Joe Byrne

Joe Byrne (1857-1880), born to Irish Catholic parents like the others in Ned Kelly’s ‘gang’, showed promise at school but left as a twelve year old, after his father died. From his youth he associated with horse and cattle thieves, but he also grew up familiar with Chinese gold diggers and is said to have spoken some Cantonese and used opium. Legend has it that he was a charmer who dallied with barmaids and periodically visited Beechworth to drink and ‘see his girl’ (in the 2003 film Ned Kelly, he was played by Orlando Bloom). Byrne was present at all the major episodes in the history of the Kelly gang. He was at Stringybark Creek, where Kelly killed three policemen; he guarded more than twenty captives on a property near Euroa while the Kelly brothers and Steve Hart robbed the town’s bank; he participated in the robbery at Jerilderie, and wrote the ‘Jerilderie letter’ as Ned Kelly dictated. He shot his erstwhile friend, Aaron Sherritt, on 26 June 1880. Byrne was shot in the ‘siege of Glenrowan’ on 28 June 1880, and bled to death in the hotel. While Dan Kelly’s and Steve Hart’s bodies burned, his was dragged out before fire took hold of the building. The next day, in Benalla, it was strung up in puppetlike fashion outside the gaol house. JW Lindt was one of several photographers who recorded the ghastly spectacle, taking, in the words of curator Judy Annear, the ‘first Australian press photograph’, showing not only Byrne’s body but other photographers at the scene. There is only one known photograph of Byrne alive, taken by James Bray in Beechworth; debonairly dressed, moustachioed, with an intelligent expression, he leans nonchalantly on a cabinet. The illustration on this page of the Australasian Sketcher is evidently copied from photographs of his bearded corpse.