April 17.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
The Appin massacre
On 17 April 1816, there occurred what has since been termed ‘The Appin massacre’. This report of that event was written by Captain James Wallis in his journal. It is an eye-witness account. Wallis was an officer in the 46th Regiment whose three detachments carried out operations in the Appin district.
17 April 1816: A little after one o'clock a.m. We marched. Noble joined us, and led us where we had seen the natives encamped. The fires were burning but deserted. We feared they had heard us and were fled… A few of my men who wandered on heard a child cry. I formed line ranks, entered and pushed on through a thick brush towards the precipitous banks a deep rocky creek. The dogs gave the alarm and the natives fled over the cliffs. A smart firing now ensued. It was moonlight. The grey dawn of the moon appearing so dark as to be able early to discover their figures bounding from rock to rock.
Before marching from Quarters I had ordered my men to take as many prisoners as possible, and to be careful in sparing and saving the women and children. My principal efforts were now directed to this purpose. I regret to say some had been shot and others met their fate by rushing in despair over the precipice. I was however partly successful – I led up two women and three children. They were all that remained, to whom death would not be a blessing.
Twas a melancholy but necessary duty I was employed upon. Fourteen dead bodies were counted in different directions. The bodies of Dunell and Kincabygal I had considerable difficulty in getting up the precipice – I regretted the death of an old native Balyin and the unfortunate women and children – from the rocky place they fell in. I found it would be almost impossible to bury these.
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“...a mournful sight – about thirty male survivors out of all that tribe...”
A letter writer to the Port Denison Times (17 April 1869), noted that:
'Whole hetacombs [large-scale slaughter]' of Aboriginal people at the hands of the Native Police and white volunteers had occurred, 'From the first opening of this port to the present time the severity with which the Aborigines have been treated has been a subject of universal regret...' The killing, he considered, had been treated with a degree of secrecy, and Aboriginals who had come into Bowen were:
...a mournful sight – about thirty male survivors out of all that tribe, which not long ago could be numbered by the hundreds, and dates back to the days of its misfortunes and decimation to the introduction, not of the bottle, but of the rifle (which is the quickest?) when the Native Police, to use the words of an eye-witness, visited the public house after their work at the shambles, 'the heels of their boots covered with brains and blood and hair'. [1]
The fact that this letter was published still did not have any impact or influence on the government. [2] A saddened George Bridgman wrote to Edward Curr, an ethnologist, that in the first decade of European occupation of the Mackay district (1860s), ‘about one half of the Aboriginal population was either shot down or perished from loathsome diseases [3]... This resulted in a preponderance of Aboriginal females and children in the region. [4]
Port Denison Times, 17 April 1869.
Port Denison Times, 1 May, 1869.
Port Denison Times, ! May, 1869
Queenslander, 18 March, 1876, p.12.
Acknowledgment: Timothy Bottoms, Conspiracy of Silence, p.58-59, 219 n.42, n.43, n.44, n.45.