Kirjahaku

In this his final book in a trilogy of works dealing with Ned Kelly and his community. Doug Morrissey presents the definitive account of the Stringybark Creek Police Murders. The ambush murder of three policemen at Stringybark Creek in October 1878 was Ned Kelly's greatest crime. Ned shot and killed Michael Kennedy, Michael Scanlan and Thomas Lonigan and arrogantly blamed them for their deaths. Sergeant Kennedy endured a two hour interrogation and suffered a particularly callous and coldblooded death. Thomas McIntyre escaped the carnage and wrote a lengthy memoir of the Stringybark Creek encounter, which is annotated and published in Morrissey's book for the first time. Doug unravels the Stringybark Creek Police Murders distinguishing myth from fact in an even handed and scholarly fashion. Newly researched material in the book provides insight into the family and professional lives of each of the Stringybark Creek policemen. Victim Impact Statements from Kennedy, Lonigan and McIntyre descendants are included. Regrettably, Michael Scanlan has no Victim Impact Statement as no family members could be located. Among the photographs included is Sergeant Kennedy's gold watch looted from his dead body by Ned Kelly. More than the famous Kelly armour, Kennedy's watch is a potent symbol of the bushranger's evil deeds. What he did at Stringybark Creek legally cost Ned Kelly his life. He aggressively chose to confront the police and the die was cast for everything that followed.

Australian history is much more than toiling convicts, Aboriginal massacres and posturing bushrangers. It is more than a critical race theory account of oppressors and oppressed, where victimhood and white tyranny take precedence over fact and reality. Genocide, white privilege and white supremacy are modern day woke fictions, promoted to destroy belief in Aussie values and tear down the past. It is a woke delusion unproven and unprovable.We need to view Australian history as it truthfully was not as we imaginatively would like it to be. The history of the pioneers needs to be recounted with understanding and empathy, not simply turned into a modern-day morality tale for political and social justice ends. Even-handed balance and a genuine respect for all past Australians needs to be restored to the national narrative: a national narrative where past generations are not unfairly demonised to suit the politically correct agenda of those who would control the present by inventing a fake version of the past.Doug Morrissey has written a book which is in part social history and autobiographical. It is also systematic in its exposure of the false nostrums of much of today's anti-Western cult, which has gripped educational institutions and much of the media.John Howard, Former Prime Minister of Australia.Doug Morrissey has written a fresh, forceful, and provocative critique of the two clashing Australias: the new and the old. Professor Geoffrey Blainey.

Doug Morrissey's acclaimed book Ned Kelly: A Lawless Life (2015) was shortlisted for the prestigious Prime Minister's Literary Award for Australian History in 2016. This his second book in a trilogy of historical works dealing with Ned's life and times, shines a much-needed light on the bushranger's pioneer community. The lives of selectors, squatters, and stock thieves are examined revealing a complex community, significantly different from the Kelly myth fiction of squatter tyranny, police oppression and selector poverty and despair. Morrissey's book holds the key to understanding the Kelly Outbreak, Ned and his Sympathisers and the neglected 'silent' majority of respectable, law-abiding residents. It reveals the collaborative fulcrum on which community life turned, based on cooperation not conflict. Settling the land is discussed as a successful pioneering endeavor rather than the usual depressing tale of woe. Cultural beliefs, shared values, community goals and how people conducted and expressed themselves in their daily lives, are at the center of this groundbreaking book. Those writing about the bushranger's life and times from now on, will need to reference Morrissey's evidence-based research or their writings will not be taken seriously.