Myall Creek Massacre and Memorial Site is the heritage-listed site of and memorial for the victims of the Myall Creek massacre at Bingara Delungra Road, Myall Creek, Gwydir Shire, New South Wales, Australia. The memorial, which was unveiled in 2000, was added to the Australian National Heritage List on 7 June 2008 and the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 12 November 2010.
History
In the half century following the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, a pattern of relations developed between Aboriginal people and European settlers that lasted into the 1900s. While the British Colonial Office instructed Arthur Phillip, the first Governor, to treat the Aboriginal population with goodwill and kindness, competition for resources and land following the expansion of European settlement invariably resulted in frontier conflict. Frontier violence posed a problem for the British administration because Aboriginal people and settlers were legally British subjects with the same rights and protection. Lack of resources and pressure from settlers however, made it increasingly difficult for the Administration to ensure the application of the rule of law.
The Myall Creek massacre in 1838, the subsequent court case and the hanging of seven settlers for the massacre of Aboriginal people, is pivotal in the development of the relationship between settlers and Aboriginal people. It is the first and last time that settlers were found guilty of, and hanged for, the killing of Aboriginal people on the frontier. It is the last time the Colonial Administration intervened to ensure the laws of the colony were applied equally to Aboriginal people and settlers involved in frontier killings. However, instead of setting a precedent that Aboriginal people could be protected under the law, Ryan (1980:20) states: the Myall Creek massacre and the ensuing cases had intensified the squatter's determination to have unfettered occupation of pastoral land. They were not prepared to wait while protectors rounded up the Aborigines, nor were they prepared to allow their stockkeepers to endure the full force of the law...for 1838 was the year that saw the final loss of control by government of pastoral expansion.
Colonial Administration's Response to Frontier Conflict Aboriginal attacks on unarmed convicts were commonplace following the establishment of the settlement at Port Jackson in 1788. While some members of the Administration felt that the Aboriginal inhabitants of the area should be driven away and kept away by the judicious use of muskets, Governor Phillip attempted to establish friendly relations and trade.Clendinnen 2003:19-31, 55 As a result of this policy, Phillip did not respond aggressively to the spearing of convicts by Aboriginal people. However, following the spearing and death of one of his servants in 1790, he authorised a punitive expedition against the "Botany Bay" tribe. He ordered the expedition to bring back two Aboriginal men to be hanged and the heads of a further ten Aboriginal men but it returned empty handed.Clendinnen 2003:174-177 Phillip never ordered another punitive expedition.
Phillip appears to have generally adopted a non-hostile approach to dealing with Aboriginal attacks. Conversely he ordered the flogging of settlers who took Aboriginal spears and nets or damaged Aboriginal canoes. Although Aboriginal witnesses to the floggings were horrified,Clendinnen 2003:99 Phillip used the floggings to demonstrate that settlers guilty of offences against Aboriginal people would be punished. In some cases he also provided compensation to Aboriginal people for their loss. However, following his departure in December 1792 all accommodation ended and the British Administration adopted a simpler solution: the unequal application of the law for settlers and Aboriginal people.Clendinnen 2003:217
With the expansion of European settlement into the Hawkesbury and Hunter regions, frontier conflict intensified. This conflict was the result of competition for land which settlers required for crops and the grazing of sheep and cattle. Aboriginal people relied upon the same land for food and water.Kidd 1997:14 The initial response by the Administration was to dispatch troops to police the frontier, but the expanding area of land to be covered made this an increasingly difficult task. A lawless frontier environment soon existed where it was impossible to control the conflict between settlers and Aboriginal people. In response to this challenge the Administration ordered settlers to defend themselves and ordered Aboriginal people to stay away from European habitation. There is no evidence that Aboriginal people understood and agreed with these orders to stay away from European settlement as the conflict on the frontier continued.
Despite this, successive Governors in New South Wales adopted similar approaches to addressing frontier conflict. In 1796 Governor Hunter ordered settlers to "mutually afford their assistance to each other by assembling when ever any numerous bodies of natives are known to be lurking about the farms". By 1801 Governor King's orders were even more specific stating that the blacks were to "be driven back from settlers" habitations by firing at them'.Reynolds 1996:39 In 1816 Governor Macquarie issued a proclamation stating that "No Aboriginal person is to appear armed within a mile of any settlement and no more than six Aboriginal people are allowed to lurk or loiter near farms".(Australian Museum 2007).
During the 1830s individual colonies around Australia started to develop distinctive approaches to dealing with the issue of frontier violence. All of these approaches focused on removing Aboriginal people from the areas settled by Europeans. In New South Wales the practice of sending troops to suppress Aboriginal violence, often aided by settlers continued.Milliss 1992:1-21 This was evident in the Liverpool Plains district (the north-west frontier) following its initial settlement by Europeans in the late 1820s.
North-West Frontier in the 1820s and 1830s Settlers from the Hunter Valley and Mudgee, in need of more pasture for their rapidly increasing flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, began arriving on the Liverpool Plains in . At this time there were an estimated 12,000 Aboriginal people living in the district, mostly belonging to the Gamilaroi (also spelt Kamilaroi) language group but including other Aboriginal groups.(Connor.2002:103). The Gamilaroi people appear, from the very beginning, to have resisted European settlement. Surveyor William Gardner recorded how shortly after stations were formed on the Namoi River, local Aboriginal groups issued a formal challenge to the settlers to do battle. The stockmen however, refused to leave their barricaded hut. The war party responded by attacking the hut and attempted to remove the roof. The warriors were forced to retreat after numerous members of the party were killed by the sixteen heavily armed stockmen. The stockmen then followed the retreating party on horseback and "taught them they knew how to fight".Reece 1974:28-29
By 1837 settlers had pushed beyond the Peel and Namoi Rivers and taken up large tracts of land along the Gwydir or the "Big River" as it was then known. Local Gamilaroi groups resisted the alienation of their traditional lands almost immediately. The dispersed nature of the settlers stations enabled the Gamilaroi to easily isolate and attack stockmen and their livestock.Connor 2020:105 In April 1836 two stockmen working for the Hall Brothers, were killed while forming a new station. In September and November of the following year two hutkeepers and two shepherds from the Bowman and Cobb stations were killed.Reece 1974:29 Crown Land Commissioner Alexander Paterson reported back to Sydney in the second half of 1837 that stockmen on the Loder station, which was the westernmost station on the Namoi, were so afraid of raids by the Gamilaroi that they had abandoned their livestock to roam unattended in the bush.Connor 2002:105
Liverpool Plains settlers demanded military protection against Aboriginal attacks. In response to their demands, Lieutenant-Colonel Kenneth Snodgrass, Acting Governor of New South Wales sent a large Mounted Police party north to enquire into and repress the aggressions complained of. The Mounted Police party, led by Major Nunn and composed of around twenty troopers reached Liverpool Plains in January 1838. What occurred after they arrived remains unclear, but at Waterloo Creek, 50 kilometres southwest of what is now Moree, the Mounted Police encountered a large party of Aboriginal people camped alongside the Creek. In the ensuing melee a number of Aboriginal people were shot. The exact number of Aboriginal people killed in the melee is unknown but local squatters who visited site later, reported the number killed to be sixty or seventy. An eyewitness to the encounter testified that forty to fifty may have been killed. Rev Threlkeld in his mission report for 1838 stated that the number may have been as high as two or three hundred.Connor 2002:110-111Reece 1974:33
According to R. H. W. Reece in his book "Aborigines and Colonists," local tradition states that Nunn's party of Mounted Police was involved in at least one more large melee with local Aboriginal people before the party left the Plains. Major Nunn's Campaign (as it was known in the district) did not prevent further racial conflict. In March of that year two men working for Surveyor Finch were killed in the neighbouring district of New England, then in April a hutkeeper on the Gwydir was killed. In the following months stockmen from stations along the Gwydir River organised themselves into armed groups and scoured the country side in what is described by Reece as "a concerted campaign to get rid of all the Aborigines in the district." According to Reece this still known in local tradition as "The Bushwhack" or "The Drive".Reece 1974: 34 The Myall Creek Massacre took place in June of that year, on Myall Creek Station near the Gwydir River.
The Myall Creek Massacre The escalating conflict between settlers and Aboriginal people on the frontier was one of the issues confronting Governor Gipps on his arrival in the New South Wales colony in 1838. Governor Gipps and the Colonial Secretary Lord Glenelg agreed that an important measure to prevent frontier conflict was to impress Aboriginal people with "the conviction that the laws of the colony will be equally administered for their protection from wrong and injury as for that of European settlers".Rowley 1970:35Lord Glenelg to Gipps cited by Connor 2002: 113 The Myall Creek massacre provided Governor Gipps with an opportunity to demonstrate that the law could protect Aboriginal people through its equal application. When news of the incident was reported to him, Governor Gipps did not hesitate to order the perpetrators be brought to justice.Wannan 1962: 200
Once Governor Gipps was informed he gave instructions that Police Magistrate Day should proceed immediately to the scene of the tragedy with a party of mounted police to seek out the murderers.Wannan 1962:201 Day conducted a thorough investigation and apprehended eleven of twelve suspected Myall Creek murderers. The eleven men were arrested and tried for the murder of Daddy and an unknown Aboriginal(R v Kilmeister No. 1 - http://www.law.mq.edu.au)