Murder at Myall Creek

by Mark Tedeschi

  George Anderson, who had boldly remained outside, refused to join the group of invaders. He was convinced that the men confronting him were about to commit a most egregious crime. While he was not prepared to recklessly risk his own life by physically resisting them, he was firmly resolved not to cooperate with them in any way. Anderson managed to save a little Aboriginal girl by pushing her into a different hut while the adults were being tethered. The two Aboriginal brothers, Davy and Billy, were not touched by the marauding party, because they were viewed as being the property of Henry Dangar, and nobody would dare to cross him. Anderson tried to save Heppita, the striking Aboriginal woman with whom he had been in a relationship for the previous five weeks, by begging for her to be released into his care. To spite Anderson, and clearly with evil intent, John Fleming responded that the gang would keep Heppita, and instead indicated another young woman to be given to Anderson as a token gesture, whom the men thrust aside in his direction. Fleming’s intention in doing this was to compromise Anderson, as though he were giving him a consolation prize for not standing in their way, thereby making him complicit in their actions. Another woman was thrust in Davy’s direction.

  John Russell emerged from the hut with the end of the rope in his hands and hitched it to his saddle. The twelve horsemen – now including Charles Kilmeister – mounted their steeds and began slowly moving away from the huts. Twenty-eight terrified Aborigines emerged, each of the adults secured to the long rope by the wrists and the children either being carried or clinging to their mothers. The stockmen – deaf to the crying and wailing – rode on either side of their tethered captives, prodding them to move away from the huts in a westerly direction towards what was ultimately going to be a terrible outcome. George Anderson, who remained in great trepidation at the huts, lost sight of them after two or three minutes. Once they had disappeared, at Anderson’s suggestion, Davy surreptitiously followed the caravan of death at a safe distance, and when the forced march entered a gully about half a mile away from the huts, he hid behind a tree and witnessed the fate that befell the wailing Wirrayaraay.

  Fifteen or twenty minutes after being forcibly led away, the captives reached their destination – a wooden stockyard in a shallow gully where they could not be seen from the huts.1 Once inside the stockyard, John Fleming lined up the majority of his horsemen in a circle surrounding their intended victims, while several of his men remained outside to prevent escape. Many of them had their swords drawn, while a few had guns in their hands. One of them dismounted and untied the terrified Wirrayaraay. Fleming then pointed his fowling-piece in the air and fired two shots to create panic among the Wirrayaraay and to signal the beginning of the massacre. George Anderson, who had remained at the huts, heard only the two shots, and then silence. The mounted stockmen urged their horses forward at the defenceless group in their midst, hacking and slashing their swords down on them, as the men, women and children of the Wirrayaraay ran a murderous gauntlet within the confines of the stockyard. Not one of them made it out. Many of them were felled with swords, while others were trampled under hoof. The stockmen did not need to use their precious ball and powder on their victims when they could just as easily dispose of them by sword or by crushing them. The gully was filled with the screams of the victims and the war cries of the horsemen as a thick cloud of dust kicked up by the horses became intermingled with the blood and mangled bodies of the Wirrayaraay. The stench of death was everywhere. Gradually the noise died down as the Wirrayaraay were killed. When it came to an end, the whites showed exhilaration as they slashed at the last few bodies still writhing on the ground. All but one of the Wirrayaraay who had been led away from the huts were murdered in this manner. The last remaining captive, Heppita, had been kept aside by Fleming as they entered the stockyard, and was ‘saved’ to service the stockmen’s sexual pleasures at a later time.

  At the conclusion of this gruesome slaughter, at Fleming’s direction the bodies were decapitated and dismembered. He then instructed his men to build a pyre of logs and sticks and to heap all the remains in a pile on top. The collection of body parts caused the men to become even more saturated with the blood of their victims, so that by the end of the process they were almost entirely covered in a thick crust of blood-soaked dust. When all the bodies had been collected, Fleming directed his men to set fire to the logs. They remained at the scene as the bodies slowly burned, and then they left.

  George Anderson remained at his hut in great trepidation, desperately hoping against hope that the stockmen would be satisfied with merely frightening the Wirrayaraay and that they would return unharmed. However, when Davy appeared from the vicinity of the gully and told him what had happened, Anderson was filled with horror and regret that he had not done more to prevent the atrocity. He immediately instructed Davy to run to Newton’s Station to warn the Wirrayaraay men there that they were in terrible danger. At Newton’s, manager Thomas Foster sent the Wirrayaraay back to Myall Creek by a short-cut over the ranges. The young men rushed back as soon as they could, arriving at Myall Creek Station at 10pm that night to find that, other than two women and three children, their families had been murdered. At Anderson’s insistence, they left the same night after he explained to them that the killers would probably return. The remaining Wirrayaraay walked to McIntyre Station, twenty-five miles to the east. As the night wore on, Anderson grew more and more morose as the reality set in of what had happened. It was not until the following morning that he saw an ominous plume of smoke coming from the gully to the west of the huts.

  The twelve stockmen spent the night camped in the bush, drinking, carousing, abusing Heppita, and reminiscing about their latest bushwhack and, for some of them, their previous murderous exploits, until they fell into a drunken sleep. The next morning, Monday 11 June, Fleming and his gang awoke with renewed vigour for further bloodshed. They rode (with Heppita) about sixteen miles to Newton’s Run, looking to find and kill the younger men of the Wirrayaraay tribe, however, the Aboriginal men they sought were not there. Fleming spoke to Thomas Foster, who observed that there were ten to twelve armed stockmen. He recognised many of them, as well as John Fleming: John Russell, Charles Kilmeister, John Johnstone, William Hawkins and James Oates. Foster observed that they had an Aboriginal woman with them who was tied up and appeared to be in bad condition. Oates asked Foster the location of the Aboriginal men who had been cutting bark, to which Foster merely replied, ‘God knows where they are now.’ When Foster enquired whether Kilmeister was ‘after the blacks’, Kilmeister replied, ‘They rushed my cattle yesterday,’ which Foster knew to be a lie. Hawkins added it was a bad job that the blacks were not in the vicinity and remarked that they must have been moved away in order that they should not be caught. The group of stockmen asked one of Foster’s men to look after Heppita while they went looking for the black men, saying that someone would come back for her later, but Foster would not allow his employee to mind the woman. The stockmen left Newton’s, taking Heppita with them. She was never seen again.

  Having failed to find the young Wirrayaraay men at Newton’s Run, the marauding stockmen proceeded to look for them at the nearby Dight’s Station. At Dight’s, they spoke to the hut keeper, John Bates, and again enquired after the blacks, only to be told that they had not been seen there. The group remained at Dight’s chatting for about an hour. At one point in the conversation, one of the stockmen, James Parry, said that they had ‘settled the blacks’. They soon left Dight’s Station and returned to Myall Creek Station, still looking for the men they had missed at Newton’s, only to find that the Wirrayaraay men were not there. They spent the rest of that day and night camped there.

  The following morning, Tuesday, 12 June, John Fleming, John Russell and Charles Kilmeister returned to the massacre site. Fleming saw that the fire had failed to properly burn the bodies, so he re-lit the pyre in an attempt to further destroy the evidence of their deeds. He instructed Kilmeister to maintain the fire for as long as it took to consume the bodies
. Meanwhile, back at the huts, Anderson spoke to Edward Foley and asked him if any of the blacks had made their escape, to which he was told that all but one had been killed. Foley showed Anderson his sword, and Anderson could see that the blade was covered in dried blood. The eleven stockmen left Myall Creek later that day, still in search of the ten young Aboriginal men of the Wirrayaraay tribe, leaving Charles Kilmeister at the station to look after the fire.

  As soon as the men left, Kilmeister went to the fire and tended it for the remainder of that day. He had every incentive to destroy the evidence of the murders before the return of his superintendent, William Hobbs. However, it proved to be very difficult to completely destroy the bodies. With Hobbs due to return at any time, Kilmeister pleaded with Anderson: ‘For God’s sake, mind what you say. Do not say that I went with them.’ Anderson needed little encouragement to remain silent about the atrocity. He knew that there were eleven men in the district who would be only too ready to kill him if they thought he might reveal what he knew about the identity of the murderers.

  Some days later, between thirty and forty Aborigines, possibly including some of the ten or so younger men, two women and three children who had fled from the Myall Creek Station, were murdered at McIntyre’s Station, their bodies also cast onto a large, open fire. Many suspected that the later murders were committed by the same stockmen who had perpetrated the Myall Creek massacre.

  8

  DAY’S DILIGENCE

  Five days after the murders, on Friday 15 June 1838, manager William Hobbs returned to the Myall Creek Station. He had already heard rumours about the murders, which were reverberating throughout the district. At the Wirrayaraay’s former campsite near the huts he found several baskets containing articles generally used by them. He also found a cap that had been given by a white man to one of the young boys called Joey. Hobbs questioned George Anderson and Charles Kilmeister, both of whom denied any complicity in the murders but asserted that a group of unknown stockmen had taken away the Aborigines. Hobbs had previously been informed that Kilmeister had been seen with the others scouring the countryside for the ten young men of the tribe, so he challenged Kilmeister with this, but Kilmeister advanced the lame excuse that he had been out and about looking for cattle that had wandered off. Hobbs disbelieved him. Anderson was so fearful of reprisal from the group of stockmen that he deliberately failed to inform his manager of the identity of those who had been responsible for the massacre, including Charles Kilmeister, claiming that he had not recognised any of them. Only Davy, the young Peel River Aboriginal man, was prepared to speak openly to his superintendent. He told Hobbs he had witnessed the murders and offered to show him where they had taken place.

  That afternoon, Davy led Hobbs to the massacre site. On their way along a regular bush track, despite the fact that it had rained in the meantime, Hobbs could still see the footprints of bare feet, including children’s, with horse tracks on either side. He also found a discarded woven basket of the kind used by the Aborigines that contained a piece of possum skin, some pipe clay they used for painting, belts, and a few small crystal stones that the Aborigines greatly valued as they were considered to have ‘a charm to cure them when they are sick’. At the site identified by Davy, Hobbs was horrified to find a mass of piled-up, partially burnt, dismembered bodies of men, women and children among the ashes of a large fire. There were numerous bloodstains on the ground and the fencing of the nearby stockyard. He saw the shoe marks seemingly made when people had rolled logs to construct the fire. Hobbs noticed that the footprints of naked feet along the track from the station led only towards the stockyard, whereas the horse tracks indicated movement both towards and away from the vicinity.

  The sight before him was so shocking and the stench so abhorrent that Hobbs was overcome with nausea and dread. Although tempted to leave this scene of mayhem, he was determined to ascertain how many victims’ bodies had been burnt in this pyre. He reluctantly and tentatively stirred among the ashes and found numerous severed heads, limbs, torsos and other body parts of adults and children. Those sections of skin that had not been burnt enabled him to be certain that the victims were all Aboriginal. He made several attempts to count the number of bodies, getting a different number each time because most of them had been beheaded and dismembered. The lowest number was twenty and the highest number was twenty-eight, including ten or twelve small heads and bodies of children. Hobbs saw one particularly large torso, which, though totally burnt, he assumed to be the remains of ‘Daddy’ because of its size, but the head had been removed and the body so extensively burnt that a definitive identification was impossible.

  The following morning, Hobbs returned to the massacre site with Thomas Foster, the manager at Newton’s Run. Foster briefly inspected the pile of partially burnt bodies but made no attempt to count them. Hobbs was so sickened from his previous sighting that he was unable to approach the pile again. Overnight, the bodies had been attacked by dingoes, hawks and other birds of prey. Foster also noticed the horse tracks both towards and away from the site of the murders. By the time of this second inspection, Hobbs had a fair idea that Kilmeister had been involved, so he told his stockman that he thought it was a very cruel thing for him to have sanctioned the murder of these people when he had been on such friendly terms with them. He pointed out that it had been largely because of Kilmeister that the Aborigines had been permitted to stay on the property. Kilmeister still denied any involvement in the murders, but when Hobbs told him that he considered it his duty to report the murders to the authorities, Kilmeister begged him not to do so, lamely adding, ‘Not that I had anything to do with it.’

  William Hobbs delayed informing his employer and the authorities of the atrocity. However, Hobbs told Frederick Foote, a free settler on a nearby pastoral lease, what had occurred. Foote was appalled at the treatment of the Aborigines in his district, and determined to report the murders. Foote’s first attempt – to inform the Police Magistrate closest to the atrocity, Captain Edward Denny Day, who was based in Invermein (Scone) and Muswellbrook, more than 160 miles south of Myall Creek – was unsuccessful, because Day was away on patrol. So, Frederick Foote travelled to Sydney, where he delivered a note to the new Governor, Major Sir George Gipps, who had landed in the colony only four months earlier with strict instructions from the British government to protect the Aboriginal inhabitants of the colony and to prevent unlawful incursions against them. On receiving Foote’s note, Gipps wrote a letter of instruction to Captain Edward Denny Day at Invermein instructing him to proceed post-haste to the Myall Creek district with a party of mounted police and, once there, to investigate, gather evidence, arrest those responsible and bring them to Sydney for trial.

  In the meantime, William Hobbs sent a letter to his employer, Henry Dangar, and another identical one to Police Magistrate Edward Denny Day reporting the murders. Before sending the letter, Hobbs read it aloud to Kilmeister and Anderson. The letter was as follows:

  July 9 1838

  Sir,

  I beg to acquaint you that about a month since I had occasion to leave Mr Dangar’s Station on the Big River for a few days, on my return I saw near the Hut the remains of about thirty Blacks, principally women and children. I recognised them as part of a Tribe that had been at the Station for some time and who had since they first came conducted themselves in a quiet and proper manner. On making enquiry, I was informed that a party of White men had come to the Station, who after securing them, had taken them a short distance from my Hut and destroyed nearly the whole of them. I should have given information earlier, but circumstances having prevented my sooner coming down the country.

  I am, Sir,

  Your obedient Servant,

  W Hobbs1

  Kilmeister became extremely agitated and attempted to dissuade Hobbs from sending the letter, claiming that those Aborigines had been spearing their cattle, but Hobbs knew that this was a lie. Hobbs pointed out to Kilmeister the indecency with which the bodies had been treate
d after death, and Kilmeister offered to go to the site and bury the remains. Hobbs replied, no doubt with an appreciation of the irony, that if Kilmeister’s protestations of innocence were true, then it could do him great harm to interfere with the bodies in the event of a later investigation.

  When Henry Dangar received the letter from his superintendent at Myall Creek, he deliberately took no immediate action.

  * * *

  Captain Edward Denny Day had come to the colony from Ireland in 1837 to take up a position as a Police Magistrate. Among the stipendiary magistrates, none was superior to him in diligence or capability. Day was assigned to a huge district on the northern frontier of the ‘limits of location’, based in Muswellbrook, Merton2 and Invermein. By the time of the murders at Myall Creek, Denny Day already had a reputation as a thorough and competent magistrate, and was particularly well known for his record in apprehending bushrangers.3 Day was both brave and physically strong, which were qualities necessary for extensive travel throughout his districts, many parts of which were dangerous, due to the presence of bushrangers and warring Aborigines. He was known to conduct his investigations in a most tenacious manner.

  When Magistrate Day received the letter from William Hobbs, he forwarded it to Governor Gipps, who replied with instructions to immediately investigate the incident. Day was provided with a small group of mounted police, and he set off without delay. Many other magistrates would have conducted a cursory investigation, biased in favour of the local settlers and their convict staff, and returned to Sydney empty-handed. Magistrate Day, on the other hand, made a concerted effort to ascertain who had been responsible, to apprehend them, and to collect evidence that would be admissible at their trial in Sydney.

  For forty-seven days from 19 July 1838, Magistrate Denny Day interviewed witnesses, questioned them thoroughly if he thought they were withholding information from him, then wrote out their statements in longhand, read them back and obtained signatures or marks attesting to the truth of the facts contained in them. Almost everywhere, Day was met with hostility from and obstruction by most of the settlers and their convict staff. His difficulties were described in this way: