Ned Kelly, the youngest son of poor Irish immigrants,  was one of the last Australian outlaws. He was hung on 11 November 1880 in Melbourne jail. He was 25 years old. 

Ned Kelly
Kelly on 10 November 1880, the day before his execution “We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home.” – Australian First People Proverb

My thoughts are like an oxbow lake
They begin in the shallows then curve
Along the current,  pushing me along
Into the depths, cloudy with sedimentation
And hostile.I remember my beautiful Mother
crying when she had no food to feed us eight children.
I was seven years old when I first stole food
from those bastard merchants.. 

After languorous miles:  
of feelings, speculations, hopes,
I can stay here if I choose,
here in the shallows, in hiding.
The Queen's men after me again.

I watch as the river creates land out of water
taking me back, back again to face the danger
that's heading straight for me 
all along the straight and narrow
path of rich man's  law.

Those who lose their dreaming are lost.

I drift, 
meander away from the main stream.
follow a stem of the river - 
a precious stream -
to  linger here, drink deep from this
free-standing body of cool water:
the last I'll ever see.

This new landform -
truly, an oxbow lake - 
is a billabong
as the Wiradjuri people say. 
it is here that I will make my stand
no more running away..

“I still listen to his music every single day and I’m able to visit his grave as it’s only around the corner from my house in Sutton, Co Dublin. I go over and I pour water on to his gravestone. I call it washing his face. Then when I leave I give him a kick... for breaking my heart.” Philomena Lynott, Phil's mother.