User talk:PastelLilac

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Your contribution to Australia

Hello there

The procedure on Wikipedia is that if an editor reverts your contribution and gives a reason, you should go to the article Talk page and discuss the issue and try to seek consensus for your changes. Please see policy on the Bold, revert discuss cycle and consensus.

Thank you Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 23:19, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Clifton Hill Community Music Centre moved to draftspace

Thanks for your contributions to Clifton Hill Community Music Centre. Unfortunately, I do not think it is ready for publishing at this time because it needs more sources to establish notability. I have converted your article to a draft which you can improve, undisturbed for a while.

Please see more information at Help:Unreviewed new page. When the article is ready for publication, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page OR move the page back. — MaxnaCarta  ( 💬 • 📝 ) 23:41, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Your edits to the Ned Kelly article

Thanks for your edits which for the most part improve the article. As for the quote from the newspaper article, if you read the article right through you will see that the author (the editor of the local paper) is referring to the Jerilderie letter which is already discussed in the article. It is therefore one contemporary's opinion of the letter. It is odd that Jones take the quote out of context and removes certain passages. The whole quote is: "The contents of the manuscript in question principally consisted of a long tirade against the ineptitude and untruthfulness of the Victorian police, who were designated '' loafers, scoundrels and black guards '' of the deepest dye. The Victorian Government also came in for its share of vituperation an abuse for employing such men. Kelly called upon all and sundry to be up and resist, and hound down thescoundrels and wipe them off the face of the earth, and so on. Kelly was undoubtedly ambitious, and would seemingly have liked to have been at the head of a hundred followers or so to upset the existing government or bring them to terms. With his ambition there must also have been a lot of the Don Quixote about him. According to him, he, his family and his relations were the persecuted, and the Government and its officers were the persecutors. To judge by reading between the lines of the manuscript which he was so anxious to have published, one would be inclined to think that the leader of the outlaws was also a bit of a lunatic, or rather, a dreamer, in his own way. One might also conclude that he was a desperate man, driven to desperation by his imaginar wrongs, and was then up in arms against the community, with his back to the wall. To sum up the writings, in the writer's opinion the greater portion of them could only be considered by anyone who read them to be little better than emanations ofwild fancies from a disordered brain." Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 00:13, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Further to your edits on the Jerilderie letter, I think the account now gives too much weight to Jones's interpretation of the letter. Jones pushes a particular thesis, claiming that Kelly planned a republican rebellion in Victoria and that the Jerilderie letter was a warning of this. The majority of scholars consider this nothing but wishful thinking on Jones' part, unbacked by evidence. Dawson and others point out that the vast majority of the letter consists of a rant against Fitzpatrick and other Irishmen who support the police and lurid descriptions of the murders Kelly will inflict on his enemies. The threatened "colonial stratagem" doesn't relate to his evocation of an Irish Rebellion but to his plan to punish the police for their harrassment of his family and the arrest of those involved in the Whitty larceny. If you read the relevant passage in context you will see that the "suffering innocence" [he means "innocents"] are his family and associates who have been targeted by the police, not the rural poor oppressed by the squatters and the state or Irish Australians in general.

I can see why you wanted a direct quote from the letter which alludes to the later plan to attack a police train, but I think the current discussion of the letter doesn't convey the extent to which it is "an escalating promise of revenge and retribution" for the alleged injustices inflicted on Kelly and his family by his arch enemy Fitzpatrick. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 06:34, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, should be "invokes". I missed the reference to ther violent tone in the following paragraph. Looks good now. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 06:41, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

I have slightly rewritten the ambush of Kennedy and Scanlon to make it consistent with the two different accounts in Macfarlane and Jones. Macfarlane's version is based on McIntyre's contemporary police reports and inquest statements. Jones's version is based on McIntyre's memoirs written twenty years later. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 02:28, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@Aemilius Adolphin: All good. I was wondering if you'd like to have a crack at the Fitzpatrick incident section? I'm sure you'll agree it's in a sorry state. It could probably be adequately summarised in a few paragraphs. I think the subsections should be cut entirely. - PastelLilac (talk) 04:23, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree it needs to be completely rewritten and condensed. To tell the truth, the task of trying to untangle the Fitzpatrick mess isn't very appealing but I will have a look at it on the weekend. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 05:28, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@Aemilius Adolphin: Thanks. I'm going to chip away at it. Hopefully helps make things easier. - PastelLilac (talk) 06:02, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your continued work on this, you have improved the article immensely. I haven't been able to face Fitzpatrick yet, but I think you have already improved the section. I have removed your additions to political legacy because contemporary newspapers are primary sources and shouldn't be used as an editorial intervention in a debate. As for the Basu book, is it talking about cultural depictions of Kelly and therefore should go in the cultural depictions section. However, we need to summarise the book's argument fairly and therfore shouldn't just select one type of cultural depiction. As I understand it, the book argues that cultural depictions of Kelly varied over time and tended to reflect political concerns of the moment. Happy to discuss. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 22:21, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

@Aemilius Adolphin: There should be something on how Kelly has been co-opted by different groups across the spectrum, to serve different agendas. Most notably, socialists / labor activists using him as a symbol of class struggle, and nationalists using his image to promote Australian identity. As for cultural depictions, they have been used as tools to promote said agendas and are therefore worth mentioning in this section too (not specific examples). IMO there should also be a line on contemporary interpretations of Kelly's popularity as a sign of discontent among the working/underclass and a possible broader revolt. More than enough journalists and authority figures at the time expressed this view. We have the cartoon of Kelly dancing around a communist flag, and then no relevant corresponding text that gives some idea of the societal attitudes and fears that gave rise to it. I think the Brisbane article does this adequately. There's probably a better way of wording it, to get across that it's a subjective historical perspective. BTW there is no policy that forbids citing old newspapers. We have a template for citing Trove specifically. Citing an old newspaper isn't OR as long as a neutral point of view is maintained and the journalist's opinion is not framed as fact. The paper in question is also of course a major one. - PastelLilac (talk) 23:16, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

"There should be something on how Kelly has been co-opted by different groups across the spectrum, to serve different agendas." The problem is that this is a vast topic which would need to be adequately covered from a NPOV. There are already sections on the Kelly myth, cultural representations and Kelly's status as a social rebel. If you want to develop a section on how specific groups have manipulated Kelly to further specific political agendas, be my guest. But selecting one newspaper article and one quote from one book does not do the topic justice and arguably makes the article worse. I never said that citing old newspapers is forbidden. But policy specifically states that for historical articles secondary sources from academic sources are preferred. And statements such as: "In Kelly's day, the level of public support he received in Victoria was described as indicative of a "socialistic revolt of class against class" in the colony" and basing this on one primary source is the epitome of original research. It also raises questions of NPOV because it serves as an intevention in a scholarly debate about Kelly. I am sure that if I looked hard enough I could find a contemporary newspaper depicting Kelly as a drunken Irish lout but it wouldn't be right to generalise from this. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 23:55, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

As for the Cameron letter, my objections are that you are again engaging in original research by selecting primary sources (contemporary newspaper articles) and deciding for yourself what is "notable" and what isn't. Under policy reliable secondary sources should always be preferred over primary sources in historical articles. Wikipedia:Reliable sources. I also don't think it is notable at all. Who really cares about one newspaper's literary analysis of one of Kelly's letters? What would a "girly" letter look like? The article already makes clear that the government suppressed the letter. The quote from the Premier is dubious (did he really say this?) and would need to be balanced by the premier's frequent condemnation of Kelly. The article was more concise and to the relevant points without it. And comments such as "lol" directed at other editors in edit summaries aren't constructive. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 02:43, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

@Aemilius Adolphin: The Cameron Letter was Kelly's first real attempt to give his side of the story, and the template of the Jerilderie Letter, yet the subsection on it is proportionally slim. A couple sentences on its reception rectify this. The Herald and The Argus were Melbourne's two major papers at the time. As for Berry, he had written for The Herald, and as far as I know didn't sue the paper for libel. Removed Trove ref as Jones quotes it anyway. - PastelLilac (talk) 03:31, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that the more could be said of the Cameron letter, but I don't think all this emphasis on its style is the way to go. What we should add is that this is the first written threat to commit mass murder against the police by derailing a train. Macfarlane and Dawson both make this point. Thanks for removing the primary source, but since you have also given a secondary source quoting it, I see no problem with also adding the primary source. That way readers can see what spin the secondary sources put on it in a way which is consistent with policy. (That is, quoting the whole letter summary is a fact.) Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 03:50, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

@Aemilius Adolphin: Thoughts on current iteration? I agree, less emphasis on style. - PastelLilac (talk) 08:08, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

It's very good. You are much better at stating things concisely than I so if you don't mind I will step back and only intervene when I see something worth reconsidering. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 09:11, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

@Aemilius Adolphin: Appreciate it, and the occasional push back. In following certain threads that interest me, can lose sight of the need for balance and concision. - PastelLilac (talk) 09:19, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

No problem. If you ever want to get involved in an article that needs a real good edit, it's the one on History of Australia. It gets a lot of hits and should be a showcase, but it's in such a sad state. I just don't know where to start on it so any suggestions would be appreciated. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 09:25, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Wow, what a mess. Impressive that you got it down to around 341,000 bytes from a peak of 405,587. Will go over it again soon. The randomly oversized images bug me so I'd probably start there. - PastelLilac (talk) 10:06, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Re: The Joe Byrne death mask. It's possible that someone took a copy of the official death mask but that's a different thing. I am dubious about a blog site no matter who hosts it. See WP:RELIABLE. The book the blog site references might be Ok but I would have to see what it says. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 04:52, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Ok, it looks like Krautmayer got permission from the Police Commissioner to make molds of Byrnes' face, hands and feet. He then used these to make a wax model for his museum. (But I am not sure if permission was given for that.) Will need to check the book to see the details. It was common practice to make a death mask at the time. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 05:04, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

@Aemilius Adolphin: I'll find a better source on it soonish. Death masks were common. Not sure how common it was to use molds of a deceased person to create a wax figure, charge admission to see it, and dress the figure in the person's blood-stained boots within days of their death. It's kind of tangential and yet probably the most bizarre example of the dark tourism developing around the Kelly saga. - PastelLilac (talk) 10:33, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Your excellent work continues but I think you have condensed this so much it is now misleading. The sketches and casts of Byrnes' body were taken the night the siege ended. The body was strung up and photographed the following day. It is also misleading to suggest that casts were taken of his whole body, Gilmour just says his death mask and limbs. Castles also states that it is doubtful that the police gave Kreitmayer permission to take moulds for his waxworks because an inquiry before a magistrate was scheduled for the next day and this would have been interference with evidence. (Castles might be implying that local corruption was involved.) A death mask is a different matter. I also think it is important to state that the reason the police didn't hand over Byrnes' body is that it was relatively intact and a medical examination and inquiry before a magistrate was necessary. Also the last paragraph of this section has lost its citation somewhere along the line. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 04:37, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

@Aemilius Adolphin: I accidentally just hit 'publish' on a condensed wording. Was going to run by you first. I've also been reading Dawson's Redeeming Fitzpatrick PDF, in an attempt to formulate approach to Fitzpatrick incident section. Still difficult. Such a messy and convoluted topic. - PastelLilac (talk) 05:18, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

That version is fine, thanks. The whole Byrne business is tangential to the main Kelly story anyway. Good luck with Dawson, I think he is far too willing to believe Fitzpatrick's version of events and the police in general. The Kellys and Fitzpatrick all lied through their teeth and we will never get a coherent set of agreed facts. Perhaps the current approach is the best after all: just summarise the main versions of events and let the readers decide. It's almost impossible to write something as a "fact" without taking sides in the dispute. (For what it's worth, I'm inclined to believe that Kelly came in with a gun, startled Fitzpatrick with a couple of shots into the wall then there was a struggle and Fitzpatrick was injured when they threw him out the door. Mrs Kelly probably did scone him with a frying pan too. I doubt Kelly shot him.) Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 06:43, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

I rewrote the end of the last stand. I clarified that it was the gun battle with Kelly that lasted less than half an hour, as Dan and Hart continued firing. Jones states the last stand had lasted half an hour p 264 Morrisey states 15 minutes. P 137 Kieza says “less than half an hour.” P. 418. Less than half an hour is the majority opinion. I assume it is Shaw who states that Nicholson was injured by a bullet fragment. As the reference had no page number and the information is tangential I removed it. Happy to discuss. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 01:11, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

@Aemilius Adolphin: I'll find reference on time. It seems the totality of evidence points to time from first shot to capture being around eight minutes. This makes much more sense to me. Definitely not half an hour as claimed by Jones. "Less than half an hour" is super vague. Will also find page numbers for Shaw. Google Books annoyingly hides them in previews. Not sure doctor's wound is tangential. All other wounds from shootout accounted for. - PastelLilac (talk) 03:00, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

What is the "totality of evidence" you are referring to? We can only go by the consensus of secondary sources. And I don't think we have produced a comprehensive list of all the injures attributed to the shootout, only the serious ones. In the secondary source accounts I have read, none mentions the purported injury to the doctor. Given all the detail you have cut in other sections, why are you so keen that one account of a minor injury should be included? Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 04:19, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

@Aemilius Adolphin: "Kelly’s last stand was not an epic half-hour gun battle; it was over in less than 10 minutes." Nicholson mentioned splinter entering his calf in affidavit. A few secondary sources picked up on it. Theoretically it could have caused a similar level of damage as other wounds mentioned in article. It gives idea of how precarious their situation was. - PastelLilac (talk) 05:02, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

This is just one argument in a blog post and it relies on one person's estimate of when the first shot was fired at Kelly, when the last shot was fired at Kelly, and how long it would take him to stagger 150 metres in armour. I think 10-15 minutes for the actual shooting involving Kelly is probably close to the mark, but there is still the Age correspondent who put the timeline at about half an hour and the sources I have already quoted which put the shooting at 15 minutes to 30 minutes. I had this discussion with another editor a couple of years ago and we agreed on compromise wording of "less that half an hour". If you want we can change the wording to "Kelly's last stand lasted less than half an hour." I still think a splinter of a bullet entering a doctor's calf is too tangential. We know the situation was dangerous because we state that Dan and Steve were still shooting at them. If you want to add detail, why not the detail that the police first took Kelly to the police train but they had to move him to the station master's office because Dan and Steve started shooting up the train? I can't see the criteria by which you are cutting some detail (which I thought was useful) but are adding detail (which I think is trivial). Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 06:05, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for the cranky tone. Why not put the injury to Nicholson in the later paragraph "others wounded in the shootout..."? Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 06:31, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

@Aemilius Adolphin: Hopefully we can arrive at something more specific than "less than half an hour". Will try find other reliable secondary sources on this. As for the wounding of Nicholson, I originally included it in the later paragraph, but since he was already mentioned ("a doctor") at the moment he received the wound (Kelly's capture), it seemed a better fit in terms of narrative flow. "Ned was disarmed and divested of his armour, and attended to by Dr John Nicholson, who was injured in the crossfire as Dan and Hart continued firing on the police. Police returned fire, injuring Dan, and Ned was carried to the railway station." Not sure if that's better. - PastelLilac (talk) 11:31, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
@Aemilius Adolphin: In saying this, I get your argument. It's a critical moment in Kelly's story, and might hit a dissonant note to give equal airtime to a comparatively minor thing. As you know there are so many details to this story, more than few sit in this grey area of notability. I question whether to include the image of Curnow. Perhaps you're on board with giving him such prominence? - PastelLilac (talk) 11:44, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't mind about the Curnow pic one way or another. I am very dubious about all this attention to Dr John though. This is what he said, "While doing this we were fired at from the house, and a splinter struck me in the calf of the leg." So was it a bullet fragment or a splinter of wood? Was he even injured? He helped walk Kelly to the railway station so it doesn't seem he was hurt much. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 12:43, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

@Aemilius Adolphin: Apparently he was injured. "Interviewed many years later, John Nicholson had no difficulties remembering the scene. ... It was a dramatic and even painful moment for Nicholson; as he was helping remove Ned's armour, a bullet fired from the hotel struck the fallen tree, driving a splinter into his calf." - Ian W. Shaw, Glenrowan. As far as I know it's now the one injury not mentioned, because it's a collateral impact I guess. But another such impact is mentioned in later paragraph. - PastelLilac (talk) 19:46, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

The others are direct bullet wounds. A shot grazing a baby's head is quite different from getting a splinter. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 23:11, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

@Aemilius Adolphin: I was referring to Jane Jones, who I'm pretty sure was wounded by a bit of flying debris, not a direct shot as commonly reported. - PastelLilac (talk) 20:19, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Nicholson's splinter seems so minor it comes across as unintentionally funny. if you want to mention it after Jane Jones I wouldn't object. I am always amazed that with so much shooting over such a long time so few people were killed or seriously wounded. Nowadays a swat teams would have stormed in with stun grenades and automatic weapons blazing. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 03:31, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Bail up

Hi PL! "Bail up" is, of course, not a synonym of hold up, which mostly involves banks, and the article Robbery does not adequately cover the form practised by highwaymen and bushrangers. The expression "Bailed up" quite properly redirects to the Tom Roberts painting. The article Bushranger contains one or two references to "bailing up", and its meaning is quite clear to anyone who glances through the article, so I thought it a reasonable redirect for bail up rather than create a paragraph in Robbery. That's my logic but if you have a better idea, then I'm all ears. All I want to do is improve Australian coverage in Wikipedia, and "bail up" needs something. Doug butler (talk) 04:27, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Doug butler: Hello. Collins Dictionary defines bail up as: "to hold under guard in order to rob". Collins also defines holdup as: "a forcible stopping and robbing of a person". Same thing broadly speaking. In regards to Roberts' painting, its alternative title was 'the hold up'. TBH I think a redirect to robbery would be the most helpful. Maybe a paragraph is the way to go too. The other Anglophone countries have their own subsections there. - PastelLilac (talk) 04:50, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

FYI

Talk:Australia#RFC: Should the article state that Indigenous Australians were victims of genocide? Moxy🍁 06:08, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

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