The Argus at KellyGang 14/3/1879 (2)
THE KELLY BUSHRANGERS TO THE EDITOR OF THE ARGUS
Sir - On a former occasion you published a letter I sent you in reference to the abovenamed murderers and the difficulty which would be experienced in capturing them and you did me the honour of drawing attention to my letter in one of your leaders. I have again to ask you for space to make some remarks on the same subject. For a long time I have been convinced that these notorious criminals are not to be followed and captured like other bushrangers because they have adopted certain particular tactics to avoid pursuit and detection. Other bushrangers have acted on the principle of "sticking up" travellers, mails. &c, from day to day as they have seen the opportunity and in this way they have furnished the police with intelligence of their movements and probable destination.
The Kelly gang, on the contrary perform some daring deed and then apparently disappear for weeks and nothing is heard of them till another outrage is committed. In my opinion the explanation of this new mode of bushranging is that immediately after each outrage they betake themselves to some one of the numerous caves which they know so well, and in which their friends, relatives or sympathisers have placed ready for their use such provisions and necessaries as they may require for several weeks. Meanwhile their horses are taken care of in some friendly selectors paddocks. When from necessity or inclination, they have to leave their hiding place to rob another bank, they or their friends get their horses ready but perform every movement by night, and then they do all their travelling by night. It is generally believed but with what truth I cannot say, that the police do all their travelling by day, so that there is no chance of the two parties ever meeting. Even if the police were to travel by night they will probably never come into contact with the Kellys, for the former will, I suppose, keep to bush and bridle tracks whereas the latter will avoid them.
Knowing the difficulties of the country, I can see no prospect of the police being successful unless the suggestion I offered in my former letter is acted upon by the Government which is chiefly to blame for all these out- rages against society in encouraging and permitting worthless and disreputable characters to acquire selections in regions where honest men cannot live, and even if they attempted it, would not be permitted to remain by the lawless vagabonds. I therefore say, root out the vagabonds; drive them into open country, and there give them selections. Give them even compensation rather than let them remain to beget and rear a viper blood which will for all time be found preying upon honest men. Drive out the whole numerous tribe of these lawless men and the Kellys would soon remove or be captured. Still I have some hopes that the Queensland police will do something, for they possess certain qualifications which I will not mention, but which are known to bushmen at least in that colony.
In conclusion 1 wish further to say with the view of inducing the police of both colonies to look out, that there is a possibility of the Kellys having broken cover. If they have gone down the Murray, and it is just possible that they have, they will travel by night through the mallee scrub, perhaps by day, if they can pass themselves off as drovers returning from the Melbourne markets, and secure water where they know it exists. They may be sneaking away just as Gardiner did to Queensland. It is most unsatisfactory that the police who went down the Murray recently returned without-being satisfied that the strange men seen were not the Kellys although they seem to have been convinced that they were not drovers-I am &c.
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