also Irish. Her large family, the Quinns, had emigrated to Australia when she was just nine years old.
The Kellys were poor people, but Red made a little money in the goldfields and was able to buy 41 acres of land near the small town of Beveridge. The family grew, and for a while it looked like the Kellys were on their way to being successful farmers. This period of good fortune didn’t last long. Ned’s father had no experience as a farmer. The conditions in Victoria, from drought to flood, were unfamiliar to even experienced farmers. Beveridge didn’t flourish as expected. The road to Sydney skirted around the town, instead of going through it and bringing more business. The Kelly land lost value. Before Ned’s third birthday, his father got into debt and had to sell most of the land for half its original price. Things didn’t improve.
Selectors versus Squatters
When Ned was 12 years old his father died. A widow with seven children could not afford to buy land, but Ned’s mother was determined that the family would have land of their own. She didn’t want them to be like poor tenant farmers in Ireland, under the thumb of some rich English landowner. The government had a way for poor people to buy land. It was called selection. A family would “select” a piece of land from allotments in unsettled areas and pay rent on it. If they paid their rent regularly for around seven years and looked after the land, doing what the government called “improvements”, the land would become theirs. The improvements involved building homes and other farm buildings, clearing areas of bush to make fields and putting up fences.
It was a hard life. To survive, the selectors grew wheat and vegetables and kept cattle. They had to produce enough to feed themselves and earn enough to pay rent and do the required improvements on the land. This could be achieved with a lot of hard work when the conditions were right, but that wasn’t always the case. There were seasons when there was no rain and the crops died. There were bushfires that could destroy years of hard work in one afternoon. The government wanted the selectors to grow wheat, but often the land wasn’t good to start off with and was unsuited to wheat growing.
The best land, vast areas of it, was owned by the squatters. Today we call someone who lives illegally in a house a squatter. At the beginning of white settlement in the 1800s, squatters were men who claimed thousands of hectares of rural land in New South Wales and then in Victoria. They legally took whatever land they wanted. Even though the rich squatters had the biggest and the best pieces of land, they were unhappy about the government allowing poor people to take up selections. If any cattle belonging to selectors wandered onto squatters’ land, they impounded it and the selectors had to pay to get their own stock back. The selectors resented the squatters who had got the best land for nothing.
“Whitty and Burns, not being satisfied with all the picked land on King River and Boggy Creek…paid heavy rent for all the open ground, so as a poor man could not keep his stock, and impounded every beast they could catch, even off Government roads.”
Ned’s complaints against squatters, Cameron Letter, December 1878
Head of the Family
Ned’s mother selected a piece of land near the town of Greta on the Eleven Mile Creek. Ned had to work hard on his family’s land, cutting down trees, digging out stumps, making fences. Ned wasn’t the eldest child in the family, but he was the eldest son. After his father’s death, he became the head of the family. As role models he had his uncles and cousins. If they taught Ned anything, it wasn’t how to be an honest law-abiding citizen. A dozen of his relatives had criminal records. Between them they were arrested more than 60 times in Ned’s lifetime. There was always one of Ned’s relatives in jail for something.
Ned had his first brush with the police in 1867,
The Kellys were poor people, but Red made a little money in the goldfields and was able to buy 41 acres of land near the small town of Beveridge. The family grew, and for a while it looked like the Kellys were on their way to being successful farmers. This period of good fortune didn’t last long. Ned’s father had no experience as a farmer. The conditions in Victoria, from drought to flood, were unfamiliar to even experienced farmers. Beveridge didn’t flourish as expected. The road to Sydney skirted around the town, instead of going through it and bringing more business. The Kelly land lost value. Before Ned’s third birthday, his father got into debt and had to sell most of the land for half its original price. Things didn’t improve.
Selectors versus Squatters
When Ned was 12 years old his father died. A widow with seven children could not afford to buy land, but Ned’s mother was determined that the family would have land of their own. She didn’t want them to be like poor tenant farmers in Ireland, under the thumb of some rich English landowner. The government had a way for poor people to buy land. It was called selection. A family would “select” a piece of land from allotments in unsettled areas and pay rent on it. If they paid their rent regularly for around seven years and looked after the land, doing what the government called “improvements”, the land would become theirs. The improvements involved building homes and other farm buildings, clearing areas of bush to make fields and putting up fences.
It was a hard life. To survive, the selectors grew wheat and vegetables and kept cattle. They had to produce enough to feed themselves and earn enough to pay rent and do the required improvements on the land. This could be achieved with a lot of hard work when the conditions were right, but that wasn’t always the case. There were seasons when there was no rain and the crops died. There were bushfires that could destroy years of hard work in one afternoon. The government wanted the selectors to grow wheat, but often the land wasn’t good to start off with and was unsuited to wheat growing.
The best land, vast areas of it, was owned by the squatters. Today we call someone who lives illegally in a house a squatter. At the beginning of white settlement in the 1800s, squatters were men who claimed thousands of hectares of rural land in New South Wales and then in Victoria. They legally took whatever land they wanted. Even though the rich squatters had the biggest and the best pieces of land, they were unhappy about the government allowing poor people to take up selections. If any cattle belonging to selectors wandered onto squatters’ land, they impounded it and the selectors had to pay to get their own stock back. The selectors resented the squatters who had got the best land for nothing.
“Whitty and Burns, not being satisfied with all the picked land on King River and Boggy Creek…paid heavy rent for all the open ground, so as a poor man could not keep his stock, and impounded every beast they could catch, even off Government roads.”
Ned’s complaints against squatters, Cameron Letter, December 1878
Head of the Family
Ned’s mother selected a piece of land near the town of Greta on the Eleven Mile Creek. Ned had to work hard on his family’s land, cutting down trees, digging out stumps, making fences. Ned wasn’t the eldest child in the family, but he was the eldest son. After his father’s death, he became the head of the family. As role models he had his uncles and cousins. If they taught Ned anything, it wasn’t how to be an honest law-abiding citizen. A dozen of his relatives had criminal records. Between them they were arrested more than 60 times in Ned’s lifetime. There was always one of Ned’s relatives in jail for something.
Ned had his first brush with the police in 1867,
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