Foreword: I cannot remember when I first heard of Ned Kelly and the youths who were his comrades who flamed along these sombre hills towards the south-east corner of the Australian continent in the days of the lion rampant.

Chapter 1: The date was 18 July 1841, the day brisk, and the barque England, arriving in Hobson's Bay in the south-east corner of this Australian continent, hove to off the flat shore of a place appropriately named Sandridge. FInally at peace after stormy voyage from Liverpool ... was a family called Quinn from the neighbourhood of Belfast, County Antrim. ... a ni ne year-old girl named Ellen ... Ellen Quin was to become concerned in deeds written no less indelibly in the memory of this young nation ...