John Henry Fleming and his wife, Charlotte, had no children. In his later years, he was a popular member of his extended family and was renowned for regaling young nieces and nephews with blood-curdling tales of his exploits ‘escaping from the blacks’. His account of the events of 10 June 1838 at the Myall Creek Station bore no resemblance to the facts, and was clearly an outright fabrication. According to a present-day family member, who was often told the story by her grandmother, who in turn was told by her mother, Maria Tuckerman (née Fleming), who was John Henry Fleming’s niece, Uncle John would say this:
The cattlemen had been leading the captured group around the bush for a while hoping to attract the real culprits. They were very frustrated at not being able to get their hands on the ones they wanted – when finally deciding they had to do something. It erupted into an act of not being a straightforward act of taking aim and shooting, but a spur-of-the-moment atrocity.
JH Fleming raised his gun and aimed at one particular man who he believed knew more than he was telling them, at first to scare him into talking, so he fired at him, not to hit him, but to scare him. To his shock and horror in a split second, every man with a gun had raised his gun and fired at the same time and kept firing until all the natives were down. John Henry admitted he probably killed one, but claimed he took no part in the mass killing of the others.
He was so distraught at what had been done that he left almost immediately and rode back to camp. In the morning he went with the men back to the massacre site to see what he could do. [He was] so traumatised and terrified by what he found that he just got on his horse and rode towards home on the Hawkesbury – not on a drunken horse as was written in places later, but at a measured speed to make sure his horse made the desperate ride to his home. However, by the time he reached the Hunter area his horse was tiring badly and he decided to call on a relative living in the area, specifically to borrow a fresh horse to continue on his way to Portland Head.2 Many Hawkesbury families had moved to the Hunter Valley and began farming there by 1820.
He left his horse tied to a hitching rail in the village now known as Muswellbrook so no one would know who helped him in what he knew must soon come!
After he arrived back at Portland Head he was sheltered by a number of related families still farming at Wilberforce and Ebenezer. By then the Fleming daughters had intermarried with several Ebenezer and Wilberforce pioneer families and all were ready to help and protect him. The police never ever came looking for him, which even today is strange. He moved freely about the district, dressed as a woman. Many knew this and no one even considered giving him up to the police.
Eventually he got on a boat in Sydney, dressed as a woman and went to Moreton Bay to his brother Joseph.3
John Henry Fleming never expressed regret for his involvement in the Myall Creek murders. However, his later actions as a trustee and warden of St John’s Church at Wilberforce possibly spoke of an underlying, even subconscious, appreciation of the evil he had done. In 1877, at the age of sixty-one, Fleming was responsible for the construction of one of the stained-glass windows in the south wall of the church, close to the chancel.4 The subject of the window is Saint John the Evangelist and the poisoned chalice with an emerging dragon. The image is a reference to a legendary incident that, according to fragments of Greek and Latin texts, occurred to Saint John at Ephesus. The story goes that Aristodemus, the pagan high priest of the temple of Diana at Ephesus, challenged Saint John to drink from a poisoned cup to prove that his God was the true one. To prove the potency of the poison, two criminals were forced to drink from the cup, and promptly died. Saint John then blessed the cup and, according to various stories, a snake or a dragon emerged from it, thereby removing the poison. Saint John then drank safely from the cup, restored the two criminals to life, and Aristodemus was converted to Christianity.
At a simple level, the window is about the victory of Christianity over paganism, but at a deeper level it can be seen as the triumph of piety and faith over evil. Was the erection of the window at St John’s an expression of hope by John Henry Fleming that through his faith and good work at his church and in his Hawkesbury River community he had expunged and neutralised the demon poison of his earlier life? Was the window a coded acknowledgement by Fleming of his role in the Myall Creek murders and a symbolic prayer that he had been restored to grace by his later good deeds? Whereas John Hubert Plunkett’s chalice was a source of inspiration and a symbol of martyrdom in defence of faith, integrity and valour, was Fleming’s chalice a valiant plea to atone for an evil deed that had gone unpunished in this world?
John Henry Fleming died in August 1894 at the age of seventy-eight. His funeral service at St John’s Church at Wilberforce on 21 August was one of the largest in the area for years. Fleming had been a warden of that church for decades and he was well liked and highly regarded in his local community. There were few people still alive in his district who had a recollection of the 1838 murders that had occurred hundreds of miles to the north at Myall Creek, or of the subsequent trials in Sydney. Outside the church, the cortege was met by a group of children from the local public school, marshalled by their headmaster and his assistants, who formed a double-line guard-of-honour through which the mourners passed. Numerous wreaths were laid upon the coffin. During the service, Handel’s ‘Dead March’ from Saul was played – the same piece that had been performed at the funeral of John Hubert Plunkett twenty-five years earlier. Fleming was buried in the Church of England Cemetery at Wilberforce. The local newspaper, the Windsor and Richmond Gazette, published an obituary that acknowledged the respect the deceased had been accorded by his community, stating:
As a resident he will be much missed for his kindness of heart and generosity to the poor; he was never known to refuse to anyone in want.5
The article went on to record that he had been a member of the Hawkesbury Benevolent Society, which had provided much assistance to elderly residents in the area. It also informed readers that his health had been declining for several years, and that shortly before his death he had suffered a severe attack of influenza that had caused him much suffering, although ‘through all his pain he was remarkable for his patience’. The only hint that John Henry Fleming had led anything but a conservative, honourable and law-abiding life was this seemingly innocuous reference in the obituary:
Deceased used to tell some stirring stories of the early days of settlement in the colony, and the trouble he had with the Blacks.
* * *
Joseph Fleming, who was undoubtedly involved in helping his brother, John Henry, evade justice by hiding him in the outlying districts far to the west of the Moreton Bay settlement, had an interesting and varied working life in the years to come. In June 1839, he led the posse that captured Gentleman Dick’s gang of bushrangers on the banks of the Big (Gwydir) River. Joseph was appointed chief constable of Wollombi in 1842 and inspector of distilleries in 1844 and held those positions until 1846. In 1847, he moved to Maitland, where he went into business as a butcher and established a boiling-down works. He moved to Ipswich in 1850 and established another boiling-down works there, and also became involved in political life. In 1886, he abandoned public life and became a storekeeper in Ipswich and Roma. He died in Ipswich on 23 September 1891.6
* * *
William Hobbs, the superintendent of Myall Creek Station who had been summarily dismissed by his employer, Henry Dangar, sued him in March 1839, for unpaid wages and was awarded £17. Hobbs never worked again as a station manager. Being unpopular in the Big River district for having reported the murders to the authorities, he left the area and joined the police, serving in Wollombi and McDonald River (ironically, the area in which some of John Henry Fleming’s family lived). He married in 1842 and named his second son John Hubert Plunkett Hobbs. William then became a gaoler at Windsor and ended up as the governor of the gaol at Wollongong from 1865 until his death in 1871.7 On modern-day maps of Myall Creek Station, the valley where the homestead is
located is named Hobbs Gully.
* * *
George Anderson, who had been transported for life to New South Wales, and who played such a major role in the two trials of the Myall Creek murderers, was granted a conditional ticket-of-leave in September 1841. The condition was that he remain in Sydney in the employ of a Mr Townsend. In 1848 he was granted a pardon, and so became a completely free man, with the condition that the pardon would be void if he re-entered the United Kingdom. He remained in the colony for the rest of his life.
* * *
After the sacking of William Hobbs as Superintendent at Myall Creek Station, Henry Dangar appointed as his new manager William Wall, who had been a shepherd on the station, but based at Koloona, a few miles from the stockmen’s huts, and thus not involved in the events of 10 June 1838. William Wall was employed at the station until he passed away in 1888. William Wall’s son, John Wall (born 1852), and grandson, Cecil Wall, also worked for most of their lives on Myall Creek Station. Cecil ceased working on the station in 1937. In 1964 he provided Bingara resident Len Payne with a detailed, gruesome account of the murders that had been related to him by his grandfather – an account that differed in some respects from others.8 In particular, Cecil described the massacre as having occurred inside a stockyard rather than against a fence. The author considers Cecil Wall’s account as authentic and reliable. According to Cecil:
We were shown deep stains on the timber of the old stockyard and told that it was caused by the blood of the Aborigines.
Cecil described how parts of the stockyard frame had still existed when he was a young man ‘years before the last war’. Little by little it had collapsed, but sections of it stood for decades and the gate hung broken.
In July 1964, Cecil Wall and Len Payne went to Myall Creek Station. Cecil Wall identified the location of the stockyard where the massacre had taken place.9 At the site they found the remains of the gate posts and two very large hinges about 18 inches long and weighing 18.5 pounds, which Cecil Wall identified as having come from the gate.
Years later, Len Payne was to play a role in attempts to erect a memorial to the slain Wirrayaraay at the site of the massacre.
* * *
John Blake, one of the four men acquitted at the first Myall Creek murders trial and not subsequently retried, was severely injured in a riding accident several years later and in 1852 committed suicide by cutting his throat. His great-great-grandson, Des Blake, who has effected a reconciliation with the descendants of the Wirrayaraay, said about his ancestor’s suicide:
Did he have a guilty conscience? We like to think he did.10
Beulah Adams, great-great-niece of Edward Foley, who was one of those hanged for the murders, has also been part of a process of reconciliation. She has said:
What Edward Foley did was a dreadful, dreadful thing. There’s nothing that I can do to … to make it right. But I can say, ‘Well, it shouldn’t have happened. I’m sorry it happened.’ And that’s why I speak out today. So people will learn of the history, the dreadful history, in such a beautiful land. It should never have happened.11
* * *
On the other side of the story is Sue Blacklock, a descendant of one of the two young boys who escaped from the approaching stockmen by jumping into the creek and swimming away. She said in 2001:
There were two brothers that were saved from the massacre. One of those little boys was my great-great-great-grandfather. My dad always told me about that. It was passed down from his great-grandparents right down to him, and he wanted to hand it down to his family. But I remember Dad when he’d speak about it. His voice cracked just like the memory just sort of hurt. I hear him now telling his grandchildren all about what happened out there, and how it was burnt … and were killed and then burned. We just kept it all hush-hush. We didn’t want to talk about it because of how dreadful it was. And, um, I remember when we used to drive past that place. It … just had a feeling about it that I can’t explain.12
* * *
Neither Henry Dangar’s reputation nor his financial fortune was seriously or permanently harmed by his ill-advised support for the accused stockmen in the Myall Creek murder trials. By 1850, he was one of the largest landowners in New South Wales, holding property covering an area of over 300 000 acres (121 407 hectares), as well as extensive commercial interests in the Hunter Valley and along the Great North Road between Sydney and Newcastle. He retired from public life in 1851. The following year he sailed to England and spent the next few years travelling on the continent, returning to New South Wales in 1856. He retired to a house at Potts Point in Sydney and died in 1861. Mount Dangar, Dangar Island, Dangarfield, Dangar Street in Armidale and Dangarsleigh commemorate his name, but his finest memorial was the proud boast of many of his employees that they were ‘Dangar men’. Henry Dangar is viewed today by the Gamilaroi people as a sinister character who, behind the scenes, bore much responsibility for the murders.
Bill Dangar, great-great grandson of Henry, has said that his ancestor was essentially a good man, even though he was ‘probably wrong’ to appear to defend the perpetrators of the massacre.13
* * *
Robert Scott, co-founder of the Black Association and the man who convinced the eleven accused men not to break rank, was much less successful as a Hunter River landowner than his neighbour, Henry Dangar. However, he became quite famous for his social activities at his property, Glendon, as a host to artists, explorers, clergymen and scientists, creating a cultural centre unique in the colony for his time. He died unmarried in July 1844 aged forty-four.
* * *
After several years of complaining that the workload of Chief Justice was too heavy, and having several applications for leave refused until a suitable replacement could be found, Sir James Dowling finally collapsed on the Bench on 27 June 1844. His health in tatters, his application for leave was finally granted, but before his ship could depart for England, Dowling had a relapse and died on 27 September 1844. At the time of his death, he was preparing a volume of law reports containing the decisions of the Supreme Court of New South Wales during his time as Chief Justice. Upon his death, the venture lapsed, and the decisions of the court were not comprehensively published until they were made available to the public in digital form by Macquarie University in 1997–2005.14
* * *
After the second Myall Creek murder trial, Justice William Westbrooke Burton took leave to go to England between 1839 and 1841. Upon his return, he resumed his place on the Supreme Court. On 6 July 1844, he left New South Wales to become a judge in Madras, now Chennai, in India. This proved to be a costly move, because less than three months later the New South Wales Chief Justice Sir James Dowling died. Had Burton still been in the colony, he would undoubtedly have been appointed Chief Justice. While in India, he was knighted. In 1857 he returned to Sydney, where he was appointed to the Legislative Council, and he became President of the Council the following year. He left Sydney precipitously in 1858, after resigning his position on the Council due to a dispute with the government about the passage in the House of some land-reform legislation. He proceeded to London, where he died in 1888.
* * *
Within a short time of the Myall Creek murder trials in late 1838, procedures in New South Wales criminal cases changed markedly. In October 1840, with the passing of the Prisoners’ Counsel Act, defendants’ counsel were granted the right to address juries on the evidence. This prompted Mr Justice Willis of the Supreme Court to enter into conjecture about how the result in the second Myall Creek murder trial might have been different if defence counsel had had the right to address on the evidence:
Who can say what might have been the effect of an impassioned and eloquent defence by counsel on the minds of the Jury.15
However, it was not until 1891, with the threat of eternal damnation for perjury having less of a grip on peoples’ minds, that an accused was permitted to give sworn evidence at a trial.
* * *
Having ac
ted as Attorney General during the two years that John Plunkett was absent from the colony, Roger Therry was elected to the Legislative Council in 1843. In 1844, he was appointed as resident judge at Port Phillip (Melbourne). In 1846 he returned to Sydney to take up a position as a judge of the Supreme Court. In 1850, together with John Plunkett, he was appointed as an inaugural Senator of the University of Sydney. He resigned his judgeship in 1859 and retired to England, where he wrote the book Reminiscences of Thirty Years’ Residence in New South Wales and Victoria. He was knighted in 1869 and died in 1874.
* * *
In 1844, William à Beckett, lead counsel for all accused at both trials, was appointed an acting Supreme Court judge. In 1846 he moved to become the resident judge in Port Phillip (Melbourne). He remained there until his appointment in January 1852 as the first Chief Justice of the newly constituted Supreme Court of Victoria. In the same year, he was knighted by the Queen. As Chief Justice, he presided over the infamous Eureka stockade trials in Melbourne in February and March of 1855, in which miners were charged with high treason arising out of rioting at Ballarat. His summing up to the jury favoured a conviction, but popular sentiment held sway and the jury returned verdicts of not guilty. He retired in 1857 due to ill health, and in 1863 he moved to England, where he died in 1869 – the same year as John Hubert Plunkett.
Murder at Myall Creek Page 24