Why I Travel (With Thanks to Ned Kelly)

This piece about my motivations for travel was commissioned by a magazine in 2014, but never published for space reasons. Here it is at last, for your enjoyment...

I travel to connect the dots.

I’ve always been fascinated by history – I even gained a degree in it from the University of Western Australia – but I don’t want to only learn about it through books.

There’s nothing I like more than actually visiting the place where a great historic event took place, something that people still talk about today.

Even better is to link together a number of places connected to a famous person or happening, and step in the footprints of those who were there at the time.

One of my favourite journeys was a retracing of the life of Ned Kelly, the notorious bushranger whose gang robbed banks and fought police in northeastern Victoria in the late 19th century.

Whether they think he’s a hero or a villain, everyone knows about Ned’s famous showdown at Glenrowan, when he confronted police in the dawn light in a home-made suit of armour.

But not many know about the green sash he was awarded at the age of 11 when he saved a drowning child from a river in Avenel. Exploits from his short but eventful life are scattered all along the signposted Ned Kelly Touring Route.

I went one better in 2011 when I visited the tiny town of Moyglass, two hours from Dublin, Ireland in County Tipperary. Nowadays the village is basically just a cemetery and a pub, but what a pub.

The Ned Kelly Village Inn is festooned with Kelly memorabilia, and for a very good reason. In 1840 Ned Kelly’s dad, John Kelly, was working as a farm labourer here and stole two pigs.

Caught, he was sentenced to transportation to Australia, thus starting the journey that would lead to Ned and his dramatic fate. I felt pleased and privileged to have been to both ends of the tale.

On other trips I’ve linked together such major events as the sinking of the SS Titanic, visiting the Belfast shipyards where it was built, and later the cemetery in Halifax, Canada where many of its tragic victims lie.

I’ve visited Roman ruins stretching from England to Egypt, via Italy and Hungary and, of course, Rome. I’ve wondered at strange architectural relics of Eastern Europe’s communist era, from Poland to Slovenia.

And I’ve been to all three corners of the so-called Polynesian Triangle, Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island, amazed at the ancient Polynesians' navigational skills.

Once I’ve been there, it’s not just dusty old history to me. It’s a story, of real people and their lives.

Why do you travel? Feel free to comment below.

The Unpublished 12: Sunday Lunch in Benalla

Last year, The Age newspaper in Melbourne, Australia revamped its travel section, cancelling the Sunday Lunch column which I'd had the pleasure to contribute to from time to time. One of my country lunch reviews was left unpublished, so here it is now for your foodie pleasure...

Sunday Lunch: North Eastern Hotel

Passing beneath the elegant art nouveau lettering on the facade of the North Eastern Hotel in Benalla (about 200km northeast of Melbourne), we’re pleasantly surprised to find an expansive, relaxed interior, with lots of dark timber detail and natural light.

To one side there’s an area of low-slung lounge chairs, to the other a spacious dining room next to a bar topped with redgum timber.

The North Eastern’s menu is “a touch of fusion, towards gastropub,” according to co-owner Tony Ashton, crafted by himself in collaboration with young chef Sehan Waters. As the "Northo" only serves Sunday lunch once a month, followed by a blues session hosted by Neale Williams, we’re looking forward to a treat.

My house-smoked Atlantic salmon ($17) is just the ticket for this warm sunny day, flaked through a salad of orange, pickled fennel, chilli and snow pea tendrils. It’s fresh and tasty with a smooth smokiness, though the tendrils are a little unwieldy. Narrelle’s oysters ($18.50), finished with the “Northo Way” Asian-inspired dressing, are superb.

The sunshine is making us hanker for a bold white wine, so we share a bottle of the Mt Pilot Estate 2010 viognier chardonnay ($54) from Eldorado.

For main course, Narrelle’s selected the master stock duck Maryland ($32), whose richly flavoured and tender meat neatly contrasts with the crunch of the crispy egg noodles and wok-tossed vegetables beneath.

My bruschetta-style veal parma ($23.75) is a delicious upmarket take on the popular pub dish, with pesto, locally-sourced double-smoked ham and a speckled topping of tomato salsa along with house-made rosemary potato chips.

The other half of the Ashton duo, Helen, delivers a verbal dessert menu and we order the vanilla bean pannacotta ($10) and the mocha semifreddo with chocolate Cointreau sauce ($10), swapping plates halfway through.

It’s all excellent, and we’re full. Bring on the music.

Reviewed by Tim Richards, who was hosted by V/Line and the North East Victoria Tourism Board.

North Eastern Hotel, 1 Nunn St, Benalla, 5762 7333, serving meals 12-2.30pm Wed-Sat (and 2nd Sunday each month), 6-8.30pm Tue-Sat.

To stay nearby: Top of the Town Motel (topofthetown.net.au), Belmont B&B (belmontbnb.com.au), Glen Falloch Farm Cottage (glen-falloch.com.au).

The Unpublished is a random series comprising my never-published travel articles. For previous instalments, click on the The Unpublished Topic tag below, then scroll down.

Shadowing Ned Kelly

When you've had enough of travelling to tick off major landmarks, travelling to a theme becomes attractive.

Whether it's an itinerary built around food, history or a love of Elvis, a theme provides a "shaping mechanism" for the journey, livening it up and adding interest. There's also the fun of piecing together a puzzle as the fragments of the theme come together, creating understanding.

I had that feeling last week, as I joined the dots on the Ned Kelly Touring Route. Based in the High Country region of northeast Victoria, Australia, the route is a collection of places associated with the Kelly Gang.

For those unfamiliar with the legend, Ned Kelly was a young man from an Irish Catholic background, whose family of poor farmers was frequently in trouble with the law in the late 19th century British colony.

After an uncorroborated incident in which Ned was said to have shot at a policeman visiting the Kelly house, Ned and his brother Dan went on the run.

Joined by their friends Joe Byrne and Steve Hart, the Kellys emarked on the life of bushrangers (the Australian term for highwaymen), involving bank robberies, police deaths, a network of sympathisers, a sensational siege in their now-iconic homemade armour, and Ned's execution by hanging in Melbourne.

It's a breathtaking story, and the Touring Route takes you through some impressive places while contemplating it, from regional cities to isolated bush settings. And because I had to come to terms with the story in a "full immersion" way, actually visiting the sites personally and engaging people with what they thought of this complex man who's been called both a hero and a villain, it was a fascinating, fulfilling experience.

Some highlights, by location:

• Benalla: Seeing the green sash the 11-year-old Kelly was presented with, after he'd saved a younger boy from drowning. He was discovered to be wearing it under his armour when captured after the siege. Seeing it in a simple glass case, still stained with his blood, was deeply moving.
• Glenrowan: Walking around the historic sites and imagining the events of the siege: the near-derailment of the police train; the hotel alight; Kelly emerging like a metal-clad ghost in the pre-dawn light, bullets bouncing off him.
• Beechworth: Seeing the metal gates of Beechworth Prison, the same gates which replaced the timber gates when Ned's mother Ellen was jailed, as authorities worried that she might be broken out by protesting locals.
• Stringybark Creek: Standing in the eerily quiet clearing where the crucial gun battle took place in 1878, that led to the deaths of three policeman and the official declaration of the Kellys as outlaws.
• Mansfield: Standing in the morning light at the local cemetery in front of the graves of the slain police, being challenged in my inclination to see Ned as a folk hero.
• Beveridge: And finally, standing outside the humble, decaying, fenced-off house just north of Melbourne where Ned lived as a young boy, his large family around him and his father still alive.

It was an intriguing week, and I feel like I've learned so much from being there, rather than just reading about Kelly's life in a book. The facts are essential, but the emotional connection creates a lasting personal link to those historic events.

Tim Richards travelled courtesy of Tourism Victoria.