Audio: Jerilderie letter soundscape
Date recorded: 16 Nov 2009
Duration: 07:45
Transcript
From the director
This immersive audio is a fictional account of the events that led to the acquisition of the Jerilderie Letter by Edwin Living on Monday the 10th of February in 1879. The words in this recreation have been fictionalised; however, the incidents depicted are drawn from historical sources.
A detailed eyewitness account of the Kelly Gang's raid on Jerilderie can be found in Jerilderie 100 Years by Rev HC Lundy, 1949.
Cast
(in order of appearance)
Rosemary Johns – Mrs Gill, wife of the local newspaper editor
Mike Szuc – Mr Tarleton, Bank Manager
Michael Jeffery – Edwin Living, bank clerk
Mick Cahill – Steve Hart, Kelly Gang member
Michael Davoren – Ned Kelly, bushranger and leader of the Kelly Gang
Overview
The action takes place on Monday afternoon, 10 February 1878, in the town of Jerilderie, Victoria.
Prologue – as introduced by Mrs Gill
Scene 1 – upstairs in Mr Tarleton's private apartment in the Royal Mail Hotel
Scene 2 – downstairs in the bank (the eastern portion of the Royal Mail Hotel)
Scene 3 – walking to the home of Mr Gill, editor of the Jerilderie & Urana Gazette
Scene 4 – on the front veranda of the Gill home
Epilogue – as summarised by Mrs Gill
[Music sets the mood of memory.]
Prologue
[Mrs Gill]
Oh no, those terrible Kellys? No, we’d never have anything to do with them at all. No no. Oh yes, they came to town alright. Held the whole place up. Locked the police in the logs and held up the bank, even cut down the telegraph poles. And that silly letter of his. No, we’d have no hand in that at all. Young Edwin Living, I remember, was junior at the bank then. He took that letter and handed it straight over to the Melbourne police I remember he used to tell of it…
[Music sweeps us back in time.]
Scene 1
Mr Tarleton's private apartment above the bank.
[Sounds of a man in a bathtub.]
[Mr Tarleton]
Ah, Mr Tarleton, there’s nothing quite as relaxing as a bath in the middle of the day.
[A knock on the bathroom door.]
Leave off, I’m in the bath.
[Door to the room opens. Edwin Living enters.]
[Edwin Living]
Mr Tarleton, I…
[Mr Tarleton]
Living, what’s the meaning of this? How dare you…
[Edwin Living]
Pardon sir, please. This man here with me is Steve Hart.
[Mr Tarleton]
And...?
[Edwin Living]
With the Kelly Gang. They’ve bailed up the bank.
[Mr Tarleton]
Nonsense.
[Edwin Living]
There’s no nonsense about it sir, they’re holding up the whole town!
[Mr Tarleton]
Damned foolishness. The whole of Jerilderie? What on earth would they do that for?
[Steve Hart]
For the money in your bank, Mr Manager, and the money at the post office too. Plus Ned’s got some plans of his own.
[Steve Hart cocks his gun.]
[Mr Tarleton]
[Gasps.]
[Edwin Living]
Oh God, don’t shoot.
[Steve Hart]
Your clerk tells us we need your other key to open the safe.
[Mr Tarleton]
I don't suppose you’ll let me finish my bath first?
[Steve Hart]
Be quick about it and get dressed. Ned’s anxious to move on to the printing press.
[Music makes a transition back to the narration.]
[Mrs Gill]
And then the ruffians took poor Mr Tarleton, still pink and wrinkled downstairs to the bank.
[Music returns us back in time to the scene of the action.]
Scene 2
The Bank of New South Wales, which occupied the eastern portion of the Royal Mail Hotel.
[Ned Kelly]
Good of you to join us, Mr Tarleton, now to it and open that safe.
[Mr Tarleton]
Ned Kelly, you’ll not get away with this.
[Ned Kelly]
That’s for me to worry about then. Open it.
[We hear keys open the safe door.]
[Steve Hart]
What’s that do you think? Six hundred, seven hundred?
[Ned Kelly]
Could be.
[Steve Hart]
What do we do with these here papers?
[Ned Kelly]
What are these papers?
[Mr Tarleton]
Deeds, bonds, mortgages. Nothing of any value to you.
[Ned Kelly]
Take 'em out back and burn 'em.
[Mr Tarleton]
What!
[Ned Kelly]
Banks are slavers. These are how the banks crush the lifeblood out of the poor struggling man.
[Steve Hart]
Right.
[Music underscores the end of the scene.]
[Ned Kelly]
I’m off to the newspaper office. Who knows the way?
[Edwin Living]
I know it.
[Steve Hart]
Right.
[Ned Kelly]
Come on then.
[Music makes a transition back to the narration.]
[Mrs Gill]
And so that dreadful Ned Kelly dragged poor Mr Living all the way through the town ranting and raving his murderous lunacy all the way.
[Music returns us back in time to the scene of the action.]
Scene 3
On the road to the home of Mr S Gill, Editor and Proprietor of the Jerilderie & Urana Gazette.
[Footsteps on the dirt road and the midday sounds of birds and insects on a hot summer day.]
[Edwin Living]
If it’s not too presumptuous, Mr Kelly…
[Ned Kelly]
Ned.
[Edwin Living]
Ned, then. Might I ask what your interest in our humble little paper is?
[Ned Kelly]
Printing press.
[Edwin Living]
I see. What is it that you’d have printed?
[Ned Kelly]
A letter I penned with the assistance of some of my brothers.
[Edwin Living]
To whom?
[Ned Kelly]
To whoever’ll listen.
[Edwin Living]
Saying what?
[Ned Kelly]
The truth, that's what.
[Edwin Living]
[After a moment's thought.] About the murders in Stringybark.
[Ned Kelly]
Those were done square and the beggars what got it asked for it plain.
[Edwin Living]
That's not the way we heard tell of it.
[Ned stops walking and turns to Edwin Living.]
[Ned Kelly]
All Police lies. And if I hear any more of it I will not exactly show the lot o' them what cold blooded murder is, but wholesale and retail slaughter – something different to shooting three troopers in self-defence and robbing a bank.
[Edwin Living]
I stand corrected.
[Ned Kelly]
That's why I got Joe Byrne to take this down.
[He pulls the entire letter out of his pocket and finds page 43. Music underscores the significance of this quote.]
'I have been wronged and my mother and four or five men lagged innocent. And is my brothers and sisters and my mother not to be pitied also, who has no alternative, only to put up with the brutal and cowardly conduct of a parcel of big, ugly, fat-necked, wombat-headed, big-bellied, magpie-legged, narrow-hipped, splay-footed sons of Irish bailiffs or English landlords which is better known as officers of Justice or Victorian Police, who some calls honest gentlemen. But I would like to know what business an honest man would have in the Police, as it is an old saying, It takes a rogue to catch a rogue.'
[Ned puts the letter back in his pocket.]
[Edwin Living]
Well I suppose…
[Ned Kelly]
But you see, Living, I’ve a great faith in the power of the press. I’ll get my side told if I have to spread the printed word to every house in Victoria and New South Wales myself.
[They continue to walk toward the house.]
Scene 4
[Out front of the Gill house.]
[Edwin Living]
Here we are.
[Ned Kelly]
Knock.
[Edwin walks to the door and knocks. Mrs Gill opens the door.]
[Mrs Gill]
Yes? [She sees that it is the famous outlaw Ned Kelly] Oh.
[Tense music underscores this scene.]
[Ned Kelly]
I’ve need of your husband, Missus.
[Edwin Living]
This is the outlaw Ned Kelly.
[Mrs Gill]
I can see who he is, thank you, Edwin.
[Ned Kelly]
Bring out your husband then.
[Mrs Gill]
I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr Kelly, but Mr Gill is not at home. Perhaps by this time, he is dead down the creek.
[Ned Kelly]
Look here, Mrs Gill, I do not want to injure your husband in any way. I want him to do some printing for me, and I intend to pay him well for it.
[He pulls the letter out of his pocket again.]
I want him to print these pages in his circular and a further 500 to be distributed about the place by me and mine.
[Mrs Gill]
Well, I’m sorry, but my husband’s not here and I can’t work the press myself.
[Ned Kelly]
Now, Missus, I haven’t all day to sit and have tea with you. I’ve a hotel full of Jerilderie’s townsfolk waiting on our departure.
[Mrs Gill]
You’re simply wasting your time, Mr Kelly.
[Ned Kelly]
[Takes a step toward her.] More than time can be wasted, Missus.
[Mrs Gill]
Now see here…
[Edwin Living]
Uh, Ned. Once you’re gone, Mr Gill will undoubtedly return here. Why not give the letter to me, I’ll see that it’s printed.
[Mrs Gill]
You will, will you?
[Edwin Living]
I’ll see that Mr Gill is delivered of it. It’s only fair at least that his side be put to the public, wouldn’t you say, Mrs Gill?
[Mrs Gill]
Oh. Oh, yes, that seems reasonable.
[Ned Kelly]
And pay particular mind to this here part.
[He shows Edwin a particular passage in the letter.]
[Edwin Living]
[Reading from the letter page 49.]
'I have never interfered with any person unless they deserved it, and yet there are civilians who take firearms against me, for what reason I do not know unless they want me to turn on them and exterminate them without medicine. I shall be compelled to make an example of some of them if they cannot find no other employment.'
[Ned Kelly]
Come on, Living, back to the bank. We’ll see if your Mr Tarleton has behaved himself.
[Mrs Gill shuts the door and we hear Ned and Edwin leaving.]
[Music makes a transition back to the narration.]
Epilogue
[Mrs Gill]
Of course we didn’t print it. The ravings of a lunatic outlaw, never. The things they wrote about the old country, ranting about injustice, calls to armed insurrection and all that nonsense about horse thieving. When they’d murdered men by the dozen and robbed whole towns blind. Besides, everyone knows the Irish are just a bunch of no good horse thieves.
Credits
Conceived and directed by John Paul Fischbach
Script by Robert Reid
Recorded and engineered at I-SONIC Institute by Tim Prince
Orchestrations by David James Nielsen
'And so that dreadful Ned Kelly dragged poor Mr Living all the way through the town, ranting and raving his murderous lunacy all the way.'
About this recording
Immerse yourself in the drama of the Jerilderie siege, when Ned Kelly and his gang took over the small Riverina town in February 1879.
Using voice, sound effects and music, this audio presentation re-creates the events that led to Kelly handing over his Jerilderie letter to Edwin Living.
Directed by John Paul Fischbach, the soundscape is a fictionalised version of real incidents drawn from historical sources.
Speakers
John Paul Fischbach is a recognised theatre director, producer and special events creator. He has worked on heritage and history dramatic audio projects in Australia, Canada and the US.