Ned Kelly famously wore a suit of armour, fashioned from the thick metal parts of a farmer's ploughs (seen here laid out by police). The suit made him impervious to bullets and made him seem large and intimidating. The suit did, however, leave his legs exposed, a flaw exploited by the police during a siege in the small Victorian town of Glenrowan, when Kelly was brought down by police gunfire.

Ned Kelly’s heroic stand only cemented him as a folk hero and the saying 'as game as Ned Kelly' quickly passed into local parlance. The way Ned and his gang challenged authority resonated with the population, so much so that a movie of his exploits was made in 1906. The Story of the Kelly Gang was over an hour long and is generally regarded as the world’s first feature film.

Fascinating early photographs of Australia reveal the country's history