Murder at Myall Creek

by Mark Tedeschi

  • Charles Reid, thirty-year-old stockman from Antrim, Ireland. He had been sentenced to transportation for life after a conviction for house robbery and had arrived in the colony in 1826.

  • William Wall, a shepherd, who had been born at Waterford, Ireland, in 1800. He arrived in Australia in about 1835, and was employed by Henry Dangar, initially at Gostwyck near Uralla, then Koloona, which was part of Myall Creek Station. Dangar’s sheep were kept at Koloona, twelve miles away from the huts on Myall Creek Station, and Wall only came to the huts once or twice a week to collect food.

  These six men were attended by two young Aboriginal men, brothers Davy (Yintayintin) and Billy (Kwimunga), who were aged eighteen and fourteen respectively. Davy and Billy were trusted and had a good command of English, because they came from a different area – the Peel River district in the Northern Tablelands – where a diminished number of local Aborigines were living in imposed harmony with white settlers.

  * * *

  It was in this context in May 1838 that a group of more than forty Aboriginal men, women and children of the Wirrayaraay tribe of the Gamilaroi nation, obviously emaciated and hungry, walked out of the bush and descended into the clearing around the huts at Myall Creek Station. The arrival of such a large group of Aborigines initially caused apprehension among the whites at the station, but it soon became apparent to Kilmeister and Anderson that the blacks were peaceful and seeking refuge to set up camp in sight of the apparent safety of the huts. For many months this tribe had been camping at McIntyre’s Station and Wiseman’s Station, but had moved away because of fear of attack from roving groups of mounted white stockmen.

  The leader of the tribe was a man who had been given the name ‘King Sandy’ by local white settlers, and he wore a brass breastplate bestowed on him by Daniel Eaton, overseer at Peter McIntyre’s station, Byron Plains, near present-day Inverell,12 as a mark of his acceptance by white society.13 King Sandy had a seven-year-old son called ‘Charley’ who spoke a good deal of pidgin English and showed an unusual lack of shyness in the presence of the whites, and would converse with them and play around them. The oldest member of the tribe was an enormously tall man – the tallest anyone had ever seen, either black or white – who had been given the name ‘Daddy’ and was described by Hobbs as the doctor of the tribe.

  When the Wirrayaraay sought to establish camp near the huts on Myall Creek Station, manager William Hobbs was initially hesitant to allow them to do so, mainly because he feared that his employer, Henry Dangar, would disapprove. However, stockman Charles Kilmeister urged him to allow the blacks to make camp, pointing out that Dangar was not expected to visit the property for many months and that by the time he was due, the Aborigines would have long since gone. In light of their poor appearance and their obvious predicament, Hobbs took pity on them and gave them permission to set up camp.

  Over the next four or five weeks, the condition of the Wirrayaraay improved. Hut keeper George Anderson became enamoured with an attractive, young Aboriginal woman called Heppita, who, despite the fact that she had a tribal husband, spent more time with Anderson than with her husband. After finishing work, Kilmeister would frequently dance and sing with the Wirrayaraay, and Charley became one of his favourites.

  On Monday, 4 June or Tuesday, 5 June 1838, Burrowes and Reid left Myall Creek to drive a herd of cattle to Dangar’s other station, Pond’s Creek. Several days later, while on the way to Pond’s Creek, they arrived at Bell’s Station, where they found a group of stockmen from other stations who were awaiting the arrival of John Henry Fleming, a free man and station manager at Mungie Bundie Station, to lead them on a hunt for blacks responsible for depredations in the area. Burrowes and Reid casually mentioned to John Russell, the superintendent at Bell’s Station, that a large group of Aborigines was peacefully camped at Myall Creek Station. The following day, while continuing their droving, Burrowes and Reid met Fleming on his way to Bell’s.

  On Thursday, 7 June 1838, William Hobbs left Myall Creek to check on Burrowes and Reid, and to proceed with them and the herd to Pond’s Creek. This left stockman Charles Kilmeister and hut keeper George Anderson, as well as the two Peel River Aboriginal young men, Davy and Billy, as the only employees remaining at Myall Creek Station. Kilmeister and Anderson had a lot in common: they were both around the same age, being twenty-three and twenty-four; they had both come from England, where they had lived about a hundred miles apart; they had both been transported to New South Wales for life; they both worked for Henry Dangar; and they had both interacted closely with the Wirrayaraay during the weeks the tribe had been camped at their station. However, this is where their similarities ended. In character, they were very different, and this was to play a major role in events just three days later.

  On Saturday, 9 June, when the Wirrayaraay tribe had been at Myall Creek for nearly five weeks, Thomas Foster, the superintendent at nearby Newton’s Run, came to Myall Creek Station and offered employment cutting bark to the most able-bodied men of the Wirrayaraay. Early the following morning, ignorant of the fact that a band of whites was on the warpath heading for Myall Creek, ten of the strongest Wirrayaraay men, including King Sandy, accompanied Foster to his property about fifteen miles away. This left about thirty members of the tribe, being older men, women and children, at Myall Creek under the leadership of Daddy and in a very vulnerable state. The stage was set for a great tragedy.

  * * *

  One of the larger stations in the Big River district was known as the Mungie Bundie Station. It was owned by Joseph Fleming, who also had another 56 000-acre run called Mundowey14 and a 47 000-acre run called Orrabar. The Mungie Bundie Station was managed by Joseph Fleming’s younger brother, John Henry Fleming. The Fleming brothers had been born free men in the colony. Their father, Henry Fleming, was one of the earliest native-born, free settlers, having been born on 28 August 1791 on board the ship that brought his parents to the colony as it arrived in Sydney Cove as part of the third Fleet, carrying more than 2000 convicts and desperately needed provisions for the starving colony. Henry’s father, also Joseph Fleming, was a sergeant in the New South Wales Corps whose wife, Mary, had accompanied him on the journey to Sydney.15 In 1810, Henry Fleming, then eighteen, married Elizabeth Hall at St John’s Church, Parramatta. Henry and Elizabeth spent the early years of their married life on land on the Hawkesbury River near the junction with Bardonarrang Creek, and their first two children were born there. Between 1815 and 1819, Henry built an inn on land he had acquired at the new township of Pitt Town,16 forty miles north-west of Sydney, and it was here that his third child, John Henry Fleming, was born in 1816. In 1828, Henry and Elizabeth moved to 250 acres at Lower Portland Head,17 where Henry remained a farmer for the rest of his life.

  By 1838, twenty-two-year-old John Henry Fleming was working as superintendent of the three properties his older brother Joseph owned in the Big River district in northern New South Wales. It was unusual for a superintendent in such a remote area beyond the limits of location to be a free man, let alone a native-born son of a native-born free man, and this gave John Fleming unrivalled status and authority among the whites in the district and unparalleled freedom of movement. The Fleming stations were at the frontline of the battle to push back Aboriginal occupation of their traditional lands, and frequent depredations of cattle had occurred that were viewed as a challenge to possession of the land by white squatters. John Fleming knew that he had the support of his elder brother to take whatever steps were necessary to protect the family’s possessory rights to their stations, as well as their stock and stockmen.

  In early May 1838, the whites on Mungie Bundie were enraged by the discovery of speared and dying cattle in the bush, and there had been attempts to spear two of their men who had been camped in the bush minding the cattle.18 This led John Fleming to the formation of a large group of mounted stockmen with the object of wreaking vengeance for these attacks and taking action to prevent it happening again. Fleming got together ten convicts
and former convicts to form a posse to locate, round up and punish the blacks who were responsible. The possibility of extermination of what was referred to as the ‘black menace’ was never openly spoken of, but it was implicit in the minds of all those who agreed to accompany Fleming in his action. Nine of the posse were of European extraction and one, John Johnstone, was an African.19 They were armed with muskets, pistols and swords, and Fleming had a fowling-piece.20

  It can be seen from the identity of the ten men who accompanied Fleming that they represented a large cross-section of the squatters in the Big River district. There were five former convicts who had either received tickets-of-leave or served their sentences, and five assigned convicts working as stockmen. They were:

  • John Russell, thirty-five years old from Tipperary in Ireland, free by servitude, who was the superintendent at Bell’s Station at Bengari. Russell had been transported for seven years for stealing saddles and brushes. He had arrived in the colony on the convict ship Eliza in 1827 at the age of twenty-four. Prior to his sentence he had been a servant by occupation. After seven years in the colony his Certificate of Freedom was granted on 25 April 1834.

  • George Palliser, a twenty-seven-year-old colleague of Russell at Bell’s Station, who was a free man after serving his sentence in the colony. Palliser came from the County of York, West Riding, in England where he had worked as a farm labourer and stockman. He had been sentenced to seven years for stealing a coat, arriving in the colony in 1831.

  • James Lamb, a thirty-six-year-old ticket-of-leave man from Middlesex, who was the overseer at James Cobb’s run, Gravesend, and had been with Major Nunn during his campaign against the Aborigines earlier in 1838. He had arrived in the colony in 1825, making him the former convict who had been in the colony the longest. In 1826 he had been one of seven men charged with the gang rape of an elderly white woman in the Hunter River district, but they had all been acquitted because the victim failed to identify them.

  • William Hawkins, a twenty-eight-year-old ticket-of-leave man from Buckinghamshire, who was a stockman at Andrew Blake’s run, Mosquito Creek. He had arrived in the colony in 1828 after being convicted of stealing and sentenced to transportation for fourteen years. He had previously been a tool cleaner and scraper.

  • John Johnstone, a twenty-eight-year-old African from Liverpool, described as a ‘half-caste’. He had been sentenced to seven years for house robbery, and arrived in the colony in August 1829. He had been freed by servitude, and was the superintendent at George Bowman’s run at Moree.

  • John Blake, twenty-seven, from County Meath in Ireland, an assigned convict stockman at James Glennie’s run, Gineroi. He was the only married man among the group and had two children. A butcher by trade, he had been transported for life to New South Wales in 1834 for stealing sheep.

  • Charles Toulouse, a thirty-year-old from Worcester who was also assigned as a convict stockman to James Glennie at Gineroi. Originally sentenced to death at seventeen for stealing a pair of women’s shoes from a shop, he had been saved because of a petition by his parents to the King that resulted in the sentence being commuted to transportation for life. He arrived in the colony in 1827. In Worcester, Charles had been sentenced to ‘three months exercise on the treadmill’ for riding a horse in a public field.

  • James Oates, twenty-five, who was a convict stockman at Thomas Simpson Hall’s run, Bingara21. Also known as ‘Hall’s Jemmy’, Oates was, like John Plunkett, a man from Roscommon in Ireland. In 1829, at the age of nineteen, he had been sentenced to transportation for life for assisting in a robbery.

  • James Parry, twenty-four, from Shropshire, who had been a private solider in the 1st Royals. He was a convict stockman for Daniel Eaton at Binguy. He had arrived in the colony in 1835 after being sentenced to seven years for stealing silver and coins from a Sergeant in his corps.

  and:

  • Edward (Ned) Foley, twenty-six, from Queen’s County, Ireland. He and his brother, John, had been farm servants and were sentenced to transportation for life for ‘assault of a habitation’ and ‘assault by levelling’ (a gun) – essentially a home invasion. He arrived in the colony in February 1833 and was assigned as a convict stockman to John Fleming’s older brother, Joseph, at Mungie Bundie, after previously working for their father, Henry Fleming, at Lower Portland.

  John Fleming and his ten mounted stockmen journeyed for some days, visiting many of the stations in the district, looking for any blacks to kill. The fact that the Wirrayaraay at Myall Creek could not possibly have been responsible for the depredations – because prior to taking up residence at Myall Creek they had been living peacefully for many months at McIntyre’s and Wiseman’s stations, and that they had had most harmonious relationships with the whites at each of these stations – was of no consequence to the marauding stockmen. As they approached the Myall Creek Station, they were in a murderous state of mind, intent on suppressing the Indigenous challenge to white pastoral supremacy.

  * * *

  In the late afternoon of Sunday, 10 June 1838, about an hour and a half before sunset, John Henry Fleming and his ten fellow mounted stockmen, armed with muskets, pistols and swords, separated into two groups and approached the ridge to the west of the huts at Myall Creek Station. Oblivious to what lay in store, Charles Kilmeister and George Anderson were relaxing in the late afternoon, chatting with Davy and Billy on the verandah of one of the huts at Myall Creek Station, while the Wirrayaraay, who were camped closer to the creek, were preparing their evening meal. As the eleven mounted stockmen came to the edge of the clearing and advanced at a gallop towards the Aborigines, the rumble of horses’ hooves disrupted the calm domestic atmosphere of the campsite. The Wirrayaraay immediately panicked, the women quickly grabbing their children and most running towards the huts, seeking the protection of the two white men. Two young Aboriginal brothers, John and Jimmy,22 aged about eight or nine, who were closer to the creek than the main group, dived into the water and escaped from the immediate vicinity. Anderson and Kilmeister were equally frightened by the unexpected arrival of such a large group of stockmen, and overwhelmed by the rush of Wirrayaraay who had retreated inside the apparent safety of one of the huts. Davy and Billy clung to their masters, anxious to know whether they would be treated differently to the Wirrayaraay.

  Charles Kilmeister and George Anderson, two young convicts in an isolated bush setting of a remote penal colony, faced an armed and angry mob consisting of an influential, confident and assertive free-born colonist and ten of his henchmen, many of whom were known to them. Kilmeister and Anderson were the only obstacles obstructing the murderous vengeance that the eleven invaders were intent on carrying out. This sudden confrontation was to test Kilmeister’s and Anderson’s mettle to the limit, and determine the future course of their lives.

  7

  THE BIG BUSHWHACK

  When the Wirrayaraay fled in fear into the workmen’s hut at Myall Creek Station, it served the purpose of the invaders, because it made the entrapment of the Aborigines easier than if they had run off into the bush. The horsemen rounded towards the huts and stopped in front of where George Anderson and Charles Kilmeister were now standing quite alarmed, on the verandah. Some of the stockmen dismounted, and one of them, John Russell, took a long rope from around his horse’s neck and began unravelling it as he walked towards the hut in which the Aborigines were cowering in fear. In the meantime, John Henry Fleming remained on his horse, clearly in command, confidently directing events from his elevated position. It was obvious that these men had discussed beforehand what was to occur.

  Anderson, the hut keeper, bravely confronted the stockmen as best he could in the circumstances, asking them their business. John Russell informed him that they were going to ‘take them over the back of the range and frighten them’ and that they intended rounding up any other blacks they could find. He claimed that they were acting in retaliation for the theft of cattle, although he made no attempt to identify any individuals
or even tribe that had been responsible for the theft. Anderson was doubtful that they were merely intending to frighten the Wirrayaraay. Although fearful for himself, he felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility to do all that he reasonably could to prevent whatever it was that these men were planning to do.

  In the meantime, Charles Kilmeister, in abject fear, had retreated inside the hut with the Wirrayaraay, where they begged him, as the man who had been largely responsible for allowing them to remain at the station, for help and protection. Russell and a couple of his fellows entered the hut with the long rope and closed the door behind them. Russell took Kilmeister aside and threatened him that unless he joined the mounted whites, Kilmeister would suffer the same fate as the blacks. Kilmeister was petrified by the group of armed stockmen and fully aware of what they were likely to do to the Wirrayaraay. He readily reasoned to himself that if it was a decision between his life and those of the blacks, he had no choice but to join the stockmen. Without speaking, he nodded an acknowledgement to Russell, indicating that he had understood his options, then exited the hut. He walked over to his own hut, where he armed himself with his pistol, which he holstered into his belt, then came outside, saddled his horse, and joined the group of invaders, thereby becoming complicit in whatever it was they had in mind to do.

  Inside the hut with the Wirrayaraay, John Russell and his fellows tethered the Aborigines to the rope, while another stockman, Edward Foley, stood outside standing guard with a pistol in his hand. Men and women were tied to the long rope, including ‘Daddy’. Those children who were too young to walk were held in their mothers’ arms, while older children were allowed to stay next to their mother. All this time, the Wirrayaraay were wailing and crying out for assistance from their two erstwhile protectors.