I suppose you could say I started writing True History of the Kelly Gang in 1962. That was the year I walked into Georges in Collins Street, and came across an exhibit of Sidney Nolan's paintings, the Kelly series. It was the second art exhibition I'd been to in my life. It just knocked my socks off, burned into my brain, forever.

And not long after that, two or three years probably, I read the 'Jerilderie letter'. I couldn't read the original, of course, because there was no way to see it then. But I was so taken with Kelly's prose that I typed it all up in my very thumpy, inelegant way.

Now, just a little while before, I'd discovered James Joyce and I'd discovered Samuel Beckett, so when I read Ned I also had very strong Irish literary voices running in my head - also writers that didn't use a lot of commas and full stops. So I read, or misread, the Jerilderie letter in that particular way. And the reason I typed it up is that I knew - well, I thought I was a writer then, but I knew one day, at least, I would be a writer and I would do something with it. I would write a book.

[pause]

Now there have been some very fine things written about Kelly, of course. You know Bob Drewe wrote a wonderful book called Our Sunshine and you've got to believe that I love what he did in that book because I wrote a blurb which was or is on the back of it. And Jean Bedford, also, and Douglas Stewart.

But I still was conceited enough to think I could add something new. And of course it was the voice, the voice of Ned Kelly in the Jerilderie letter. And it really was like, it seemed to me like this was the character's DNA and one could really hope to inhabit the character of Ned Kelly through the voice of the Jerilderie letter. My original ambition was really just to begin at the beginning of the Jerilderie letter and write another 300 pages. It didn't work out like that of course.

[pause]

We think we know who Ned is but as the years have gone by his character seems to be represented in an appallingly simplistic way - the beard and the armour and less and less about the man behind it. Not that the relics are uninteresting, but even they have been somewhat under-interrogated. I think one of the more moving objects, things, associated with Ned Kelly is this green sash that he was given for saving the life of a little Protestant boy, at Avenel. His name was - I've forgotten his first name, was it Dick? Shelton? - and his descendants are alive and thriving as a result of Ned Kelly's, the young Ned Kelly's, heroism.
 
So the Protestant community of Avenel gives the Catholic boy the green sash. We know how much that meant to him, and remember - sorry to go back - remember, too, that the Irish are at the bottom of the pecking order, that Avenel's a very English sort of a town, with people with English names, and the Kellys were way down there. So he's given the sash, and on this day he's seen as a good citizen. His courage is recognised. He's included in the community.

We know how much it meant to him, because on the last free day of his life, at the siege of Glenrowan, he was wearing this same green sash under the armour. It tells us so much, perhaps tells us a lot more than the armour.

Now I never heard about this sash as a kid, and it was only late in the research process that I began to think it might still exist. So, I was on a field trip up to what's called Kelly Country, and I was with my friend Richard Le Plastrier and Laurie Muller from University of Queensland Press, and Laurie had driven down and had already found out that this sash was in this little museum in Benalla. So after we'd gone and bought the leg of lamb and the various things that we were going to take out into the bush with us, Laurie said, 'Oh, there's a little Kelly museum in here, maybe you should have a look at it.'

I walked in that door in Benalla and there was that damned green sash. Very, very, very moving. So different from the illustrations the papers use to represent Kelly to us. They go for the death mask, the armour, the old engraving of Ned shooting. But there are so many other more fruitful, telling things to represent his life and character and the green sash is one of them. The colour, by the way, is gorgeous, so the object is physically very, very beautiful. It's also interesting to reflect that it was taken from his body, if I'm not wrong, by the doctor who was there to save him. Souvenired it like so many parts of this story were souvenired. These are continuing to surface now.

[pause]

The problem of imagining Ned Kelly is that we have these fragments of the story that we know so well, almost like the Stations of the Cross in a way. There's this bit and that bit and that bit. But we really have no idea what happened between this bit and that bit. And of course what is between the fragments is a man's whole life, 90% of it. Incredible. So there's a huge pleasure in imagining the 90% that is consistent with the 10% of fragments. In following this, in interrogating the fragments, it doesn't contradict the known 'facts'. The characters walk out the door they're known to have walked out of, and walk in the door that they're known to have walked into.

You might not like the way I imagine it but you will have to agree with one thing - we have insufficiently imagined our great national story.

[pause]

Peter Carey reads from True History of the Kelly Gang:

I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silence as my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write. But this history is for you and will contain no single lie, may I burn in Hell if I speak false.

God willing, I shall live to see you read these words, to witness your astonishment and see your dark eyes widen and your jaw drop when you finally comprehend the injustice we poor Irish suffered in this present age. How queer and foreign it must seem to you and all the coarse words and cruelty which I now relate are far away in ancient time.

Your grandfather were a quiet and secret man he had been ripped from his home in Tipperary and transported to the prisons of Van Diemen's Land. I do not know what was done to him he never spoke of it. When they had finished with their tortures they set him free and he crossed the sea to the colony of Victoria. He were by this time 30 yr. of age red headed and freckled with his eyes always slitted against the sun. My da had sworn an oath to evermore avoid the attentions of the law do when he saw the streets of Melbourne was crawling with policemen worse than flies he walked 28 mi. to the township of Donnybrook and then or soon thereafter he seen my mother. Ellen Quinn were 18 yr. old she were dark haired and slender the prettiest figure on a horse he ever saw but your grandma was like a snare laid out by God for Red Kelly. She were a Quinn and the police would never leave the Quinns alone.

My 1st memory is of Mother breaking eggs into a bowl and crying that Jimmy Quinn my 15 yr. old uncle were arrested by the traps. I don't know where my daddy were that day nor my older sister Annie. I were 3 yr. old. While my mother cried I scraped the sweet yellow batter onto a spoon and ate it the roof were leaking above the camp oven each drop hissing as it hit.

My mother tipped the cake onto the muslin cloth and knotted it. Your Aunty Maggie were a baby so my mother wrapped her also then she carried both cake and baby out into the rain. I had no choice but follow up the hill how could I forget them puddles the colour of mustard the rain like needles in my eyes.

We arrived at the Beveridge Police Camp drenched to the bone and doubtless stank of poverty a strong odour about us like wet dogs and for this or other reasons we was excluded from the Sergeant's room. I remember sitting with my chilblained hands wedged beneath the door I could feel the lovely warmth of the fire on my fingertips. Yet when we was finally permitted entry all my attention were taken not by the blazing fire but by a huge red jowled creature the Englishman who sat behind the desk. I knew not his name only that he were the most powerful man I ever saw and he might destroy my mother if he so desired. 

This interview was commissioned by the State Library of Victoria in 2001.