True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey Page B

efffing home down or words to that effect.
    The following day our family were dispersed like ash upon the wind my mother taking the littlies 20 mi. away to the town of Wangaratta where she hoped for some type of job. Me and Jem was left behind to work as labourers for our aunts.
    Before imprisonment our uncles had selected land out at Fifteen Mile Creek and now there were no choice for their wives but move out there immediately and set to clearing and fencing and performing all the back-breaking tasks which are the poor selector’s lot. Jack and Jimmy Quinn come to assist their sisters get back on their feet and it were them that built the hut we was to sleep in. True they was kind enough at nighttime when the grog was talking but they was very hard men and brooked no laziness around the property. My brother Jem were only 9 yr. old and brung back homework every night from Greta School but were still required to split the firewood and carry pollard and mash for the pigs and many other chores too numerous to mention. We could do no more than curse and swear beneath our breath we had not come to the North East to work as slaves but to possess our own land we could walk on from breakfast until we saw the last kookaburra marking its boundary across the evening sky. We left Avenel expecting we would soon have sleek black cattle and big rumped long necked horses I had imagined them horses most particular in the picture they would make thundering across our plain.
    Our aunts was not unkind neither and kept saying our mother would soon make some money but then admitted she were taking in laundry in Wangaratta so we could no longer sustain our hopes.
    O how I did hate James Kelly for stealing our destiny from us and I would lie on the hessian bunk with my brother’s bare feet in my face and him and me would comfort ourselves by inventing gruesome punishments for our uncle scalding him and flogging him and dragging him behind a speeding horse. My daughter you will grow to count the days till it is Christmas morning and then you will know exactly how Jem and me reckoned the time to the Autumn Assizes when James Kelly would be assigned his fate.
    The Assizes was held in Beechworth. There were much higher country to the south and east but no one could see that from Beechworth for there the law did sit in pomp and majesty and there were no higher place than its own elevated opinion. Of course the town fed off all the sweat and labour of the miners and the poor selectors on the plains below but in those grand stone buildings they could bankrupt or hang you as they pleased. They had a courthouse & prison & hospital plus 4 banks & 2 breweries & 15 hotels.
    It were here I reunited with my mother as she descended from the Wangaratta Coach she wore a bright blue silk dress and a bustle and a mighty hat that towered above her head. I were most surprised to see how prosperous she looked.
    You grown out of them britches she said.
    I didnt understand how she could profit so well from laundry but knew better than to question her directly. In any case we rushed to court and I entered that cool limey building like it were a church my hat removed my head were bowed. I had not seen a Judge until that day and when we was told to rise I done so. When he come to the bench I never knew he would be my enemy for life I seen his wig and his bright red robes and he were a Cardinal to my eyes his skin all white and waxy as if he were a precious foreign object kept contained in cotton wool.
    Justice Redmond Barry looked down on the crowded court with hooded eyes we all went quiet even the Lloyds and Quinns could feel his power to harm them.
    The traps then brought up Uncle James from the cells he were all skin bone and misery as pitiful a creature as a plucked cockatoo and when he caught my eye he flinched away. It were not so easy to keep hating him when he were called into the dock.
    My mother then give her information speaking her mind even when the Judge told