Anybody see Ned Kelly's bones?

The infamous outlaw
Ned Kelly was always one for taking the initiative. Indeed, the modern social justice movement of movements could learn a thing or two from the infamous Irish Catholic Ozzie outlaw, who has hanged for his misdeeds 147 years ago. And the lesson I'm referring to is not his tendency to kill anything in front of him that resembled a cop, but rather that brazenness to stand up to injustice and take the battle to his nemesis - and evade capture at the same time.

(Please note, this is a loose analogy - I will not be held accountable for any of you raving lunatic pellet-firing nutcases who glance at this with dim-tinted glasses and deem yourselves the Edward Kelly reincarnated as a result of your misreading)

Fighting back - or just another gangsta?
Barbara McMahon in Sydney reports for the Guardian today that the 25 year old bushranger has again evaded authorities, 126 years after his execution by hanging. The subject of legendary resistance to State authority on the one hand, but on the other sidelined as a copkiller and brigand, Ned's bones have seemingly decided to go AWOL in solidarity with the spirit of the flesh which made them notorious.

One theory is that they were mistakenly discarded, along with the bones of other executed prisoners, in a quarry during drainage works at the prison around 1960.

As a mortgage deed burner, a bankraider, and gun-toting loose cannon, Ned was haunted by his poverty-stricken childhood in Victoria. In a lengthy manifesto he dictated prior to arriving in the town of Jerilderie, whilst being hotly pursued for the murders of 3 cops, Ned attempted to give a context and justification for his activities - expressing his animosity towards the police and the general sense of injustice he believed he and his family suffered as a result of being Irish Catholics.

Is life such irony?
But the law finally caught up with him and after a bravado final performance dressed in home-made metal plate armour, he was shot, badly wounded, arrested, sent for trial, sentenced to death and hanged. It was reported at the time by newspapers that his final words, on November 11th, 1980, were: "Such is life." He ended up, alongside other executed inmates, in a prison mass grave. And then of course re-emerged in a litany of post-70's film screenings, being played by none other than Mr. Lips himself, the Rolling Stones Michael Jagger.
Such is life!