The National Museum of Australia has bought a ceremonial sword awarded to a Victorian policeman who captured notorious bushranger Ned Kelly in 1880.
The museum paid $45,600 for the sword at an auction of antiques and collectables at Sotheby's in Melbourne on Tuesday night.
Senior curator Matthew Higgins said visitors would be enthralled at seeing something so close to the Kelly story.
''It will help people to better understand the political and economic forces at play right throughout the Kelly outbreak,'' he said.
The sword was awarded to police sergeant Arthur Steele. He and four constables rode from Wangaratta, about 250km north-east of Melbourne, to nearby Glenrowan on the night of June 26, 1880.
They arrived shortly before dawn to find the Kelly gang holed up in the Glenrowan Hotel.
The other three gang members Dan Kelly, Steve Hart and Joe Byrne were shot dead in the ensuing stand-off.
But Ned Kelly, wearing his now famous armour, emerged from the hotel, and was eventually cut down when Sergeant Steele hit his legs with two shotgun blasts.
Kelly was treated for his wounds in Melbourne, where he was tried and sentenced to death.
He was hanged on November 11, 1880, in the Old Melbourne Goal.
The Moyhu Stock Protection Society, made up of stock owners in north-east Victoria, awarded Sergeant Steele the ceremonial sword in 1881.
Mr Higgins said landholders' support of Sergeant Steele underlined the ''land war'' between poor settlers like the Kellys and the land-monopolising squatters.
Landholders wanted Kelly captured because his gang stole cattle and horses from them.
Mr Higgins said, ''Ned Kelly is still seen to be the ultimate underdog, the figure who resists authority.
''And he was seen rightly to have been the little man fighting the big man, in terms of the small holders who only had very small areas of land. It was all about [giving them] a fair go.''
Sergeant Steele was given 300 from the reward of 8000 for the capture of the Kelly gang. ''8000 in those days equates to over $2million today, so you can get an idea of how desperate the combined NSW and Victorian governments were to bring in the Kellys,'' Mr Higgins said.
''He represented a huge threat to the existing order and to the stability of the area.''