Anyone attempting to draw a romantic parallel between Malcolm Naden and Ned Kelly needs to look a little closer at recorded facts, because Naden, in my opinion, was never in Ned Kelly’s league.
As I understand the recorded history, Naden (31 years old at the time) was hunted for the alleged murder and sexual assault of young women.
After the event he “dingoed’ away from the murder scene to live like a bush rat on his own, opportunistically nibbling in the middle of the night at the table scraps of frightened cockies and, true to the dingo form, recently shot at police from a concealed position.
Kelly, so the legend goes, initially clashed with the state (14 years old at first offence) over a range of misdemeanors persecuted “personally’ by aberrant, possibly amoral police officers, including the infamous Seargeant Whelan, Constables Lonigan and Fitzpatrick. He allegedly killed in self-defence, face to face with his adversaries, after offering them the opportunity to surrender.
The enduring legacy of “Kelly verses the law’ for most Australians, is the concept of the little man standing up for his rights. The disempowered working class hero refusing to go under when faced with injustice and the power of the state. Kelly’s alleged last words while waiting to be hung in the Melbourne gaol “Well…it has come to this..such is life!” or something similiar, reflect a man accepting his fate and “taking his medicine’, also true to the Kelly form.
Naden in fairness, emerged like Kelly I suspect… from a similarly disadvantaged socio-economic background, an essentially powerless position. But unlike Kelly, Naden lived in recent years a gutless existance and should not be glamorised by the tabloid press. Kelly will remain a controversial symbol in the Australian psyche, his life representing resistance to unfettered power.
Many of us would like to have been “as game as Ned Kelly’.
Name Withheld
