October 9.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Two massacres
“Early in the morning the kartiya [Europeans] ambushed people there and shot all the ngumpin [Aboriginal people] there.”
The kartiya [Europeans]...brought up horses and cattle from Timber Creek by boat...They brought horses for breeding...and cows, calves and bulls...Over on the east side of the river at Malyalyimalyalyi and Lipanangku, they set up camp and got themselves some guns. Those kartiya had a lot of rifles and they had men with them too, Aboriginal men. Where could they have been from? Maybe Darwin or Queensland – Aboriginal people who used to live alongside kartiya. They came to shoot...Right there to the west they went on horseback along the river at Daguragu, going to Seale River. At Warluk, ngumpin [Indigenous] mob lived as different tribes mixed together: Mudburra, Gurindji, Ngarinyman perhaps and Nyininy. They used to travel north, south, east, west. The Pirlingarna tribe as well. At Warluk they all used to live together and perform their ceremonies there. They had camps there at Warluk and Burtawurta. The kartiya went downstream with horses to the same place where we used to have our night-camps when we were working on that country. They went down there and heard voices calling out. 'True! There are blackfellas here!' Then they camped the night, that lot of kartiya. Early in the morning they ambushed people there and shot all the ngumpin there. They shot the whole lot of them right there at the yards at Waerluk...All around there, where that waterhole is on the eastern side and waterlilies grow...they shot them there...They used to tell me this story: my grandfathers, great uncles, great aunts, great-great grandparents and my father...
Acknowledgment: Ronnie Wavehill, 'Early Marracres – Warluk (Seale Gorge)', Erika Charola and Felicity Meakins, eds. Yijarni – True Stories from Gurindji Country, pp. 32-37
____
Aborigines fled to a swamp where they were shot.
Willy Long of Laura related how his parents survived an attack on Olkola people led by the 'officer in charge of Musgrave police station'. [1] As in other incidents in which peaceful rivers and lagoons were turned into massacre sites, [2] Aborigines fled to a swamp where they were shot. The victims may have belonged to one of five camps in the Coen area reported to have been massacred in 1889 by a formidable force of forty, comprising three police detachments and volunteers led by Sub-Inspector Urquhart. [3] Such reprisals continued until at least 1896, as indicated by Culpin's account of events which followed the death of pastoralist Mackenzie: '[The Aborigines] were tracked to a camp on the Normanby river, where a good many found a final resting place'. [4]
A feature of police patrols was the abduction of Aboriginal women and children, a practice which was an ongoing source of 'trouble between whites and blacks'. [5] Harry Mole (who later became a police tracker at Laura) [6] was 'brought in as a child by members of a punitive expedition who had slaughtered virtually all of his people, the Gugu- Warra tribe'. [7] The attack took place at Jack Lakes, north of Boralga. [8] Corfield described how his friend Sub-Inspector O'Connor captured an Aboriginal boy of about six years of age while 'dispersing some blacks'. [9] O'Connor 'gave' the boy to Corfield. The manager of Rocklands station near Camooweal obtained a child in a similar manner:
M Trezise 1969: 102.
Corfield 1923; Culpin 15/5/1896 in Mackeith 1987: 88; Mulligan quoted in Pike 1998; Trezise 1969; Strang 1997: 19.
Cooktoum Courier 14 May, 18 June, 1889 quoted by Loos 1982: 61.
Culpin 15/5/1896 in Mackeith 1987: 88.
Jack 1922 vol II: 483.
Malone to Police Commissioner 26/9/1911 QSA A/44857.
Trezise 1969: 51.
A Haviland and Hart 1998: 36 note stories of regular police raids on the Muunthi-warra at the Jack River.
Corfield 1923: 59.
Acknowledgment: Noelene Cole, “Battle Camp to Boralga: a local study of colonial war on Cape York Peninsula, 1873-1894” in Aboriginal History Vol. 28 (2004) p. 172 n.113 to 121.