December 7.
“A Portrait of Australia With Important Bits Missing” by Glenn Loughrey
The Kilcoy massacre
'Bumgar', or blue cod, was the place name the Aborigines gave to Kilcoy. It also reminded them that European settlers had occupied all the prized lands, rich valleys, lush grasslands and flowing rivers from which their fish sources emanated. In December 1841, shepherds at one of the northern localities on Kilcoy Creek became mortified by the sudden appearance of a large gathering of marauding Aborigines at their isolated outpost. It was the Giggabarah clan of the escaped convict James Davis ('Durrumboi'), representing indigenes from both the upper Burnett and Mary Rivers...Over a few days, the clan harassed the shepherds for vestiges of food, sheep or equipment.
Most probably as a premeditated act to any warlike gestures by the Aborigines, in advance the shepherds had hatched out a daring and cowardly plan, as a likely solution to easing their fears...As most settlers were aware, arsenic was kept on many stations for the dressing of sheep for scab. Most lone shepherds had also been provided with strychnine to poison native dogs that killed or maimed the sheep. They had been extremely troublesome at Kilcoy at the time...
As many of the Aborigines coveted European rations, the dastardly scheme was for these startled shepherds to hand out some flour to the Aborigines in which arsenic was mixed...The poisonings would be a general payback over time for the killings of some white settlers.
Following a swift series of attacks unprovoked by these shepherds, two servants and a prize bull were speared. The other shepherd, who had manned a stout defence, retreated and prepared anew the bags of flour laced with liberal doses of arsenic. Frightened by the death of his comrades, the terrified attendant fled the camp and returned promptly to the head station, some few miles away.
According to oral reports at the time, being left with no further opposition, the Aborigines returned later, robbed the hut and took the tampered flour to their camp, a mile or so away, on the lagoons nearby at Sheep Station Creek. For the terrified survivor, who had abandoned the camp, the Aborigines' taking of the flour should bring about the required result...
Over a raging fire, the clan cooked the arsenic-laced rations – of poisoned damper wheat cakes – then ate the helpings. Some went back for seconds. As time passed, the Aborigines experienced “swelling of the head, (a) foaming of the mouth, violent retching and thirst, trembling of the limbs and then sudden prostration”. [1]
According to the Durrundur Aborigines who witnessed the mass poisonings of men, women and children – That black feller been eatin damper. Then plenty fellow that been jump about all the same fish when you catch 'im. After him been eatin damper, big mob bin die – him dead all about. [2]
There has been no accurate count of the Aboriginal deaths, the first poisoning in the Moreton Bay area. The estimates ranged from 70, 60 (Raymond Evans) to some 50-60 (J. J. Knight). According to the 1885 account by Harold Finch-Hatton -
The rations contained about as much of strychnine as anything else did and not one of the mob escaped. When the wake (sic) in the morn they were all dead corpses. More than 100 blacks were stretched out by the ruse of the owner of the Long Lagoon. [3]
A more accurate accounting would be 50-60, if we are to believe Henry Stuart Russell's reckonings of eyewitnesses. Thomas Fraser, a Kilcoy farm servant, from the second Scottish intake of workers of the Mackenzie's station, said he arrived at the death scene the day after the murders just to see for himself the vivid result of the poisonings. He stopped counting after he had numbered 28 of the victims.
Jones, S., p.12.
Source: Limna.
Source: Advance Australia, p.120.
Acknowledgment: James G. Lergessner, Death Pudding – The Kilcoy Massacre, Schuurs Publications, Kippa-Ring, 2007, pp. 195-198