Ned Kelly Post Office
15 Powell Street, Jerilderie.
Part of the Jerilderie Museum opened daily Monday to Friday 9am - 5pm.
Buses catered for - town tours organized. Phone (03) 58861666.
After having lunch at the nearby Travellers Rest Hotel the Post and Telegraph Master, Henry B Jefferson returned at 2pm to find Joe Byrne waiting for him, with apprentice 14 year old James Ewan Rankin under guard. Shortly after, Ned arrived and smashed the insulators holding the Telegraph lines, with the butt of his pistol. Ned then went next door and ordered Bootmaker John Roe to fetch his axe from the wood heap and start cutting down the Telegraph poles. Mr Roe, and then publican Martin Murphy were relieved by Thomas Brown and Charlie Naw who were ordered by Ned to go across the road to James Denny Rankin's store, get a new axe each and continue cutting down Telegraph poles until sundown.
Ned and Joe then escorted Mr Jefferson and young Rankin across to the Royal Mail Hotel, and from there to the Police Barracks where they were locked up along with Senior Constable Devine and Trooper Richards. On their release Jefferson repaired the Telegraph lines and began transmitting news of the robbery. Jefferson, along with Trooper Richards, local Schoolmaster William Elliott and Albert Brasch the store manager for J D Rankin, barricaded themselves in the Post and Telegraph Office with firearms in readiness for the threat by Ned to return and hold up the mail coach when it arrived later that evening. The threat was not carried out; Ned and his gang well on the way south to re-cross the Murray River into Victoria.
History 
History
