If prevailing levels of enthusiasm are any indication, the people of Australia hope to find a reflection of themselves in the celluloid mirror of "Ned Kelly," a Working Title production that is currently filming on locations in and around Melbourne. "We're out in the middle of the bush," laughs Perth native Heath Ledger, who plays the role of the gunslinging iron outlaw.

"It's like a classic fable," director Gregor Jordan says of the film's narrative. "It's the story of a young guy who is part of a persecuted minority and fights against the corrupt system. That's the structure of a lot of classic stories; the weird thing is, this one is true. It actually happened in Australia."

In 1841, convicted pig thief John "Red" Kelly of Tipperary, Ireland, was sentenced to serve seven years on the Australian island of Tasmania. After finishing out the term of his banishment, he traveled to Port Phillip, Victoria, and in 1850 married Irish immigrant Ellen Quinn. Son Ned was born to the couple in Beveridge, Victoria, in 1854.

The eldest of three Kelly boys, Ned became the man of the family at the tender age of 12 when his father died. He earned money for the clan by working as a farmhand and a bare-knuckled boxer.

The legend gets under way when at age 16 Kelly is wrongly imprisoned for stealing a horse. After serving a four-year sentence, he is justifiably embittered but nonetheless determined to stay in the good graces of justice. When a law enforcement official assaults his sister Kate and younger brother Dan, and subsequently accuses Kelly and his mother of attempted murder, however, he is forced to go "bush" (head into the wilds). He takes up arms with Dan and two friends, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart. Now formed -- and formidable -- the Kelly Gang blazes a trail of lawlessness through the Australian outback, plundering banks and eluding authorities. The mayhem culminates in an epic gun battle in the once-quiet hamlet of Glenrowan.

Some Australians view Kelly as a criminal and a misfit, but most consider him a national folk-hero -- a legend in his own time, and in ours. In fact, Kelly-mania seems to have reached an historical high. "Ned: The Exhibition," a large-scale exposition of Kelly artifacts -- including his whiskey still and the revolver he used during his last stand at Glenrowan -- has enjoyed a 10-month run at the Old Melbourne Gaol penal museum, and Australians have been lining up to buy copies of a new "Ned Kelly" CD, which features songs like "Battle Lines," "Stringybark Creek" and "The Siege of Glenrowan."

"Ned Kelly's story has come to encapsulate a particular Australian feeling: independence, frontier-seeking, speaking out against injustice," says Tim Bevan, the Queenstown, New Zealand-born co-founder of Working Title and one of the film's executive producers. "All of these things have a universal ring."

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