YOUR SAY: As Ned Kelly said, 'I ask that my story be heard and considered'

The location was chosen by the gang because Glenrowan had a dangerous bend in the railway line just outside the precinct of the hamlet - an ideal location to derail the special police train. It was also the closest railway to the Kelly heartland of Greta, which allowed the Kelly sympathisers to emerge and exit easily, thus disappearing with equal ease from Glenrowan.

It was at the siege that the Kelly gang used their iconic armour, and three of the four members of the gang were killed.

The overall plan seems to have been for the Kelly gang to take over Glenrowan where a large number of sympathisers would gather in support of the gang.

The shooting of Aaron Sherritt at Woolshed ensured that a special police train would be deployed headed for Beechworth. It was intended to derail the train at Glenrowan where the troopers were to be killed or captured. The Kelly gang and their supporters could then proceed to Benalla where unprotected banks would have been extremely vulnerable. This in turn would have supplied funds to bankroll Ned Kelly's romantic idea of the Republic of North Eastern Victoria.

There are many accounts of the cause of the siege by journalists, police, historians, academics, lawyers, commentators and others. On the one hand the events could have led to the mass demise of all those who were on the train, clearly a catastrophic event if it had occurred. Perhaps the major causative events of the siege can be found in Kelly's own words:

Let the hand of the law strike me down if it will, but I ask that my story be heard and considered. If my lips can teach the public that men are made mad by bad treatment and if the police are taught that they must not exasperate to madness men they persecute, then my life will not be entirely thrown away.

Words, it could be argued, reflecting police and political corruption where underneath the Kelly outbreak surged turbulent waters in the community which threatened to engulf the colonial set-up at the time.

For many years, the last weekend in June was a time when people in Glenrowan and surrounding districts commemorated what was thought to be a heroic attempt by Ned Kelly to make the North East a republic at the last stand at Glenrowan in June 1880. In recent years historians have shown the republic claims to be a myth, and Ned Kelly's plan for Glenrowan to be a revengeful blueprint for a bloodthirsty police massacre.

Largely due to the amazing courage of school teacher Thomas Curnow, the planned train wreck and police massacre was avoided, and the Kelly gang's reign of terror ended. The entire colony celebrated. When you visit the new Ned Kelly Discovery Hub at Glenrowan, there is no mention of the Republic of North East Victoria, even though only a decade ago it was thought to be the main reason for the siege. Not any more - instead at the entrance to the hub is this quotation from Ned Kelly "I expect a special train will be sent from Benalla and I am going to kill the lot". If anything is going to be commemorated or celebrated this weekend, it should be Thomas Curnow's remarkable bravery, and the demise of the Kelly gang of murderers.

MORE COMMENT

Albury Wodonga Health is "dead in the water". During the COVID crisis the Murray River had never been wider and it is clear that Albury Wodonga Health straddling the Murray has run out of puff and is finished. After struggling valiantly since 2009, the patient is clearly dead and for everyone's sake it needs to be buried so that the health needs of both sides of the river can be realistically addressed. Cross border ventures are rarely successful and wading through the torrents of newsprint now devoted to health that formerly dealt with rail problems, it's clear that there are good reasons for the impasse.

Anyone looking at the sea of roofs emerging on both sides of the river must be convinced of the need for significant facilities on both the NSW and Victorian side of the border.

Two health regions being Wodonga with Wangaratta, and Albury with Wagga might enable the state governments to finally bat for their own teams instead of this interminable arguing the toss. It is hard to calculate the real cost of this prevarication and spells a failure of leadership across the board.

The 15-year marriage that has been Albury Wodonga Health is clearly at an end. It feels like an opera where everyone in the audience knows the heroine is doomed, but she keeps singing, saying she is feeling better, but then drops down dead and the curtain falls. Surely it's time to call it a day. The series of futile efforts at rapprochement look like reluctance of relatives to accept the inevitably palliative state of a patient. What Albury Wodonga Health needs is an undertaker, not a doctor, anything else is only prolonging the agony.