Ned Kelly's brother 'may have survived police shoot-out'

THE brother of the notorious Australian outlaw Ned Kelly and another gang member may have survived the final showdown with police, it was claimed yesterday.

An amateur historian chose the 125th anniversary of the gun battle to challenge the conventional wisdom that all the gang were captured or killed, and he called for a coroner to investigate whether Dan Kelly and Steve Hart managed to escape.

The showdown between police and the outlaws, who wore suits of homemade armour fashioned from ploughshares, is part of Australian folklore, and the fascination has been fuelled by a series of films and books.

Paul Tully, the historian, who is also a councillor in Ipswitch, Queensland, said the two gang members may have managed to get out of the hotel which was set on fire by police after they sought refuge in it.

Ned Kelly, portrayed on screen by Heath Ledger in 2003 and by Mick Jagger in 1970, led his gang in a series of daring bank robberies in southern Victoria before engaging police in a last-stand battle on 28 June, 1880, in the town of Glenrowan.

He was arrested after being shot and wounded while charging police lines, and he was later hanged.

Another gang member, Joe Byrne, was shot and killed by police, some of whom later propped up the body so they could have their photograph taken alongside it.

Hart and Dan Kelly ran into the Glenrowan Hotel during the showdown and were presumed dead after police torched the building and then pulled two charred bodies from the rubble.

Mr Tully said the story about Dan Kelly's possible survival began in 1933 when an ageing farm hand with severe burns and the initials DK branded on his buttocks told a Queensland newspaper he was Dan Kelly.

The man, who lived in Ipswitch for 15 years, regularly recounted the exploits of the Kelly gang to residents, challenging anyone to prove he was an impostor, until he was killed by a coal train in 1948.

Mr Tully presented a 35-page submission to Victoria's coroner yesterday, calling for the remains of the two men pulled from the Glenrowan Hotel to be exhumed for DNA testing that could determine "for all time" whether Dan Kelly survived the fire. Samples of the Kelly family DNA were available, he said.

"What I say is that it's strongly possible," he said. "It can't be dismissed as a joke because the bodies were never identified."

The Victorian coroner has agreed to review the submission and is expected to make a decision in the next few months.

But Ian Jones, a leading Kelly historian, dismissed Mr Tully's claims as a publicity stunt designed to promote Ipswitch, saying there was no credible evidence that Dan Kelly and Hart had survived the fire.

"It's very difficult to say in history that something didn't happen but this is 24-carat gold-plated impossible," said Mr Jones, the author of several books on the Kelly gang.

Ned Kelly, an iconic figure who is sometimes referred to as Australia's Jesse James, was cast as a symbol of rebellion against authority at a time when nationalism began stirring in the then British colony.

His mythical status grew after he died, with controversies surrounding his burial place and an enduring mystery about the whereabouts of his skull, which was stolen in 1973 after being displayed at the jail where he was hanged.