Obs: What do Australians make of the novel? That is the sort of space Kelly occupies in the national imagination. If it is like anything, it is like Thomas Jefferson. This is, as I continue to tell my American friends, not like Jesse James. PC: When he was hanged, there were great protests and since that time his popularity has only grown. As Dame Mabel Brooks later said: 'If a cog had slipped in time, the Kelly boys would have been on Gallipoli, one probably a VC winner.' He was proof that our dismal history need not be read pessimistically. You rarely lose marks in Australia for outwitting the police. It did not hurt that it took two years for the forces of the Crown finally to capture him. Rather, he elevated himself, and inspired a particular people with his courage, wit and decency. Yet the story of Ned Kelly, and the reason Australians still respond to him so passionately, is that he was not brutalised or diminished by his circumstances. PC: It is easy to look at this boy as a product of his class and circumstances, one more example of what happens when you imagine you can change your penal colony into a decent nation.
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