Inside Ned Kelly's armour For Australians, the name Ned Kelly conjures up an iconic image - a man dressed in home-made armour, brandishing a gun. The imposing armour helped the Kelly Gang become imprinted on the hearts and minds of Australians, and the image of Kelly's round helmet with a small eye slit has become a symbol as recognisable as a kangaroo. So when it came to creating the armour for "Ned Kelly" the movie, a lot of work had to be done. The original Kelly Gang's armour was fashioned from the iron mouldboards of a plough and crafted using makeshift equipment in the bush. All four members of the gang, Ned, Dan Kelly, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart, had their own suit of armour, and all four sets survive today. "We decided to make real steel armour, just like what the gang had worn," says Costume Designer Anna Borghesi. "We set up a forge in the carpark of the production office, and forged the armour the same way the gang did - hot forged over tree logs." Because the filmmakers wanted to remain faithful to the originals, Borghesi negotiated with the custodians of the original armour and managed to get access to the suits to take patterns. After making the steel armour, Borghesi had four fibreglass suits created in case the actors had too much difficulty wearing 36 kilograms (80 pounds) of steel during scenes. But, in the end, only the heavy steel suits were used. "Using the fibre glass armour would have changed the whole body language of the gang," armour maker Jonathan Leahey explains. "With the whole weight of all that steel hanging on you, it affects the way you move." Due to a change in scheduling, the climactic Glenrowan sequence, where the gang dons armour, was filmed at the beginning of the shoot. This meant armour makers Leahey and Dylan Thornton had a lot of late nights in the lead-up to filming. "The first lot we did were too big," says Leahey. "It was only a few days before shooting and we had to get our crew back together and work night after night to get them finished." Despite the rush, the team managed to create versions of the Kelly Gang's armour almost identical to the originals. "There was a definite sense of importance about the work, because what we were doing was creating history, in a way." The most satisfying moment for Leahey was seeing the actors, dressed in his armour, stepping out on to the veranda of the Glenrowan hotel. "It was great, to see them all lined up in armour, getting shot at. It was a great experience."   Naomi Watts’ character Julia Cook is fictional, but a real woman named Julia is mentioned in the Jerilderie Letter   Ned Kelly (Heath Ledger) in armour   Protected by armour, Dan Kelly (Laurence Kinlan) and Steve Hart (Philip Barantini) open fire   The real Ned Kelly's armour, on display at the State Library of Victoria