‘THE ABORIGINAL TRACKERS THAT TRACKED NED KELLY’ - 1880
Why the only police Ned Kelly really feared during a two-year manhunt involving 200 cops were a group of Aboriginal trackers brought in to capture or kill him.
They were the six young Aboriginal trackers brought down to Victoria from North Queensland to capture or kill the outlaw.
From April 1878 when Kelly first went on the run until February 1879 when his gang took over a New South Wales town for three days, the bushranger was virtually untouchable.
But for the next 16 months with the Queensland trackers on his tail Kelly was so worried about getting caught he was barely seen in public.
The story of these remarkable black bushman has now been told in a new book called The Kelly Hunters by journalist and author Grantlee Kieza.
There had been calls to bring in Queensland trackers since October 1878 when Kelly shot dead three policemen at Stringybark Creek in the Wombat Ranges.
After the murders Kelly could be shot on sight by anyone and took extreme measures to evade capture as he committed crimes to fund his life in hiding.
'When Ned Kelly heard Queensland was sending down Aboriginal trackers he was truly terrified. As tough and fierce as he was he was mortally afraid of them.'
The trackers were aged 16 to 24 and not all could speak English. Most had been riding with O'Connor for the past three years and were from Mackay and Fraser Island.
There was Jack Noble, also known as Wannamutta, who had been pressed into service aged 14 or 15, and his brother, Corporal Sambo.
Sambo - sometimes 'Quambo' - was the oldest and as a younger man had been a 'notorious rascal who had committed every sort of crime, including being a bushranger.'
Johnny, considered by some to be insane, was the best tracker O'Connor had met. A year earlier he had been accused of killing an Aboriginal woman in Charters Towers.
Gary Owens had the tribal name Werannallee but police called him Barney. The final two trackers were known only as Jimmy and Hero.
The trackers were paid three shillings a day, half what their white counterparts earnt.
When the trackers arrived in Benalla on March 10 they got haircuts and went shopping. They were seen playing cricket with local children and quickly became popular.
'They'd give boomerang throwing demonstrations, all that sort of stuff,' Kieza says. 'They were seen as real curiosities.'
They were treated with a measure of respect by the police at the time but often it was very patronising,' Kieza says.
'They'd be given a little bit of money to go and buy lollies and things, like they were small children or even pets.'
The trackers soon got to work and had success in curtailing the Kelly Gang's activities.
'They could pick up their tracks in all sorts of places,' Kieza says. 'Their tracking abilities were incredible.'
The trackers, who could spot a drop of blood on a blade of grass, could tell what sort of horse had gone by - and whether it had a rider - by the imprint of its hoofs.
'They could distinguish even between the sort of boot heels the gang were wearing,' Kieza says.
'There's talk of them having found a sweat smudge from someone who had put their hand on a branch hours before. Uncanny kind of tracking abilities.'
The trackers wore blue uniforms with caps and carried the latest Snider-Enfield rifles.
'They had the best weapons and they knew how to use them as well,' Kieza says. 'Certainly Ned Kelly feared what they could do.
'It's significant that as soon as they arrived he never did another bank robbery. He didn't really show himself publicly anywhere until the siege of Glenrowan.
Kelly, who reportedly called the trackers 'those six little demons' and was 'astounded and terrified of them' was increasingly forced to engage in guerrilla warfare.
Kelly kept largely to the high country in the Strathbogie, Warby and Wombat Ranges because he did not believe the trackers would want to go above the snowline to look for him.
'They really suffered as a result of trying to catch Ned Kelly,' Kieza says. 'They had to camp out in the mountains for sometime weeks at a time in freezing conditions.
'All the police put up with all sorts of privations but it was especially hard on the Aboriginal trackers who weren't used to that sort of weather, they were from sunny Queensland.'
Within weeks of arriving Corporal Sambo was dead and buried at Benalla.
When the Victorians began breaking up O'Connor's trackers to go on separate search parties he resigned and took his troopers to Melbourne.
They were ready to head back to Queensland when on June 26, 1880, Joe Byrne murdered his lifelong friend and police informer, Aaron Sherritt.
O'Connor then agreed to commissioner Standish's plea to stay and accompany his officers on a train which Kelly planned to derail by tearing up the tracks near Glenrowan.
The gang had rounded up the town's residents at gunpoint and held them at the Glenrowan Inn but Kelly allowed school teacher Tom Curnow to leave the hotel and he flagged down the locomotive.
When police including O'Connor and his five trackers arrived the gang donned their suits of armour and stepped out of the pub to face a barrage of gunfire.
During the gun battle a bullet grazed tracker Jimmy's head. 'He's supposed to have jumped up and fired shots at the Glenrowan Inn and said, "Take that, Ned Kelly",' Kieza says.
Byrne, Dan Kelly and Steve Hart were killed in the siege and Ned was captured at dawn on June 28 after being shot in his unprotected legs.
Kelly was charged with the murders of the three police at Stringybark Creek and was convicted of murdering one of them. He was hanged in Melbourne Gaol on October 11, 1880, aged 25.
'For the trackers it was a pay day,' Kieza says. 'And perhaps there was also a degree of being coerced and forced into it.
'You can't say that they were slaves but they were often pressed into service and they were doing stuff against their wishes.
'In the case of Ned Kelly, I think part of it with the trackers is that it was a massive hunt for them and they could see some recognition for themselves.'
Most of the trackers were denied their share of the reward because authorities deemed they would not know what to do with all of that money.
