Bush Mastered - The Life And Death Of Ned Kelly
Re-examining Australia's legendary larrikin and his place in pop culture.
One of the great myths about Australia is that it doesn't have any history. Having been populated for the better part of 50,000 years, the Great Southern Land actually has no end of history, much of it to be found in its rocks and in the oral tradition of its indigenous people.
If, however, you're someone who considers Australian history to have commenced with the arrival of Cook or with confederation, then you can see why certain people and particular incidents have assumed great importance. So it is that Ned Kelly is championed as a hero - even a revolutionary - by some even while he's considered a thief and a murderer in the eyes of the law.
The personification of Aussie mateship and a fine example of Australia's love of the larrikin, Ned Kelly enjoys a reputation Down Under somewhere between Robin Hood and Billy The Kid. In the 140 years since his death, there have been plays about Kelly, poems, TV programmes, motion pictures and any number of novels. Of the latter, Peter Carey's Booker Prize-winning True History Of The Kelly Gang was recently brought to the big screen by Justin Kurzel, the South Australian responsible for the superb true crime drama Snowtown, an ambitious staging of Macbeth and the - frankly shocking - Assassin's Creed.
Starring 1917's George Mackay (himself the son of an Australian) as Ned, alongside Russell Crowe, Charlie Hunnam, Nicholas Hoult, Kurzel's actress wife Essie Davis - best known to international audiences for her to-the-edge performance in The Babadook - and Nick Cave's son Earl, True History Of The Kelly Gang isn't overburdened with fact. Rather like Carey's novel, this is but an alternative take on the family legend, albeit one informed by alternative cultures and the Jerilderie Letter, a screed Kelly dictated to his lieutenant Joe Byrne, outlining his grievances against the forces of law and order. Peter Carey had the missive to hand whenever he was writing the novel, ensuring that his prose possessed the poetry and eccentricity as Ned's.
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