robin Hood who made a suit of armour from iron ploughshares and fought a corrupt system. His story has inspired countless books, plays and ilms – including a 1970 production with the unlikely lead-role casting of Mick Jagger – and for many Australians, Kelly remains a controversial igure.