Day 98: More of Melbourne

Saturday 12th March

Walking round the city

State Library

Need Kelly's armour

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I basically spent the day wandering around the city. I visited the local Games Workshop and Bread Top in the morning. I then visited the state library. This large building is centred around the large, round, reading room. Around the edge the walls rise up 6 stories, 3 of them filled with exhibits about Australia's history.

There are exhibitions about the early explorers, including many of their own books on the botanical and animal wonders they found here A few of the first colonists get a mention, as well as how the city was founded and built. Later on, on the lower levels, the more recent history of modern Melbourne is celebrated, including the eras of pulp fiction and the rights of women and LGBTs.

The most famous exhibit though should be the complete set of Ned Kelly's armour.

Ned Kelly was a famous "bush ranger"- an Australian outlaw. He lead a small gang of four and was famed for  being a Robin Hood style rogue- only stealing from the rich and helping the poor. One of his most famous example was whilst robbing a bank when he set all of e mortgage documents in the vault on fire, thus freeing the local farmers from their repayments. 

He was eventually besieged with his gang in a small house in the outback. A local blacksmith had fashioned the gang body armour and helmets from ploughs. (When asked about the effectiveness of this the local plough manufacturer said it wasn't possible to make such bullet proof armour- it would later be found that e armour was made from some of his ploughs.) During the siege the police guns couldn't penetrate the armour, preventing the worst injuries to the gang. This helped in the siege but their arms and legs were not well protected. Slowly limbs were rendered useless and arteries severed. Eventually only Ned was left, one arm hanging limp by his side and limping on a leg. Police shot him down resulting in his capture.

The judge in Melbourne (can't remember his real name right now, he's got a statue outside the library, nicknamed "the hanging judge" for hanging, basically, everyone), declared him guilty of enough charges to see him hanged. The next day he was taken out and uttered (probably) his famous last words "Such is life".

The gangs armour was taken as souvenirs by the various police present. Since then tough the pieces have been reclaimed. Apparently there's one set in the police museum, another in the justice museum, and Ned's in the library. Some tampering has occurred, bits have been lost and supposedly added, but it's mostly his armour, still with the marks from the blacksmith's hammer and where the bullets hit.