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5 Alive or dead at Glenrowan
JUNE, 1880.
The Kelly Gang are living in the hills.
Their friends bring them food, but life is hard, and the police are still making trouble.
They don't put the Kellys’ friends in prison now, but they stop them buying land.
And why? Because they are friends of the Kelly Gang...
‘We must do something,’ Ned said, ‘to help our friends.
‘We need a new country- a country for poor people, with good police, and good judges.
‘But it's not going to happen easily. We must fight for it!’
‘We need money for that,’ said Joe. ‘A lot of money.
‘And there's a policeman with a gun at every bank now.’
‘We need armour, to go over our heads and bodies,’ Ned said.
‘Bullets can't get through armour.’
‘How are we going to get armour?’ asked Dan.
‘We can make it,’ said Ned. And they did.
With help from their friends, they made four suits of armour from old farm machinery.
Then they began to plan their fight.
‘Our friends want to help,’ Ned said. ‘They have guns, and they want to fight with us.
‘So we need to bring a lot of policemen to one place. How can we do that?’
‘With a killing,’ said Joe. ‘We kill Aaron Sherritt.
‘He's working for the police- he tells them everything about us!
‘You know it, I know it, everybody knows it.
‘He was a friend once, but now he wants to see us dead!’
‘Yes, that's true,’ Ned said. ‘We hear it from everybody.
‘So, you go to Aaron's house at Beechworth and shoot him. You and Dan.’
‘Right,’ said Dan. ‘And then when the Beechworth police hear about the killing, they know it's us, the Kelly Gang.
‘So they ask for help from the police at Benalla...’
‘And the Benalla police take the train to Beechworth,’ said Steve. ‘Lots of police, all in one train.’
‘And we’, Ned said quietly, ‘are waiting for the train at Glenrowan...’
The plan began well.
Joe and Dan rode to Beechworth.
When Aaron Sherritt opened his door on Saturday 26th June, Joe shot him at once.
Then the two outlaws rode sixty kilometres across country to Glenrowan.
News of the killing went down to Benalla.
Ned and Steve arrived at Glenrowan Inn on Saturday afternoon.
They began to bring hostages into the inn-
people from the railway station, railway workers, people from the town.
Then Ned took some of the railway workers to the hill just past the railway station.
‘Take up the railway line,’ he told them. ‘Go on!’
‘We can't do that!’ one worker said. ‘Do you want to kill everybody on the next train?’
Then he saw Ned's gun, and asked no more questions.
The workers took up three metres of railway line, and went back to the inn with Ned.
Joe and Dan were there now, and some of the gang's friends.
Other friends, about thirty men, stayed near the railway line.
In the inn there was a lot of drinking that night.
On Sunday morning Ned found more hostages—
the schoolteacher, Thomas Curnow, with his young wife, baby, and sister.
There were now sixty-two hostages in the inn.
And everybody waited for the police train.
The police moved very slowly.
In Beechworth, Benalla, and Melbourne they talked, made plans, and talked some more.
In the end, a police train left Melbourne late on Sunday evening.
And that evening Ned told about twenty of the hostages, ‘You can go home.’
Later, the schoolteacher came to him.
‘Can I take my family home?’ he asked. ‘Don't be afraid of me- you know I'm a friend of the Kellys’.’
‘Yes, you can go,’ said Ned.
Thomas Curnow was a brave man.
He took his young family home, and later went quietly out into the night and along the railway line.
At three o’clock in the morning he heard the train, and held up a red light. ‘Stop! Stop!’ he cried.
At the inn, Ned and the gang heard the train too.
They listened, but there was no noise of a crash, no train falling through the trees, no cries and shouts.
‘What's happening?’ Steve said.
‘Nothing,’ said Ned. ‘Somebody stopped the train before it got to the broken rails.
‘Put your armour on, boys, and get ready to fight.’
The gang went out to the front of the inn.
They began to fire at the police, and the police fired back.
Bullets went everywhere.
Three of the hostages inside the inn died.
The police shot Ned in the arm and the foot, and Joe in the leg.
‘Go back into the inn,’ Ned said to the gang.
‘I must find our friends. They must get away from here.’
The gang's friends were near the railway line.
‘We want to fight, Ned,’ they said. ‘Take us with you!’
‘No, no, you must get away,’ said Ned.
‘The plan for the train went wrong, and there are police everywhere. This is our fight. You can't help us! Go!’
Back at the inn, the shooting did not stop.
The hostages, many of them women and children, were on the floor, their faces white and afraid.
Joe was in the front room with a drink in his hand.
‘I drink to the Kelly Gang!’ he cried.
Then a bullet came through the wall and hit him. He died at once.
The wounds in Ned's arm and foot were bad, and in the trees he fell to the ground.
A friend tried to help him, but for some hours Ned could not move.
Then, slowly, he stood up, and in his armour began to walk back to the inn.
His brother Dan and Steve Hart were still inside the inn, and Ned went back to help them.
In the early morning light, he came slowly out of the trees, his gun in his hand.
One man against thirty-four policemen.
They fired and fired at him, but the bullets hit Ned's armour,
and Ned laughed. ‘Go on- fire! You can't kill me!’ he called.
But there was no armour on Ned's legs.
One of the policemen saw this, and fired— once, twice...
The bullets hit Ned's legs, and he fell slowly to the ground.
At once the police were all around him.
He was alive, but only just, and they carried him to the railway station.
Soon after this, the last hostages left Glenrowan Inn.
Only Dan and Steve were still inside, but the police did not stop firing at the building.
Later on that Monday morning a second train arrived in Glenrowan, with more police, photographers, and newspaper men.
There were now more than a thousand people in the town.
And down south, in Melbourne, hundreds of people waited in the streets for news of the Kelly Gang.
On Monday afternoon Ned's sisters, Maggie and Kate, arrived in Glenrowan.
They heard the news about Ned, and then asked for news of Dan.
‘Maggie, tell your brother and Steve Hart to put down their guns and come out of the inn,’ said a policeman.
‘Tell them to stop fighting? Never!’ said Maggie.
Maggie and Kate did not see Dan alive again.
The police were afraid to go into the inn, but they did not want Dan and Steve to get away in the night.
So they set fire to the building.
Old buildings burn fast, and when Maggie and Kate got to the inn, the sky was red with fire.
‘Dan! Oh, Dan!’ Maggie called out, again and again.
‘My poor, poor brother!’ Kate cried.
Glenrowan Inn burnt down to the ground.
When the fire was cold, they took out the dead bodies of Dan Kelly, Steve Hart, and Joe Byrne.
Ned was alive, but in prison.
It was the end of the Kelly Gang.