The PR Blog

From Ned Kelly to Dezi Freeman: When Outlaws Change, but the Questions Don’t

Today, news broke that Dezi Freeman has been shot dead in Victoria’s High Country, bringing an end to a long and deeply unsettling manhunt.

For weeks, his name sat heavily in the public mind -  somewhere between fear, anger, and, in some corners, a strange and uneasy fascination. A sense of bewilderment. 

And almost immediately, the comparisons began.

Because Australia has seen something like this before.

In the late 1800s, Ned Kelly was also hunted through rugged country not all that different from where Freeman met his end. Armed, defiant, and on the run, Kelly became something more than a criminal in the eyes of many. He became a symbol.

To some, he was a murderer. To others, a rebel. To many, a product of his time -  a man shaped by poverty, authority, and a system that left little room to breathe.

Over time, his story was burnished into legend.

But this is not the 1800s.

And Dezi Freeman was not Ned Kelly.

That distinction matters.

Freeman’s path appears far more isolated -  not part of a wider social struggle, but rooted in something more fractured. A deep distrust of institutions. A worldview that set him firmly against the structures most people live within, even if imperfectly.

And these days, many can identify with his feelings of distrust and self imposed isolationism. 

And yes, the echoes of Ned Kelly are still there.

An armed man. A retreat into the bush. A nation watching as police close in.

It taps into something old in the Australian psyche -  the idea of the lone figure against authority, playing out in the harsh beauty of the landscape.

But in a time when trust in institutions is clearly under strain, it becomes easier to understand why some people see things that way.

We’ve seen this more clearly in recent years.

In Wieambilla, what began as another isolated situation turned into something far darker. Police officers walked into what should have been a routine call -  and never came home.

That moment should have ended any lingering romanticism about modern ‘outlaws.’ But it hasn’t -  shaped by the sense that rules are applied unevenly, and that what is tolerated or punished can depend on where you stand. 

We are reminded, brutally, that this is no longer the age of folklore and campfire stories. These are real events, with real consequences, borne by families who don’t get to turn the page when the story ends.

That is where the comparison with Kelly begins to fracture completely.

Kelly, for all his violence, drew support from a community that believed -  rightly or wrongly -  that he was standing against something bigger than himself.

Because the question does keep returning.

Why do these stories take hold?

Why, even now, does the figure of the outlaw still flicker at the edges of the national imagination?

Part of it is history. Australia was shaped by convicts, by harsh authority, by men and women who often lived on the edge of survival. Suspicion of power runs deep in that soil.

Part of it is storytelling. We are drawn to defiance, to the individual who refuses to bend -  even when we know the ending will not be kind.

And part of it, perhaps, is something more uncomfortable.

A sense that when people feel cut off -  from institutions, from community, from meaning -  the result is not rebellion in the noble sense, but fragmentation.

Isolation.

And sometimes, violence.

That’s the real thread that connects Ned Kelly, Wieambilla, and now Dezi Freeman.

Not heroism.

Not even rebellion, in the way we might like to imagine it.

But the slow drift of individuals away from the structures that hold a society together -  until the only language left is confrontation. 

History Rhymes -  But It Doesn’t Repeat

It’s tempting to draw a straight line from past to present. To wrap modern events in the familiar cloak of history and say, “We’ve seen this before.”

But that risks misunderstanding both.

Kelly’s story belongs to a rough, emerging colony, full of injustice but also tightly bound communities.

Freeman belongs to a modern world where a person can become completely disconnected from society -  and try to stay that way.

That difference is everything.

And so the question remains, as it always has:

At what point does resistance stop being a stand… and become something else entirely?

It was a question in Kelly’s time.

It is a sharper, more urgent question now.

Because today, we are not watching legends unfold.

We are watching what happens when trust breaks down -  slowly, quietly - until something finally gives way.