November 1.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Martial law and order
Constable Cooney’s ‘little army’ and the Sturt Creek massacre
Although [Constable Cooney] reported no conflicts or fatalities, his patrol was around Kaningarra… where a man called Riwarri ‘ described his people being killed and captured by a police party following the murder of Condren and O’Sullivan’. [1]
Recent archaeological digs at the old Denison Downs homestead on Chuall Pool at Sturt Creek Station and around the adjacent ‘goat yard’ have produced bone fragments which were subjected to great heat, not just a campfire. Those places are where Cooney’s little army was said to have killed people.
The Aboriginal oral history is clear about this.
[The old people] came from the south along the Canning Stock Route to Kaningarra. They stole a camel, then killed and ate it north of Kaningarra. Police on horseback found them there and began shooting them because they killed the camel. They rounded up others, tied them together and walked them on to the old station Kilangkaarra, then on to Nyarna (Lake Stretch).
From there they took them to the place where the Jaarni tree stands (south of Billiluna) and kept them there tied up for a few days. Then they walked them up to old Sturt Creek Station [where they] lined them up between two trees tied together with wire around their neck and with their hands and feet tied with wire. Two policemen stood together on each side and shot them one by one from the ones at the end to the ones in the middle till they were all dead. Then they dragged some of the bodies to the goat yard, dumped them there in a heap and set fire to them using kerosene. They dragged the rest to the well, threw them in and set fire to them too… the footprints of the white men dragging the bodies to the goat yard and the well [were visible]. The white men killed them because they were jealous of the country. You can still see the white bones in the goat yard and in the well today. At the bottom. [2]
1. Pamela Smith, ‘Into the Kimberley: The Incursion of the Sturt Creek Basin (Kimberley Region WA) and Evidence of Aboriginal Resistance’, Aboriginal History, vol. 24, 2000. File cited Department of Native Affairs 653: 783/1922.
2. ibid.
Acknowledgment: Kate Auty, O’Leary Of The Underworld – The Untold Story of the Forrest River Massacre, La Trobe University Press in conjunction with Black Inc, Collingwood, 2023, pp. 90-91, 235, n.36, n.37
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And in modern times....
In June 1957, according to reports in the Brisbane Telegraph, one thousand Palm Islanders rose in rebellion, and twenty police were despatched in an RAAF crash boat to restore order: a massive overreaction by police and press. There had been no violence and no property damage: merely a noisy demonstration against the pitiful pay of... £2 per week, a threat to strike, and the release of a fellow protestor from the Island jail.
The native affairs' chief had no patience for these “half-castes” who threatened “good order and discipline” by demanding a fair wage. Prior to any inquiry, on [Director of Native affairs Cornelius] O'Leary's orders, seven men and their families were arrested at 3 am the next morning and shipped off in leg irons – three to Cherbourg, three to Woorabinda, and one to Bamaga. [1] This preemptory authoritarianism was typical of life on the Island. “You could be jailed for little – or nothing”, recalled Neville (later Senator) Bonner. “If you were late for work, you could be punished. If you weren't in your own house when the 10pm curfew bell rang, you could be arrested.' [2]
QSA TR254 3A/241. 7.7.57, report of visiting justice.
A. Burger, Neville Bonner: A Biography, Macmillan, South Melbourne, 1979: 30.
Acknowledgement: Rosalind Kidd, The Way We Civilise, pp. 229, 367 n.1, n.2.