When Ned Kelly and his band of young tearaways ambushed and killed three brave policemen in a remote mountain camp in 1878, they sparked the biggest and most expensive manhunt Australia had seen. The desperate search would end when Kelly and his gang, wearing suits of armour, tried to derail a train before waging their final bloody gun battle with police in the small Victorian town of Glenrowan.

In the 20 months between those shootouts and aided by a network of informers, hundreds of lawmen, soldiers, undercover agents and a team of Aboriginal trackers combed rugged mountains in freezing conditions in search of the outlaws. The police officers were brave, poorly paid and often ailing, but they risked death and illness in the hope of finding the men who had killed their comrades.

The hunt for the Kelly Gang became a fierce battle of egos between senior police as they prepared for the final shootout with Australia’s most infamous bushrangers, a gun battle that etched Ned Kelly’s physical toughness and defiance of authority into Australian folklore.