The Kelly Hunters

The desperate manhunt to bring down Australia's most notorious outlaw When Ned Kelly and his band of young tearaways ambushed and killed three brave policemen in a remote mountain camp in 1878, they sparked the biggest and most expensive manhunt Australia had seen. The desperate search would end when Kelly and his gang, wearing suits of armour, tried to derail a train before waging their final bloody gun battle with police in the small Victorian town of Glenrowan. In the 20 months between those shootouts and aided by a network of informers, hundreds of lawmen, soldiers, undercover agents and a team of Aboriginal trackers combed rugged mountains in freezing conditions in search of the outlaws. The police officers were brave, poorly paid and often ailing, some nearing retirement and others young with small children, but they risked death and illness in the hope of finding the men who had killed their comrades. The hunt for the Kelly gang became a fierce battle of egos between senior police as they prepared for the final shootout with Australia's most infamous bushrangers, a gun battle that etched Ned Kelly's physical toughness and defiance of authority into Australian folklore. By the author of the critically acclaimed Mrs Kelly, as well as other bestsellers such as Banks, Monash and Banjo, The Kelly Hunters is a fascinating and compelling account of the other side of the legendary Kelly story. PRAISE FOR GRANTLEE KIEZA OAM 'Engagingly written ... one of the most nuanced portraits to date' - The Australian 'Vivid, detailed and well written' - Daily Telegraph 'A staggering accomplishment that can't be missed by history buffs and story lovers alike' - Betterreading.com.au 'A free-flowing biography of a great Australian figure' -- John Howard 'Clear and accessible ... well-crafted and extensively documented' - Weekend Australian 'Kieza has added hugely to the depth of knowledge about our greatest military general in a book that is timely' Tim Fischer, Courier-Mail 'The author writes with the immediacy of a fine documentary ... an easy, informative read, bringing historic personalities to life' - Ballarat Courier

The desperate manhunt to bring down Australia's most notorious outlaw When Ned Kelly and his band of young tearaways ambushed and killed three brave policemen in a remote mountain camp in 1878, they sparked the biggest and most expensive manhunt Australia had seen. The desperate search would end when Kelly and his gang, wearing suits of armour, tried to derail a train before waging their final bloody gun battle with police in the small Victorian town of Glenrowan. In the 20 months between those shootouts and aided by a network of informers, hundreds of lawmen, soldiers, undercover agents and a team of Aboriginal trackers combed rugged mountains in freezing conditions in search of the outlaws. The police officers were brave, poorly paid and often ailing, some nearing retirement and others young with small children, but they risked death and illness in the hope of finding the men who had killed their comrades. The hunt for the Kelly gang became a fierce battle of egos between senior police as they prepared for the final shootout with Australia's most infamous bushrangers, a gun battle that etched Ned Kelly's physical toughness and defiance of authority into Australian folklore. By the author of the critically acclaimed Mrs Kelly, as well as other bestsellers such as Banks, Monash and Banjo, The Kelly Hunters is a fascinating and compelling account of the other side of the legendary Kelly story. PRAISE FOR GRANTLEE KIEZA OAM 'Engagingly written ... one of the most nuanced portraits to date' -- The Australian 'Vivid, detailed and well written' -- Daily Telegraph 'A staggering accomplishment that can't be missed by history buffs and story lovers alike' -- Betterreading.com.au 'A free-flowing biography of a great Australian figure' --- John Howard 'Clear and accessible ... well-crafted and extensively documented' -- Weekend Australian 'Kieza has added hugely to the depth of knowledge about our greatest military general in a book that is timely' Tim Fischer, Courier-Mail 'The author writes with the immediacy of a fine documentary ... an easy, informative read, bringing historic personalities to life' -- Ballarat Courier

Challenges the preconceptions that hunter-gatherers were Paleolithic relics living in a raw state of nature, instead crafting a position that emphasizes their diversity.

The astonishing life of Ned Kelly's mother While we know much about the iconic outlaw Ned Kelly, his mother Ellen Kelly has been largely overlooked by Australian writers and historians -- until now, with this vivid and compelling portrait by Grantlee Kieza, one of Australia's most popular biographers. When Ned Kelly's mother, Ellen, arrived in Melbourne in 1841 aged nine, British convict ships were still dumping their unhappy cargo in what was then known as the colony of New South Wales. By the time she died aged ninety-one in 1923, having outlived seven of her twelve children, motor cars plied the highway near her bush home north of Melbourne, and Australia was a modern, sovereign nation. Like so many pioneering women, Ellen, the wife of a convict, led a life of great hardship. Born in Ireland during a time of entrenched poverty and sectarian violence, she was a mother of seven when her husband died after months in a police lock-up. She lived through famine and drought, watched her babies die, listened through the prison wall while her eldest son was hanged and saw the charred remains of another of her children who'd died in a shoot-out with police. One son became Australia's most infamous (and ultimately most celebrated) outlaw; another became a highly decorated policeman, an honorary member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a worldwide star on the rodeo circuit. Through it all, 'the notorious Mrs Kelly', as she was dubbed by Victoria's Assistant Police Commissioner, survived as best she could, like so many pioneering women of the time. By bestselling biographer Grantlee Kieza, Mrs Kelly is the astonishing story of one of Australia's most notorious women and her wild family, but it's also the story of the making of Australia, from struggling colony and backwater to modern nation.

Tenth Legion has long been considered the greatest - and most hilarious - book on turkey hunting. Yet until now it was only available in a privately published edition. Many people who hunt turkeys do so with an attention to detail, a regard for strategy, tactics, and operations, and a disregard for personal comfort and convenience that ranks second only to war. As for all cultists, it never occurs to them that they may be anachronisms. Supremely unconscious of the rest of the world, blind and deaf to logic and reason, they walk along their different roads in step to the music of their different drums.

Love him or loathe him, Ned Kelly has been at the heart of Australian culture and identity since he and his Gang were tracked down in bushland by the Victorian police and came out fighting, dressed in bulletproof iron armour made from farmers’ ploughs. Historians still disagree over virtually every aspect of the eldest Kelly boy’s brushes with the law. Did he or did he not shoot Constable Fitzpatrick at their family home? Was he a lawless thug or a noble Robin Hood, a remorseless killer or a crusader against oppression and discrimination? Was he even a political revolutionary, an Australian republican channelling the spirit of Eureka? Peter FitzSimons, bestselling chronicler of many of the great defining moments and people of Australian history, is the perfect person to tell this most iconic of all Australian stories. From Kelly’s early days in Beveridge, Victoria, in the mid-1800s, to the Felons Apprehension Act, which made it possible for anyone to shoot the Kelly Gang, to Ned’s appearance in his now-famous armour, prompting the shocked and bewildered police to exclaim ‘He is the devil!’ and ‘He is the bunyip!’. FitzSimons brings the history of Ned Kelly and his Gang exuberantly to life, weighing in on all the myths, legends and controversies generated by this compelling and divisive Irish-Australian rebel.

SOONTO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE The international bestseller, Booker Prize winner, and winner of the 2001 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book. Out of 19th century Australia rides a hero of his people and a man for all nations: Ned Kelly, the son of poor Irish immigrants, viewed by the authorities as a thief (especially of horses) and, as a cold-blooded killer. To the people, though, he was a patriot hounded unfairly by rich English landlords and their stooges. In the end, Kelly and his so-called gang (his younger brother and two friends) led a massive police manhunt on a wild goose chase that lasted twenty months, in which Ned’s talents as a bushman were augmented by bank robberies and the support of nearly everyone not in a uniform. His one demand – for which he would have surrendered himself was his jailed mother’s freedom. Executed by hanging more than a century ago, speaking as if from the grave, Kelly still resonates as the most potent legend in the land down under.

Covers the development of handgun hunting as a sport, guns and ammunition, and some of the remarkable adventures that have occured while hunting with handguns