Eyewitness: Bullets bounced off Kelly ‘like hail’

Bullets bounced off Ned Kelly “like hail” as the Australian outlaw made his last stand, according to an eyewitness account that has surfaced more than 130 years after his capture.

The dramatic retelling of the Kelly Gang’s 1880 shootout with police in Glenrowan is contained in a letter from Scotsman Donald Sutherland to his family, donated to the State Library of Victoria where it is now on display.

According to Sutherland, a bank clerk in a town near Glenrowan who lived in fear of being robbed by the notorious band of bushrangers, Kelly and his men were “desperados who caused me so many dreams and sleepless nights”.

The letter gives a detailed account of the infamous siege that ended the gang’s reign of terror in colonial Australia: “The police thought he was a fiend seeing their rifle bullets were sliding off him like hail... They were firing into him at about 10 yards in the grim light of the morning without the slightest effect.”

Protected by makeshift armour covering his head and chest which “alone weighed 97 pounds”, Kelly reeled but did not relent until he was shot in parts of his body not protected by his home-made metal outfit, Sutherland wrote.

“The force of the rifle bullets made him stagger when hit, but it was only when they got him on the legs and arms that he reluctantly fell exclaiming as he did so, ‘I am done. I am done’.

“Ned does not at all look like a murderer and bushranger... He is a very powerful man aged about 27, black hair and beard with a soft, mild-looking face and eyes, his mouth being the only wicked portion of the face.

“The Kellys are annihilated. The gang is completely destroyed,” he wrote.

Victoria’s state librarian Sue Roberts said she was delighted that Sutherland’s family chose the institution to look after the letter.