April 20.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Another massacre
A vivid account of a brutal massacre.
[In retaliation for the murder of one of his English stockmen] George Fraser and his men tracked the large mob of Guwa from camp to camp as they made their way towards the Forsyth Ranges on the head of Mistake Creek. A week [in North Queensland] after the incident, Sub-Inspector Robert Moran and his troopers arrived. [1] Along with Fraser's party they numbered fourteen, and surrounded the Guwa camp on three sides. Hazelton Brock recalls:
Never shall I forget that scene...when the shots poured into camp; every being was up, and a general rush made for the hills and timber; but the troopers drove them back. I had often read of men becoming panic-stricken on the field of battle, and I now knew what it meant. For a second that mob stood irresolute, men, women, and children, huddled together, rending the air with piercing screams and cries of anguish. Then they broke for the creek, where there was a precipice of 30 ft [9 metres] to the water. However, that didn't matter; they tore down the couple of hundred yards' slope...and without a moment's hesitation jumped into the creek below...
There were about 200 blacks in the water, endeavouring to shelter themselves under the banks, but it was no use; the merciless troopers found them out, and lead poured thick and heavy on them. You could see the flash of a rifle and watch a head disappear; a few seconds, and some bubbles would rise, then a dark crimson spot would spread across the water, marking another soul sent home. After a little while the blacks were thinned out to about half, nearly all the men being killed; and now happened one of the most blood-curdling sights I ever saw.
The troopers had been getting more and more excited, until at last they threw down their guns and drew their sheath-knives, which they all carried, jumped into the water, and engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle. But it didn't last long; the blacks had only a nulla-nulla or two, and the troopers fought with the ferocity of tigers. [2]
The coverage refers to one 'Sergeant M-'. Local Winton author V T Cordin (ed), WintonQueensland (Originally Pelican waterhole) one hundred years of settlement 1875-1975, Winton Shire Council, Winton, 1975, p.58, refers to Sergeant M as being Morgan from Winton Police Station. However, it appears more likely that it was Sub-Inspector Robert Moran who was in charge of the Native police barracks at Yo Yo Creek near Charleville. During the 1870s period three new townships came in to being: Tambo (1863), Blackall (1868) and Aramac (1872), and with the resignation if Acting-Sub-Inspector Carroll at Aramac, it is not inconceivable that Native Police patrols were being staffed from other regions. In 1879, according to the Brisbane Courier (3 May 1879, reporting from 8 April), Sub-Inspector Moran was trapped by floods at Muttaburra, which suggests he was working the whole of the Mitchell district and Winton, despite being in the Gregory pastoral district, probably came under his ambit at one time. My thanks to Jonathan Richards for helping to identify Moran as the likely candidate.
Queenslander, 20 April, 1901.
Acknowledgment: Timothy Bottoms, Conspiracy of Silence, p.172-173. 243 n.71, n.72,
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A view from a little over a century ago
“Australia has no native difficulty of its own; its Aborigines are few, scattered, and dying out…
Acknowledgment: T.A. Coghlan, Labour and Industry in Australia, Oxford University Press, 1918, Vol. IV, p. 2317.