1 - Introduction

Summary

One of Australia's earliest cases of ‘dark tourism’ involved spectators travelling from as far as Melbourne to witness the bushrangers known as the ‘Kelly Gang’ during their ‘last stand’ against police officers at Glenrowan in rural Victoria. On 27 June 1880 Ned Kelly, Dan Kelly, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart held 60 hostages in the Glenrowan Hotel in the hopes of ambushing police officers. At 3 am the following morning, police surrounded the hotel and gunfire ensued between the Kelly Gang and the police, killing some of the hostages in the building. The hotel was burnt to the ground, causing further fatalities.

The police, anticipating the siege, invited four Victorian journalists to document what they hoped would be the capture of Ned Kelly and his criminal associates. The inclusion of the reporters meant that the siege, accompanied by photographs, became international news. The news coverage also illustrated the desire of people to witness the macabre, including ‘real-life’ crime unfolding. For example, the Town and Country Journal (1880a, 8) reported that there were ‘thousands of people’ at Glenrowan from different parts of the country. According to the media, ‘great excitement prevail[ed]’ at Glenrowan with ‘numbers of people constantly arriving’ on horseback to witness the siege (Town and Country Journal, 1880b, 8). Other spectators arrived on the midday train from as far as Melbourne to see the ‘entertainment’ or ‘piece of theatre’ (Cochrane, 2022, para. 10). Indeed, Cochrane (2022, para. 10), writing to stimulate school history students to analyse historical images, argues that the spectators behaved like an audience attending the theatre, ‘cheer[ing] and clapp[ing] at the most dramatic moments’.

Following the siege, those who had travelled searched for ‘keepsakes’ or ‘souvenirs’ of the experience:

The ruins of the hotel were scanned eagerly, and all the relics in the shape of knives, forks, bullets, empty cartridge cases, were seized upon. Some of the bullets lodged in the stockyard fence, and these were at once cut out and appropriated. The spot where Ned Kelly fell was also a subject of great interest, and some leaves with blood upon them were taken away as treasures. (Town and Country Journal, 1880a, 8)