July 13.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Two massacres
“...he shot down the whole band.”
Meanwhile, pastoralists continued establishing their runs, including Joseph Ravens who set up Stainburn Downs Station, about 20 kilometres north-west of Aramac. In the mid to late 1860s, members of the Iningai made several raids. [1] first taking sheep from Rule and Lacey's Eight Mile Lagoon Sheep Station and killing several of them, then later stealing 150 ewes from Stainburn, killing half before they were retrieved. According to Raven, shortly afterwards they killed a man working for Rule and Lacey and a posse followed up to where a lot of caves were located. [2] This was Gray Rock Station, where later a hotel was established on the Cobb & Co track between Aramac and Clermont:
...in a vast amphitheatre. It stands at the base of a low cliff and rocky ramparts of red sandstone – not grey – encircle it on three sides, the radius being some miles in extent...The rocks abound with caves, which used to afford shelter to the Aborigines when in trouble. [After the murder of the white man]...a small band of whites, well armed and led by the manager, started in pursuit...and then traced to a cave about three miles [5 kilometres] from the side of the hotel. The entrance [to the cave] was low, and the leader, who left his followers behind, crawled into the cave on his hands and feet, where he found himself face to face with thirteen savages...With two loaded revolvers he shot down the whole band, who, paralysed with fear, offered no resistance. [3]
A Smith, This El Dorado of Australia: A centennial history of Aramac Shire, Studies in North Queensland History, No.29, Dept. of History & Politics, JCU, Townsville, 1994, pp. 15-17.
J W Raven, 'Reminiscences of a Western Australian pioneer', 1909 Mitchell Library, Microfilm MAV/FM4/3099, pp. 14-15.
Capricornian, 13 July 1878, p.12.
Acknowledgment: Timothy Bottoms, Conspiracy of Silence, pp.176, 244 n. 87, n. 88, n. 89.
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Only thirty of the blacks were shot here.
In his first report [Native Police Officer Frederic] Urquhart describes five 'dispersals' – acts of retribution which followed the 'murder' of one white, the pastoralist James White Powell and the injuring of his 'blackboy', at Carlton Hill Station in the Gulf region of the far north west on 13 July 1884. This was just one chapter in the ongoing war with the Kalkadoons in north-west Queensland. [1] Urquhart's report reveals that he went out in pursuit accompanied by six troopers and thirteen horses plus 'Mr Powell's partner' the legendary western squatter Alexander Kennedy... The first 'dispersal' was on what he described as a 'very large' camp at Gunpowder creek, 'there being upwards of 150 blacks in it'. Urquhart clearly was regretful when he reported to his superiors that only 'thirty of the blacks were shot' here. The terrain was difficult and these were clearly powerful warriors and his 'detachment was not strong enough to admit to my doing more'.
However, he carried on and was able to round up and attack 'four more large mobs of blacks' between 'the scene of the murder and the head of Wills River'. No further figures are mentioned so we are left guessing as to the death toll inflicted in those camps, yet we are no doubt still on the conservative side if we estimate the retribution ratio of one white to sixty indigenous people. The shooting was indiscriminate following the surrounding of each camp and there are no signs that ordinary police work was performed such as investigation or attempts to locate the actual culprits. Neither did he mention any women and children, but there would surely have been both in each of these camps. [2]
See also Laurie, A.: The Black War in Queensland, article RHSQ 1960-62. Vol 6 p.170-71.
2. QSA A/49714 no 6449 of 1884 (report); QPG re 13 July 1884, Vol 21:213; 21 July 188 - COL/A395/84/5070; Q 16 Aug 1884, p.253; 20 Aug 1884 Inquest JUS/N108/84/415; POL/?/84/6449; 15 QF Nov 1884.
Acknowledgment: Robert Ørsted-Jensen, Frontier History Revisited, p. 55, n.94, n.95.