September 21.
Treaty by Glenn Loughrey
Another massacre
A measured account of a massacre.
Towards the close of the autumn of [1841] after a beautiful and most prosperous season, we were miserably startled from the unconscious lull of security which long continued impunity from harm invariably produces, by the appalling intelligence that one of my out-stations had been attacked, its three unfortunate occupants brutally massacred, and the sheep, two thousand in number, carried off as spoils, together with whatever stores and implements the station had been provided. Accompanied by three neighbours, I immediately proceeded to reconnoitre the spot of this atrocity. The tracks, camp fires, and numerous gunyahs indicated clearly the recent presence of a tribe numbering, we surmised, at least two hundred. The hut was empty, but we could plainly perceive by blood and other evidences of deadly struggle, that one at least of the unfortunate fellows had there met his dread end...The watchman...had been sneaked upon in his hut, and while in the act of turning or in some way attending to a 'damper' baking in the ashes, speared in the back. The shepherds, had been waylaid on their return with the flocks, and destroyed probably without the chance of an effort for their lives.
Possessed of all the information which it was possible thus to obtain, we returned to arrange a party for immediate pursuit. Each of our men was savagely anxious to be chosen for this imperatively painful task; the thought of their butchered comrades, with sundry vivid reminiscences of personal escapes from a fate as dreadful, made them pant for an opportunity of vengeance on the heads of their wily and dangerous enemy. We made our selection from among them, however, upon other and I hope sounder grounds than could be gathered from the noisiest ebullion of excited feeling. Including my neighbouring friends, we mustered a party of ten, well mounted and accoutred, and taking with us ten days provisions, we started at day break on the following morning in pursuit.
[The party tracked the Aborigines and attacked their camp, which was on the edge of a cliff, from above and below.]
Pouring in, therefore, upon the eager but unconscious crowd below the contents of ten barrels, a fearful charge was effected in their savage glee; a scream of mingled consternation and surprise, a rush in reckless despair towards the only means of escape from their exposed and dangerous elevation, a murderous and tumultuous struggle amongst themselves, their yells of mingled hate and agony, as grappling together in the last grasp of death the foremost of them fell, urged over the ledges' brink by the pressing crowd behind that madly hurried on, into the yawning sepulchre beneath, was all of the horrid scene that the increasing darkness of the night enabled us to perceive.
We had now reloaded, and our party from below, pushing forward to the scene of conflict, poured in a deadly volley upon the thronging crowds that lined the rocky entrance to this fatal ledge – back flew the despairing wretches from that dreadful spot – again a volley from our party on the heights dealt frightful havoc in their ranks. The utmost wildness of despair now ceased upon them all; some actually dashed themselves in frantic violence to the depths beneath...Such of the horrid carnage below, I fain would have retired from the dreadful spot, but all my efforts and entreaties, threats were utterly useless. Shot after shot, with curses wild and deep, the excited fellows launched at their hated foes – their butchered comrades' blood was that night fearfully avenged.
Acknowledgment: F. Eldershaw, AUSTRALIA AS IT REALLY IS, LONDON, 1854, pp. 63-73. Cited by Henry Reynolds, Dispossession – Black Australians and White Invaders, pp. 42-44.