19th Century Plough
I'm one among millions of Ned Kelly fans. I suppose I've inherited the Larrikin gene from my father. In Australia I re-read Ian Jones' Ned Kelly: A Short Life, another piece of historical writing both detailed and balanced.
It is Ned Kelly's creation of armour from moldboards that intrigues me. By 1870, ploughs were being manufactured in Melbourne, railroads were everywhere, and the strikes against factory working conditions were about to take place. Kelly engaged a blacksmith to fashion armor from plough moldboards like the one shown above. This anachronism produced an intimidating sight. In his armor, Kelly must have looked like a robot to the attacking policemen. In the wildness of the Australian bush, a strange mechanical presence.
That's why Sydney Nolan's paintings of the Ned Kelly saga have a visual impact that a movie cannot. Ned's armour is broods over the pictures. Nolan had deserted the Australian Army when he undertook the series, which may explain his identification with his subject. That's probably another reason why I continue to find Ned Kelly and Sydney Nolan so intriguing. My dad, the larrikin Croswell Bowen, was best known for his crime reporting and his biography of the outrageous Irish-American playwright, Eugene O'Neill. Did he feel quite guilty over his father's conduct in the Toledo, Ohio Bank Failure of 1931?
Note: I took the above photograph of an antique plough in Patterson, New York, about 3 months before I learned that the Kelly gang had fashioned their armour from similar ploughs!
No comments:
Post a Comment