In my own book, I have tried to avoid coming to any conclusions at all, and focused on writing the book in a novel-like form.

On the other side is Police Association Victoria secretary Greg Davies, who last week said Kelly was ''a psychopathic criminal misfit who left a trail of destruction and misery in his wake''. Referring to the murderers of both Hoddle Street and Port Arthur, he said the outlaw was ''no more brave than Julian Knight or Martin Bryant''.

And even when it comes to experts on the subject, the division remains. The greatest Kelly writer of them all, Ian Jones, wrote of Ned: ''Perhaps he was the only real Robin Hood who has ever lived.''

It is much the same answer that two halves of the Australian population have given for the past 135 years, with just as much certainty - and sometimes fury.

''Was he a good man or a bad man?'' ''Bad man!'' cried the little boy, even as, at exactly the same time, his sister shouted with equal conviction ''Good man!''

And yet, at least allow me to put it in context. Far from being a lone psychopath intent on murdering people for the sake of it, at the time of the Stringybark Creek murders, Ned and the rest of the gang were in a remote valley far from settlements, panning for gold, trying to raise the money to launch a legal appeal to get Ned and Dan's mother, Ellen Kelly, out of jail. She had been sent for three years for attempted murder for hitting a policemen - who had possibly been molesting her daughter - over the head with a shovel.

Two patrols of police came to the valley, carrying leather straps - the contemporary equivalent of body bags - to take the Kellys out. Ned called on the first patrol to surrender, and the only constable that did so lived to provide the testimony that would send Ned Kelly to the gallows, while the three brave policemen who did their duty and went for their guns did not.

At a time when the average wage was a pound a week, the Victoria and NSW government soon put an extraordinary £8000 reward on their heads, for information leading to their capture. But despite that, the Kelly Gang was still protected by their own community for the next 2½ years as they evaded capture. I entirely agree that the murders of the police was beyond tragic and empathise with the fury of Sergeant Kennedy's great-grandson. But despite that, there is no doubt that Ned Kelly himself was a hero to his own people at the time. Even after his capture, more than 30,000 people signed a petition pleading that his life be spared. So strong was the popular feeling that a royal commission was launched shortly after his hanging inquiring into the causes of the Kelly outbreak.

One witness, Inspector Montfort, was particularly frank in his testimony: ''A great deal of the difficulty with these men would be got over if they felt they were treated with equal justice.''

A huge party of the Kellys and their sympathisers sense of injustice was their lack of access to the prime land held by the squatters, a point later made by another policeman, Mounted Constable Robert Graham.