Personnel

Creative Director

Brad holds a Master of Publishing and Editing from Monash University and is currently developing his PhD thesis on popular culture at Edith Cowan University. Trained as a typographer with over thirty years of industry experience, Brad has worked for institutions including the AFL, Australian Red Cross, and Vision Victoria, producing a range of print and digital services, from books and magazines to websites and annual reports. Brad also coordinated the twice-yearly pop culture event ComiXpo, Australia’s most exciting science fiction and fantasy collectable pop culture fair, which showcased some of the greatest names in comics, movies, television, animation, and gaming. ComiXpo highlighted the best in collectables, merchandise, and memorabilia from both the industry and fans, and presented amazing props, costumes, art, and impressive fan-based cosplay, along with innovative customer interactions. Complementing his industry experience, Brad taught at Townsville’s James Cook University live work studio, RossDesign; served as a sessional lecturer at Melbourne’s RMIT School of Advertising; and taught as a lecturer and subject coordinator in Melbourne Polytechnic’s Bachelor of Writing and Publishing. He is currently a senior lecturer and subject coordinator at AIT. In 2017, New Holland Publishers published Brad’s first commercial novel, Ned Kelly: The Iron Outlaw.

Ned Kelly: The Iron Outlaw

Most Australians know something about Ned Kelly – his gang’s final shoot out with police at Glenrowan, Ned in his iron armour then down by troopers shooting at his exposed legs, his subsequent trial and hanging in Melbourne – it’s a story often told. But did you know that Ned was planning a republic of North-east Victoria? That many of the settlers in the area were ready to take on the establishment and form their own independent state? That Ned’s ‘life of crime’ can be linked to the gross corruption of the colonial Victorian police force. Historian Brad Webb has written the essential guide to the Kelly legacy, with rarely seen images. This book is a must for any library. and has plenty to offer to those who think they know the full story of the Kelly Gang.

It struck me, fantasist that I occasionally am, that if we had lived in different times, earlier times when Ned’s name was a household word, when we were young people not so far removed from HIS time, if they had been able to put their hands on your Iron Outlaw, what an essential piece of historical insight your book would have been to them, I was thinking supposing it had been available to every school kid of the right age, what a perspective into the world as it was then! And of bloody British Australia and its policing as they were then, imagine what kind of viewpoint it may have provided them, what kind of attitude as to their own lives and opportunities in this country. I would have included it in a list of compulsory reading for everybody! Oh well, just a thought.

Reg Livermore
on Ned Kelly: The Iron Outlaw

Published by New Holland Publishers
Edited by Susie Stevens
First published in 2017
Revised and reprinted in 2018
ISBN: 9781742579863
125mm x 177mm
Softcover
208 pages