This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
36.46400° S, 146.22106° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Six metres of fibreglass in armour, standing a short walk from where the events it refers to actually happened.
Visit Wangaratta identifies the six-metre Big Ned Kelly at 33 Gladstone Street, on the corner of Gladstone and Kate Streets, with exact mapping and visitor facilities.
Glenrowan is where the Kelly Gang's final confrontation with police took place in June 1880. The gang took hostages in the town's hotel, police surrounded it, and the siege ended with the building burning and three gang members dead. Kelly, wearing plough-steel armour, was captured, tried and hanged in Melbourne later that year. Several people were killed across the whole sequence of events, including police officers earlier at Stringybark Creek and a hostage during the siege itself.
Those facts are stated plainly because the alternative is worse. Kelly is one of the most argued-over figures in Australian history – read as a symbol of Irish-Australian resistance to colonial policing by some, as a killer by others – and the town's tourism has long carried a note of celebration that sits awkwardly with what occurred there.
The statue makes no argument. It depicts the armour, which is the image everybody carries: a helmet with a horizontal slot, a breastplate, and no face. That anonymity is why the shape has become a piece of national visual shorthand, taken up by Sidney Nolan in his paintings and used ever since.
The maker's identity and a date: unknown.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
Visit Wangaratta currently identifies the six-metre Big Ned Kelly at 33 Gladstone Street on the corner of Gladstone and Kate Streets and provides exact mapping plus visitor facilities.
ACCESS
Public Glenrowan landmark with car and coach parking available in the surrounding visitor precinct. Use legal town parking and approach on foot.
