The outlaw, Ned Kelly, looms large over Australian culture. Hanged for his crimes at the age of 26 in 1880, the story of Ned was the subject of the first ever feature-length movie, made in 1906. Peter Carey won the Booker Prize with his novel The True History of the Kelly Gang, Sidney Nolan painted a famous series of Ned Kelly paintings featuring stylized versions of his distinctive armor and the northeastern plains and ranges of Victoria, where the Kelly gang used to roam, is still colloquially known as Kelly Country.
So in 1995, when a group of authors, academics and critics got together to establish an award for Australian crime writing, Australia’s most famous bushranger seemed the perfect person to name it after. Not only did Ned have the crime aspect covered having been convicted of horse theft, cattle rustling, assault, bank robbery and murder, but he was also a talented writer with a vivid turn of phrase. The Jerilderie Letter runs for fifty-six pages and is part political manifesto, memoir and justification for his actions. Written whilst on the run, the year before his death, it highlights Ned’s power as a story teller/mythmaker as well as displaying a handy turn of phrase. Who else would think to describe the local police as being ‘a parcel of big ugly fat-necked wombat headed, big bellied, magpie legged, narrow hipped, splaw-footed sons’?
Ned begins his letter with the line, ‘I wish to acquaint you with some of the occurrences of the present past and future’, so I thought I’d take a lead from him and acquaint you with some of the great books and authors who have won the prize in his name. Even if you have read Jane Harper’s The Dry or binge-watched Liane Moriaty’s Big Little Lies, there awaits a world of Australian crime writing waiting for you to explore. Here is a whirlwind tour through some of my personal favorites.
The Legends: Peter Temple & Garry Disher
If you were a gambling man, and Peter was, a new Peter Temple book was a sure-fire bet to pick up the Ned Kelly Award each year. His books are known for their larrikin characters, strong sense of place, humor and perfect writing. His last book, Truth, won the Miles Franklin, Australia’s greatest book prize. It was that rare crossover when a crime author was lauded by the literary world, giving hope to genre writers everywhere.
But if you only read one Peter Temple book, make it The Broken Shore. It won the Ned Kelly but also many other awards, including the U.K.’s Gold Dagger, becoming the first Australian author to do so. Set in the fictional coastal town of Port Munro, Joe Cashin, a homicide detective, is a broken man, desperately trying to rebuild himself after a horrific incident at work, which killed a young colleague. As he slowly knits himself back together, he is asked to investigate the death of wealthy local, Charles Burgoyne, and is drawn into the small town’s politics, racism and historic misdeeds. I love this book so much that I set my second novel, Second Sight, in the fictional coastal town of Kinsale, an imaginary fifty kilometers along the coast road from Port Munro.
I once had a reader at my event describe Garry Disher as crime writing royalty. As the descendent of Irish Republicans, like Ned Kelly, I don’t have that much time for royalty but Disher is a certified legend. He has won the Australian Crime Writers Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award among many and published over fifty books and counting, quite a few of them crime related and published in internationally. The novel, Wyatt, which won the Ned Kelly in 2010, features a main character similar to Ned, in that you shouldn’t want him to triumph and yet you still do. Wyatt is a professional hold-up man who doesn’t suffer fools and is a stickler for standards—no drugs, no unnecessary violence and no emotional entanglements. There are four so far in the series.
I was lucky enough to have been mentored by Garry for my first novel, All These Perfect Strangers, as part of a scheme run by the Australian Society of Authors. As I was panicking before my first ever festival appearance, Garry told me if it was looking disastrous, he would feign a heart attack to take the attention off the stage. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that, but if crime fiction rewarded the good guys, Garry would have even more awards than he already does.
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction
Helen Garner has been described as Australia’s greatest living writer. Among her many awards, are two ‘Neddies’ for her true crime books. Beautifully written, Garner places herself in these stories, bringing a deliberately personal interpretation to the subject matter. This intentional challenge to the objectivity of journalism has won plaudits and controversy. Her latest novel, This House of Grief, follows the court case of Robert Farquharson, a man recently separated from his wife, who killed his three young children by driving them into a dam. Garner attended every day of the court hearings, which attempted to work out if this was a dreadful accident as Farquharson claimed or a deliberate act of murder. Her first Ned Kelly winner, Joe Cinque’s Consolation, centered around a notorious case in Canberra, where a young law student and her friend drugged and murdered her boyfriend with a combination of heroin and Rohypnol. I had just finished studying law at the same university and still lived in the city at the time and can vividly remember the reporting of the bizarre circumstances which seemed chilling and unreal. Garner’s book was later made into an atmospheric movie of the same name by one of my fellow classmates who like me decided that a career in the law was not for him.
My personal favorite non-fiction Ned Kelly winner is Chloe Hooper’s The Tall Man. Not only did it win the Neddie, it won pretty much every other Australian prize it was eligible for. Set on Palm Island, a tropical paradise in North Eastern Australia, it tells how one morning in 2004 Cameron Doomadgee, an Indigenous man, swore at a policeman, and forty minutes later lay dead in a watch-house. This book is his story and also the story of that policeman, the tall man of the title and the ‘boss man’ of Palm Island, Christopher Hurley, who before this incident had been seen as a model of reconciliation, having spent a substantial amount of his career working in Aboriginal communities. Hooper follows the coronial inquest, the riots that followed, the charging of Hurley for murder, becoming the first police officer to be found responsible for a black death in custody, and the trial that followed. This incredible book may make you cry but more importantly will make you think. The story of these two men, black and white, in some ways encapsulates the complicated nature of race relations in Australia. The issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement travel beyond the borders of the United States.
Present and Future
There are so many exciting Australian crime authors writing now that it is hard to know where to start. Many of them are already appearing in the U.S. bestseller lists like Jane Harper, Sarah Bailey, Michael Robotham and Candice Fox. Should you like to actually meet some of the next generation then you are in luck. A joint group of Ned Kelly winners and nominees is touring the United States later this year. Sulari Gentill is the author of thirteen books including the much loved historical crime fiction Rowland Sinclair series. Emma Viskic has written the critically acclaimed and much awarded Caleb Zelic books, which has a deaf detective as its protagonist. Jock Serong has written four books and has won prizes all around the world and finally, Robert Gott, author of the William Power series of crime-caper novels as well as the creator of the hilarious newspaper cartoon The Adventures of Naked Man. Creatively titled, On the Run—Australian Crime Writers in America, this awesome foursome will be hitting your shores in November. You have been warned.
Australian crime writing is tough, riveting, often funny and complex, much like Ned Kelly himself. When Ned was only eleven, he saved a young boy from drowning and was awarded a green sash in recognition of his bravery. Fourteen years later, he was wearing that sash under his armor at the last shootout with police at Glenrowan. It is that poignant image that perfectly captures Australian crime writing, steely on the outside but underneath lies a courageous beating heart.
