Dimensions
212 x 280 x 5mm
Written and Illustrated by an Eye Witness.
Edited and with an Introduction by Ian Jones.
Thomas Carrington's drawing, 'Ned Kelly At Bay' is an Australian icon - the armoured outlaw calmly firing his revolver at surrounding police in the Glenrowan bush.
Press artist Carrington was eyewitness to that amazing gunfight - and the entire siege of Glenrowan. He was on the special police train the Kelly Gang planned to wreck. He lay on the Glenrowan railway station platform sketching the start of the pre-dawn battle and, twelve hours later, drew the spectacular end of the siege as the Glenrowan Inn burnt to the ground.
His Glenrowan drawings - published as engravings in the 'Australasian Sketcher' only five days later - make up the uniquely dramatic portfolio, now brought to new life by Carrington's little known account of his Glenrowan adventure. It is described by Ian Jones as "vivid and personal", capturing "a powerful sense of what it was like to be there".
The artist's narrative and pictures are book-ended by Jones's introduction and afterword which tell how Carrington - Melbourne bohemian, clubman, art connoisseur, political cartoonist and dilettante critic - came to find himself in the middle of his century's greatest breaking story, which, in an unexpected way, he may have helped create.
