The Massacre Story
The Story of the Myall Creek Massacre
BACKGROUND, 1788–1837
The infamous massacre of Aboriginal people at Myall Creek in Northern New South Wales in June 1838 occurred in the fifty first year after the British began their penal colony near Sydney cove.
The encroachments of the Europeans brought years of devastating strife to Aboriginal peoples, who had lived on this country for thousands of years. They suffered terribly, as they were exposed to diseases to which they had no immunity and they died in large numbers.
They were driven from their lands, which had sustained them physically and spiritually. Demoralised and degraded, they were coming to be seen as a doomed race. A proportion of the white population abused them, despised them and coveted their lands.
The first British Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, was, in the poet Les Murray’s words, ‘a kindly, rational man’, who attempted to develop harmonious relations with the Aboriginal people. However, he and subsequent leaders failed to bridge the cultural gaps and failed to protect Aboriginal people from those who tormented them. Likewise, that proportion of the white population who sympathised with the Aboriginal peoples were usually powerless to prevent atrocities on the frontier.
Even the judgement of those who sought to help Aboriginal people was often clouded by presuppositions of cultural superiority. There was little knowledge of or value given to Aboriginal languages and belief systems. As the pastoral industries continually advanced into Aboriginal lands, those in the vanguard of occupation were aware of their isolation and numerical inferiority. Some feared a rising of the tribes and lived with a siege mentality.
Any news of Aboriginal people clashing with whites or interfering with livestock could be a spur to action. With the closest agents of the British law several days’ ride away, low level skirmishes gave way to atrocities of which the massacre at Myall Creek is an extreme, though well documented, example.
THE EVENTS OF 1837 AND EARLY 1838
In the early or middle part of 1837, Myall Creek Station was established by Henry Dangar and became part of his pastoral empire. In 1837 and 1838, the station was managed by William Hobbs, a young freeman from Somerset whose personal staff comprised three assigned convicts: Charles Kilmeister the stockman, George Anderson the hut keeper and Andrew Burrowes, mainly responsible for the horses.
According to author Roger Milliss, there was a constant fear of Aboriginal people – real or imagined. All the men went armed when they were away from the shelter of the station. However, there were no Aboriginal people to be seen and Milliss comments that by mid 1837 the area immediately north of Bingara, extending up to Myall Creek, originally peopled by the Wirrayaraay or Wolroi tribe, may well have been swept clear of its traditional owners.
By 1837 the centre of the conflict had shifted downstream on the Gwydir. There were a number of incidents in which killings of a few white people or livestock resulted in large scale killings of Aboriginal people.
Major James Winniet Nunn came from Sydney at the end of 1837 and with a party of about 30 troopers and some volunteer stockmen conducted a murderous campaign extending over 53 days.
In one incident, up to 300 Aboriginal people may have been killed in a surprise attack at Snodgrass Lagoon on the Waterloo Creek on January 26th, 1838. According to oral history gathered by the late Len Payne of Bingara, the Gwydir exploded in a fresh outburst known as the ‘Drive’ or the ‘Bushwack’, at the beginning of May 1838.
Towards the end of May or early in June, a large party of Aboriginal people were reported to have been surprised at dawn in a ravine at the headwaters of Slaughterhouse Creek, with heavy loss of life.
Shortly before this, a group of about 50 Aboriginal people moved to Myall Creek Station at the invitation of Charles Kilmeister. They had been living at Mclntyres – a cattle station about 30 kilometres upstream from what is now Bingara. They had been urged to move by their friend Andrew Eaton, a hut keeper at Mclntyres, who feared for their safety. Milliss comments,
“Everything points to an unusual bond developing between the little clutch of whites and the crowd of blacks who had suddenly descended on them, something approaching real friendship, not just for the enticing of young girls, but for the older men and their children as well – all taking place in the short space of a fortnight or three weeks.” (Waterloo Creek p. 282)
THE EVENTS OF JUNE 10–15TH, 1838
On Sunday morning, ten of the Aboriginal people, representing just about all of the able bodied males, including ‘King’ Sandy, accompanied Thomas Foster, the superintendent of Newtons, a neighbouring station, to assist him cut bark.
About half past three or quarter to four, a group of at least 10 and possibly 12 stockmen came galloping up to the huts of Myall Creek Station, brandishing their guns and swords.
Unfortunately for the Aboriginal people, who were preparing their evening meal, William Hobbs, the station superintendent, and Andrew Burrowes, one of the assigned convicts, were absent from the station. It is likely that the marauding gang knew this.
The horsemen herded the Wirrayaraay into the workmens’ hut with only two boys aged about eight or nine able to escape. One of the stockmen, John Russell undid a long tether rope from around the horse’s neck, entered the hut with one or two others and began tying the defenceless people’s hands together.
Despite his evening socialising with the Aboriginal people Charles Kilmeister, one of the station convicts, joined with their tormentors. George Anderson, another of the assigned station convicts, refused to join and was later prevailed upon to give evidence against them. He identified John Fleming, the only perpetrator not of convict origin, and John Russell as the ring leaders.
Charles Telluce, James Oates, William Hawkins, Edward Foley, George Palliser, Jem Lamb and the mixed-race ex-seaman, ‘Black’ Johnstone, were implicated. Anderson was uncertain about two others, John Blake and James Parry.
Also with Anderson were two Peel River Aboriginal people, Yintayintin and his brother Knimunga, known by the whites as Davey and Billy, respectively. They were employees of Mr Dangar and regarded in a different light to the group of Wirrayaraay and were not threatened by the gang. When Davey asked for and was given a young woman, Anderson tried to save ‘Peta’ or Ipeta, a striking woman with whom he had had a relationship in the previous few weeks. Perhaps to spite him for not joining them, the gang left him with another young girl.
Anderson later recalled that many of the group of 25 or 30 Aboriginal people had been given nicknames, including one man named ‘Daddy Daddy’. He was a ‘very old, big tall man’, whom William Hobbs later described as the ‘doctor of the tribe’. He has been spoken of as the clan’s ‘clever man’. Old Joey, Tommy Sandy and his wife Martha and their precocious son Charlie, who was liked by everyone and was William Hobbs’ special favourite, were others Anderson recalled.
The stockmen were deaf to the cries of their victims. Within twenty minutes of first arriving, the mounted men surrounded their frantic captives and they were hauled forward by a man with the end of the rope hitched to his saddle. They headed west from the hut, with Anderson watching until they had disappeared from view over the top of a rise. Two solitary shots were heard 15 or 20 minutes later.
Only one of the whole clan was spared – John Blake appears to have selected an Aboriginal woman. All of the other Aboriginal people were beheaded and their headless bodies were left where they fell. It is thought that the gang spent the night camped out, carousing and recalling their bloody deeds.
Meanwhile, Anderson waited at the hut, later claiming to have never visited the site. Davey slipped away and brought back news of what he had seen. Not knowing what the murderers next move would be, Anderson kept those who had avoided capture with him.
At 10pm, the ten Aboriginal men who had been away at Newton’s arrived at Anderson’s hut and learned the awful story of what had befallen their kin. They had covered close to 50 kilometres during the day. But now, with Anderson’s urging and Davey interpreting they were persuaded to get as far away from the station as possible.
By 10.30pm, the ten men, two women and three boys headed off into the night, towards Maclntyres.
THE MURDERERS’ RETURN
On Monday afternoon, the murderers returned to Anderson’s hut and spent the night there and, on Tuesday morning, set about burning the bodies of their victims.
SUBSEQUENT MASSACRES
It appears that the group of Aboriginal men reached Maclntyres on Wednesday, June 13th and that, no sooner had they arrived than the stockmen caught up with them.
It is thought that they had tracked the group with the assistance of Billy, whom they had coerced. Most of the group were found and murdered.
Worse, it seems likely that the murderers were guilty of another outrage near Maclntyres, even more horrific than that at the Dangars.
From reports gathered by the missionary, Lancelot Threlkeld, between 30 and 40 Aboriginal people were murdered and their bodies cast onto a triangular log fire.
A woman’s throat was reported to have been cut; she was allowed to run with blood spurting and then was thrown alive onto the fire. Her infant child was thrown alive onto the fire. Two young girls were mutilated by the gang.
It is likely that after these events, the stockmen were involved in several days of heavy drinking and their party dispersed on Friday, June 15th 1838.
AN OUTRAGE REVEALED
On the same afternoon, Dangar’s superintendent, William Hobbs, returned to Myall Creek, having already gained some information about what had occurred in his absence.
He questioned Anderson and accepted Kilmeister’s denial of complicity.
He was then guided by Davey to the site of the massacre, noting footmarks and tracks of horses cast hard in the soil after recent rain. At least 20 separated heads and a mass of bodies were together in a haphazard pile. The stockmen’s attempt to burn the bodies had failed because of the damp wood.
Hobbs spent between fifteen and twenty minutes at the site, becoming at one stage stricken with nausea.
The next morning, Hobbs and Thomas Foster inspected the site for a briefer period.
The men agreed that the atrocity should be reported and Hobbs undertook to inform his employer, Dangar. He did, though, let it be known that he was going to report it to the authorities as well.
By Sunday, June 24th, Frederick I. Foot, a landholder, set off to Muswellbrook to report the matter to the nearest police magistrate, Edward Denny Day. Missing Day, he travelled on to Sydney and, on July 4th, wrote an account of the incident for the attention of Governor Gipps.
Governor Gipps, only in the colony four months and anxious to implement British Government instructions to protect Aboriginal people, gave the report precedence over other matters, including an inquiry into Major Nunn’s activities. Edward Denny Day, supported by a party of mounted police, was instructed to institute a strict inquiry and to apprehend all those responsible.
