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By popular demand, Joe Journal is no more, it has become a
section of interviews, like the one below with Allison
O'Sullivan; the great great Granddaughter of Anton Wicks. Anton
Wicks was the man who Joe and Dan used to lure
Aaron Sherritt
to his death. Allison, despite a busy schedule, kindly consented to
briefly answering several questions in relation to the Anton Wicks
story via E mail for this site. I am pleased to display the results.
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How does being related to Anton Wick affect your family, is it
spoken about often?
It was something my Grandfather used to love telling stories about
when we got together at Christmas, but I don’t think it has impacted
greatly on anyone’s lives. Anton wasn’t a very pivotal figure in the
story of Byrne or the Kelly Gang, he was just a neighbour and friend
of Margret Byrne who accidentally got caught up in the action. It
certainly had far more impact on my Grandfather and his brothers and
sisters, growing up in the area in the 1890’s-1920’s. There was
apparently still some animosity between Sherritt and Wicks kids,
with a little stone throwing occasionally! No one from my branch of
the family has lived in The Woolshed/Beechworth area since the
1920’s though, so with the passing of time it has simply become a
great family story.
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What can you tell me about Jane Batchelor? The Hut bought off of her
by William Wicks, Jane was the person whom lent Joe and Aaron the
knife to cut up the cow, and get their first stint gaol. What can
you tell me about that? Unfortunately not much more than that –
they were a well respected family in the area, but my own family
history is silent on whether they had more than a nodding
acquaintance at the time. Ian Jones tells this story in much better
detail than I could in “The Friendship That Destroyed Ned Kelly”.
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William Wicks was Anton's son, was he the first to hear of the death
of Aaron Sherritt?
As I understand it, William was the first person unrelated to the
incident to hear about it (If I’m wrong in my assumption, or if
anyone has any more accurate info on this, I’d love to hear from
them). Anton managed to slip away from Dan and Joe and reached
home sometime before midnight, where William was sitting up worrying
about him. As the police, Ellen and Mrs Barry were trapped in the
hut until the next day; the only other people who knew were Dan,
Joe, and a number of
sympathisers (family and friends) who helped
with the plan. When the shots rang out through the valley from
Aaron’s house however, I’m sure a lot of local residents had some
idea of what was happening.
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When you first learnt of your connection, what was your first
thought?
I was quite young when I first heard the story. It was around
the time in primary school when we first learned about the Kelly
Gang. I remember telling my grandfather on our next school break
about all this cool Kelly stuff we’d been learning, and he basically
said “Well, have I got a story for you then!” He was always quite
chuffed when people asked him to tell the tale. I don’t think the
story really affected me until I grew up a little, and started to
understand the impact of the Kellys within the context of Australian
social history.
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Did you grow up in or around the Woolshed?
No, I’m a city kid. The last of my line to be raised in The Woolshed
was my Grandfather Ron Wicks (the family changed their name from
Wick to Wicks because of European tensions that made German names
unpopular in British colonies). He left in the early 1920’s to
become an Engine Driver in Junee, NSW.
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Have you been to the Woolshed, to Anton's house site?
Unfortunately not since I was a kid. I can’t wait to get back there
and really get a feel for the place, now that I have a better grasp
of it’s history. The place has always had a sort of mythical quality
for me - that period of time in Australian history feels almost like
another world altogether.
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There is not too many books out there, besides 'The Friendship',
have you come across any other books that relate to Anton in a big
way?
Not really. Most authors focus on Ned, as the leader of the Gang,
and Anton is more a part of Joe’s story. Unless someone were to
write a book on the Byrne family and their lives in The Woolshed, I
don’t think Anton and his family will ever figure very prominently.
The unfortunate consequence of his being a minor player is that his
name is rarely spelled correctly, which used to send my Grandfather
around the bend! I think Ian Jones and the recent exhibition at OMG
(which was fantastic, by the way) are the only people I’ve found so
far who have gotten it right. Even Beechworth Museum gives it as
“Antonio Wicks”, as does his own gravestone. I’ve seen a lot worse,
too. When I try to (politely) correct people, they honestly don’t
believe me. The recent revival in interest in the story is helping
though, and a lot more people are digging around for the facts.
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Do you know what happened to Anton after the
incident When Joe shot Aaron? Where did he go, what did he do?
The story as told to me by my grandfather was th at at some point
after Aaron was shot, Joe and Dan’s attention was diverted to the
problem of getting the police out of the bedroom in the hut. At the
first opportunity Anton ducked into the trees surrounding the hut
and took the long way home through the bush, afraid that the other
two (Ned and Steve) were close by. When he got home he was
apparently in quite a state, covered in dirt and bits of twigs etc
from creeping through the bush. William was waiting for him when he
got home, worried that he’d been gone for so long (I don’t know
whether or not William heard the gunshots). When he’d sat his father
down in the kitchen, Anton blurted the story out to William, who
didn’t know what to do. He wisely decided to do nothing, and sat
with his father until daybreak. Anton was terribly worried that the
Gang would come after him as a witness and “do him in”.
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Overall, what do you think of Joe, and the gang, Heroes or simple
outlaws? I am interested to know your thoughts after everything your
relative Anton Wicks went through, he was close to the
Byrne family?
That’s a very difficult question to answer. I don’t think there will
ever be a simple answer to this. Obviously to some people they will
always be heroes, to others criminals. They certainly achieved much
in their attempts to highlight the plight of poor selectors and to
force the Government of Victoria to account for the (already
somewhat infamous) brutality of the Victorian Colonial Police. On
the flipside, they none of them made life easy for most of their
neighbours, most of whom lost livestock or personal possessions at
one point or another. I don’t think anyone in this story comes out a
saint, but I’m leaning towards the Gang and their families – I think
what they were trying to achieve and the odds against them outweighs
their earlier transgressions.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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