When Ned Kelly’s mother, Ellen arrived in Melbourne in 1841 aged nine, British convict ships were still dumping their unhappy cargo in what was then known as the colony of New South Wales. By the time she died aged ninety-one in 1923, having outlived seven of her twelve children, motor cars plied the highway near her bush home north of Melbourne, and Australia was a modern, sovereign nation.
Like so many pioneering women, Ellen led a life of great hardship. She endured famine and drought, was a mother of seven when her husband died after months in a police lock up, saw her babies die, listened through the prison wall while her eldest son was hanged and saw thee charred remains of another of her children who’d died in a shoot out with police. One son became Australia’s most infamous (and popular) outlaw; another became a decorated policeman and a worldwide star on the rodeo circuit. Through it all, ‘the notorious Mrs Kelly’, as she was dubbed, survived as best she could.
