Ned Kelly Discovery Hub

The Ned Kelly Discovery Hub sits in parkland directly overlooking the siege site in Glenrowan, the very ground where, in June 1880, Ned Kelly’s last stand brought nearly two years of pursuit to its violent end. That proximity to place shaped everything about the design approach to this landmark cultural attraction, commissioned by Heritage Victoria and the City of Wangaratta.

Pidgeon Ward created the exhibition graphics working in close collaboration with experience designers Convergence Design and architects Content Studio, developing a graphic language aimed at immersing visitors in the world of the Kelly outbreak, evoking not just the events, but the feeling of being there. Central to this was a series of haunting landscape photographs commissioned from photographer Samantha Slicer, shot across the rugged bush country surrounding Glenrowan. Her images capture the dense, unforgiving scrub in which the Kelly Gang moved for close to 20 months, sheltered by sympathisers and hidden from police searches that repeatedly came up empty following the Stringybark Creek killings of October 1878.

Slicer’s landscapes form an atmospheric backdrop for a rich archive of photographs, documents and period illustrations that layer the full Kelly story across the exhibition. The long years in hiding, the bank raids at Euroa and Jerilderie, the network of supporters who kept the gang one step ahead, all building to the climactic account of the Glenrowan siege itself. The result is an exhibition graphic environment that draws visitors into the story not just through information, but through atmosphere and place.