October 14.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Another massacre
...several of the influential blacks were...fully sensible of the injustices they had suffered.
In October 1840 there was a crisis in white-Aboriginal relations at Port Phillip. Following widespread settler concern about black assertiveness in the districts around Melbourne a party of soldiers and border police under the command of Major Lettsom surrounded a large ceremonial gathering a few miles north of the town and captured the whole assembly. They were marched into town and imprisoned overnight. One man was shot at the time of capture and another while escaping from incarceration. [1] The blacks were frightened and infuriated. G.A. Robinson reported that the most influential men amongst the tribes in Melbourne warned him that they intended 'returning to the mountains and forest ranges and killing every white man they could find unprotected'. [2] E.S. Parker told a similar story. The blacks had said they would take to the mountains and try and 'drive the white fellows from the country'. [3] The Protectorate officials – Robinson, Parker and [William] Thomas – worked hard to restrain the blacks and, given the lack of immediate physical retaliation, felt they had been successful in defusing the situation. But their account makes it clear that the Aborigines channelled their anger into magic in order to unleash the horrifying power of Mindye the rainbow serpent on the whites and those blacks who were friendly with them, especially the Port Phillip clans. Thomas reported that the blacks from his station at Nare Nare Warren had fled because a celebrated Goulburn 'clever man' had said the Mindye was about to come [4] ...Parker observed [that] several of the influential blacks were...fully sensible of the injustices they had suffered.
Port Phillip Gazette, 14 October 1840.
Papers of G.A. Robinson, 57, 1845-49, ML, MSS A7078/1.
E.S. Parker, Quarterly Journal, 1 September-30 November 1840, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate; North Western District, VPRO.
W. Thomas to G.A. Robinson, 1 March 1841, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate; Westernport, VPRO.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier, pp. 71-72, 177 n.65, n.66, n.67, n.68.
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Another (massacre) took place to the east.
Another (massacre) took place to the east. I was shown this place too. From Jinparrak homestead east there is Number 17 Bore. From Number 17 there's a fence line running south to Ngangi. Coming back west of there is Number 4, and from Number 4 there's a river. At the head of it is another place where they shot a lot of ngumpin [Indigenous people]. It was the same thing again; ngumpin were killing cattle. I was shown where kartiya [Europeans] had covered dead bodies with stones – Blackfella Creek just where the head of the creek is, west of that blacksoil plain. They came upon the ngumpin there. 'Look here! They must be stealing our cattle!'
They were spearing the cattle. The kartiya came and surrounded the ngumpin. There was no hope; they were only going to shoot. The ngumpin started hearing shots...The ngumpin at the creek went running across the plain, running the way they used to be able to run. The others on horseback tried catching up to them, but they couldn't. They followed them, shooting from behind. Some of the old people couldn't run so fast and got shot. The kartiya kept chasing the others all the way up onto Ngangi. There the ngumpin hooked up their spears and waited for them. The kartiya were saying, 'It's no good. We can't go, otherwise those blackfellas will get us with their spears...
Acknowledgment: 'Wirrilu (Blackfella Creek)' in Erika Charola and Felicity Meakins, eds. Yijarni – True Stories from Gurindji Country, pp. 43-44.