A University of Newcastle research project has uncovered evidence of a massacre of Aboriginal people in the Riverina that was previously little known in the region.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia 1788-1930 project recently added more than 100 incidents to its online map of massacres involving more than six people being killed.
The map already had 300 locations marked, including the Murdering Island massacre near Narrandera, where an estimated 70 Aboriginal people were killed in 1854.
There is now a new digital marker for a massacre in the Riverina, at Gum Creek Lagoon beside the Kidman Way between the Murrumbidgee River and Griffith.
The massacre's addition was based on the 1848 memoirs of overland drover James R. Byrne, who joined a group of 16 stockmen leading 53 cattle between Yass and Adelaide during August 1839.
According to Byrne's account, the stockmen ambushed a group of Aboriginal people, identified by the research project as Wiradjuri warriors, in retaliation for wounding a stockman and a horse.
The stockmen "fired as the natives appeared and then rode down upon them with cutlasses," leaving nine Wiradjuri dead and the rest fleeing across the river.
Wiradjuri elder James Ingram said he had not heard of the Gum Creek Lagoon massacre before but was not surprised given that Governor Lachlan Macquarie had declared martial law against Aboriginal people.
"He wrote in his diary that they were to fire upon Wiradjuri people and if we didn't surrender, they were to hang us up in trees to put the fear of God into the rest of the Wiradjuri people," Mr Ingram said.
"So I can understand how these massacres happened because the martial law was to kill on sight."
Mr Ingram said he was also not surprised by the stockmen killing multiple Wiradjuri over an incident that started with a horse being wounded.
"They didn't need many excuses to do what they did back then," Mr Ingram said.
Back in 1839, the group was on its 11th day of travel after leaving Gundagai when one of the stockmen's horses was wounded by three spears thrown from within riverside reeds.
The stockmen had wanted to "punish" the Aboriginal people in response but could not cross the Murrumbidgee to reach their camp.
The Wiradjuri followed the stockmen and their cattle at a distance for the next 10 days before breaking a cart driver's arm with a club while he was scouting for a river crossing.
The stockmen killed four Wiradjuri in that encounter before using dogs to track down and kill another nine.
"Considering that the punishment we had inflicted was sufficiently severe to deter them from further molesting our party, we drew the men off, very much against their will, and permitted some half-dozen of the natives to escape," Byrne wrote.
Mr Ingram said he was open to the idea of putting up signs and a memorial for the massacre at Gum Creek Lagoon but it was decision for the Local Aboriginal Land Councils.
Emeritus Professor and leader of the massacre mapping project, Lyndall Ryan, said the recently added incidents included 19 "genocidal massacres", carried out over several weeks, often in reprisal for the killing of a colonist or pastoralist.
"They weren't an accident. They were designed to get Aboriginal people out of the way, whether it was to 'teach them a lesson', or to make them so timid that they were easier to employ," she said.
Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content:
- Download our app from the Apple Store or Google Play
- Bookmark dailyadvertiser.com.au
- Follow us on Twitter
- Follow us on Instagram
- Follow us on Google News
- Make sure you are signed up for our breaking and regular headlines newsletter