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”.