The Scottish colonist and pastoralist, Angus McMillan, led a group of around 20 colonists to attack and kill several groups of Aboriginal people across a number of days. 0000115891 00000 n From 1839, Angus McMillan tried on numerous occasions to reach Corner Inlet from the Monaro District and finally succeeded in February 1841 when he reached the tidal bank of the Albert River. They murdered, according to Gippslander, 150 at Warrigal Creek, which would make it one of the largest known massacres of Aborigines in Australian history.[36]. We are yet to have a complete understanding of Gippsland in the 1840s. This documentary tells the story of the Warrigal Creek massacre of 1843 in Gippsland, Victoria, where as many as 150 Gunai Kurnai children, women and . Drawing on official archives and oral histories that have never died, this is the story of The Warrigal Creek Massacre. Host virtual events and webinars to increase engagement and generate leads. Bells account and the report of the massacre involving the Native Police in April 1845 can be found by simple searches on Trove. 91 0 obj <> endobj Can only find the trailer. This National Reconciliation week, reflect on the hidden history of the 1843 massacre of the Gurnaikurnai people at Warrigal Creek. 0000017382 00000 n In other parts of the District, prior to my arrival, they had occasionally come into collision with the Settlersthe consequence of which was the murder of four shepherdsand as far as I can learn without any provocationthey have also committed, and are still committing, many depredations on the stock of the Settlerswhich from the nature of the country, and the known fact of their carrying on their depredations at night, it is difficult to prevent. One might assume that Balderstone was blissfully unaware of this when she moved to the farm in 1974, but she explains she knew about Warrigal Creek from the beginning. 0000001456 00000 n Many Bunurong joined the police and used the guise of their role to extract vengeance on the Kurnai. [41] The conspiracy of secrecy is used to explain why Hoddinott probably with good reason, chose to remain anonymous, as the account implicated Angus McMillan as the leader of this murderous retaliation. Balderstone and Irving hope that one day Australia fully recognises the extent of the massacres through a truth and reconciliation commission. 0000008955 00000 n From 1840, increased numbers of convicts were sent to Van Diemens Land after the cessation of transportation to New South Wales. They returned in triumph with flesh from the Kurnai they had killed. Messrs. Pearson and Cunninghame have been the latest sufferers by those cannibals; it is not only the stock they kill we feel the loss of, but running the remainder off their runs, and the expense the proprietors are put to in collecting their cattle, and procuring guns and ammunition for everyone engaged in their employment.[22]. Bass Coast South Gippsland Reconciliation Group members Marg Lynn and Florence Hydon say they have been left completely unsatisfied: Stage one was getting rid of McMillan, of course, but stage two was totally frustrating.. Inspire employees with compelling live and on-demand video experiences. His alleged role in the massacre is a construct entirely of Gardners own making, where he attached McMillans name to the Gippslander story without revealing this to his readers. No reason was given for the murder. Light refreshments will be available. Presumably he had reasons for both, but he did not say why and he did not reveal the source of his information. It may be student work out of Swinburne. He was shot through the foot and was so injured that he was called Club Foot.[39]. Their territory extended along the coast from Cape Liptrap in the west to Point Hicks in the east, and inland to the Great Dividing Range in the north. Wayne, a very valuable and comprehensive article. The themes in this page may cause distress. The creek is on a farm 40 kilometres (25 mi) south of Sale, and 200 kilometres (120 mi) east of Melbourne, in the South Gippsland area of Victoria, Australia. 2023 Vimeo.com, Inc. All rights reserved. Use your same username and password to log in and you'll be Thomas wrote that Meyrick, gave me a most awful statement of doings in Gippsland & tho he stated the utter impossibility of bringing forward valid evidence to convict in a court of law, yet the awful spectacle of human skeletons & pack[s] of bones & report[s] of doings within the last 3 yrs, shows that the Aborigines have been cut off in awful numbers, & the residue left almost totally destitute, in fact he said how they lived God only knew as they were driven to the Lakes & Lagoons where Europeans would not follow them, that the Maneiro Blks (encouraged he believed by the early Settlers) [had] been very instrumental with the Black Police of awfully thinning their numbers that the Awful Sacrifice of life after the Murder of Mr McAlister was awfully reckless & merciless [53]. [16] The Port Phillip Gazette reported in April 1845: A report has been current that a whole tribe of blacks has been extirpated in the Gipps Land country, by the Western Port or Port Phillip blacks, led on by several of the Mounted Black Police; we understand that an investigation is now going on, and we may add it is one of the most extraordinary affairs we have yet heard about. According to Gardner, the Warrigal Creek massacre was revenge for his murder. This 50-minute documentary directed by Lisa Gye and Andrew Dodd examines a day in 1843 when 150 Indigenous men, women and children were slaughtered on the banks of what is now Warrigal Creek in Gippsland. Ranald Macalister was the nephew of Lachlan Macalister and the fifth European to be murdered by the Kurnai. This 50-minute documentary directed by Lisa Gye and Andrew Dodd examines a day in 1843 when 150 Indigenous men, women and children were slaughtered on the banks of what is now Warrigal Creek in Gippsland. Warrigal Creek Massacre: A Truth-telling Documentary. Sell more tickets through digital marketing. According to Gardner, the Warrigal Creek massacre was revenge for his murder. Gary Foley's Koori History Website http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/indexb.html Kevin Gilbert, Because a . When Angus McMillian and the Highland Brigade rode through Gippsland in 1843, they aimed to murder as many Gunai Kurnai children, women and men as they could. Gardner cites this version to confirm that Gippslander was in fact Hoddinott but he does not mention that the two versions contain a number of significant differences. [52] There could not have been a cover-up if human remains were still visible after their arrivals. [30] Escapees living outside the law would therefore have posed a dire threat to the Kurnai. He was joined by detachments of the Border and Native Police. He was hit in the eye by a slug, captured by the whites, and made to lead the brigade from one camp to another. 0000888069 00000 n I have seen somewhere that this version of the. 0000034127 00000 n endobj This implied that the other four police were assigned servants, or white slaves, as John Pascoe Fawkner, the editor of the Port Phillip Patriot and a fierce critic of the convict system, called them. However, Thomas, Hatcher and Meyrick did not mention Warrigal Creek as Gardner claimsand they certainly did not mention McMillan. The Commissariat let annual tenders for the supply of fresh meat and other staples. In a letter to his family in England dated April 1846, the Gippsland squatter Henry Meyrick said: .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The blacks are very quiet here now, poor wretches. [60] Dunderdales geography was correct and it is just possible he knew who he was referring to, given that he arrived in the district just twenty-six years after the event he describedwell within living memory. External Lived Experience Employment Opportunities, Complete the VMIAC Conference 2023 Survey, CEO Update with Craig Wallace | 17.02.2023, New Consumer Register Opportunity: Access Policy & Triage Guidelines, CEO Update with Craig Wallace | 03.02.2023, CEO Update with Craig Wallace | 20.01.2023. x]xG)mIq$hpwwR+VKqPMps^63.ffv>Y ?hiO#'FZ@&.JGr4O,D5nHEK{GDs ,2fspcd88qpB[V,4~nfrpe8,$Y}i{rq]v9sl{3g &6mBRii&"0k2dZNPR5foHWJcJWLlel+_0d)[Vs[ ])[UJT+Wd41 Gardner himself refers to Nuntin as the station established by McMillan for Macalister on western side of the Avon River in October 1840. xX[~`*E}KgnvqEd%$4?9h1s7KDE+>RT*;[(b qgAHrgAX8]eAVi a"0Uc|sQ d$uIOrE&n2"c,%$qHFWpTWn>!bB):I\PhE17 [58] Apart from the perverse logic of this claim, it is factually incorrect. 2 0 obj In my research for Bitter Harvest, I could find no reference, in original sources, to The Highland Brigade, established, according to the Gardner version of history, to seek out and exterminate blacks. An independent expedition from Melbourne to Corner Inlet in the barque Singapore in the same year led to the discovery of the mouths of the Albert and Tarra rivers. If a historical narrative is to be used as the basis for debate or action in the public sphere, it should be grounded in non-partisan, objective research and analysis. Peter Gardner has written three books in which he asserts that Angus McMillan, The Butcher of Gippsland, was responsible for several massacres of Kurnai people. [42] Elsewhere he states that Hoddinotts desire to remain anonymous would seem to indicate that the telling of the story may have had undesirable repercussions. Originally reported by Robinson as such, Gardner has interpreted an obscure comment by Robinson to argue that it was actually a massacre by settlers that Robinson was covering up. the Warrigal Creek massacre - possibly even a participant in it 10. true /ColorSpace 25 0 R /Intent /Perceptual /SMask 26 0 R /BitsPerComponent This was the cause of great enmity among the surviving Bunurong. Word of the murder was sent to Lachlan Macalister. He calls them The McMillan Massacres. HLWKf_e|~JD,@K&HSU}t?nO?7OWO?zW_/Vew}V53VfyKwVh{OM5{=+JUwPfQ}-nXY34lMXGz+{? For them to do that and come up with a shared name was a major achievement. Balderstones daughter Alice Irving calls the site a powerful place. [8], Michael Connor: The Massacre Maps shoddy research, In order to export livestock, the squatters needed a port and grazing land in Gippsland, as it was the closest part of the mainland to Van Diemens Land. 0000116911 00000 n Gardners cover-up conspiracy theory thus rests on an obvious misrepresentation of Hatchers account. This included five in the Border Police, one of whom held a ticket-of-leave. In the revised edition of Gippsland Massacres, Gardner reinvented the account, claiming the bones were carried away from the [Warrigal] Creek by the cartload. [45] Hoddinotts tale thus appears to contain generic elements from the period. 0000014051 00000 n Massacre [ edit] Welcome to you all., Read Quadrant online or as a printed magazine Starting at $88.00 a year. <<6C2049F009130640B9B98E7F057F832E>]/Prev 1164416/XRefStm 1766>> Viki Sinclair, another member of the group who is descended from a member of McMillans Highland Brigade, says: Its the first time around here that the Aboriginal groups came across with groups like ours to work on something like this and it was something important to tackle and do together. % The Australian reported in August: The Prince George touched at Port Albert on the 25th ultimo, and reports that the Agenoria is taking in cattle there, the captain of which reported the blacks to be in a very riotous state. The question posed at the start of this article was whether Gardners Warrigal Creek massacre story should be seen as historical fact or an apocryphal tale. [11] Sydney Morning Herald 6 September 1843, p.2, [13] Port Phillip Patriot 23 December 1841, p. 3, [15] Fels, Marie Hansen (2010) I Succeeded Once: The Aboriginal Protectorate on the Mornington Peninsula 1839-1840 , ANU E-Press, pp 249-271, [16] See also: George Henry Haydon (1846) Five Years Experience in Australia Felix pp151-152 (on-line edition), [17] Port Phillip Gazette 30 April 1845 p.2, [18] Gardner, P D (2005) The Myth of Tribal Warfare On-line essay, [20] Geelong Advertiser 5 August 1843, p.2, [21] Sydney Morning Herald 6 September 1843, p.2. There exists little to no official documentation of the Warrigal Creek Massacre. NAIDOC Week 2019. [40] Gippslander (1925) Experiences with Gippsland blacks, The Gap, Education Department, Bairnsdale Inspectorate, Omeo, pp 5-6. 0000024998 00000 n >> 8 /Filter /FlateDecode >> 'Conspiracy of silence': how sabotaged inquiries fed massacre denials, Telling the truth about Australia's past will be painful but it will be liberating | Karen Mundine and Richard Weston, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Nous et nos partenaires utilisons des cookies et des outils similaires afin d'assurer le bon fonctionnement de nos services, d'amliorer la fonctionnalit de notre site Web, de comprendre comment les visiteurs utilisent nos services afin que nous puissions amliorer nos performances, et des fins . [4][1], Despite the widespread belief that MacMillan led several massacres, as of 2021[update] there are over 12 monuments in the Gippsland region dedicated to him. There exists little to no official documentation of the Warrigal Creek Massacre. 0000020559 00000 n Gardners method in telling the story is to first present the massacre and McMillans involvement as matters of fact. [46] Gardner admonished Hoddinott, stating, in this account he failed to implicate McMillan as he had done 15 years earlierbut neither version implicated McMillan.[47]. %PDF-1.5 The region had descended rapidly into crime and violence in the absence of any government authority. The Warrigal Creek Massacre: True Story or Apocryphal? hb``0c`` `01$Q3(f`faPS``e` 0=!E Clq.~Jg` `d``A h! He stated: Mr. Ranold McAlister, nephew of the allegorical author, was dragged off his horse, and cruelly murdered, on the township of Alberton, his head being so totally disfigured that his countenance could not be recognised among even his most intimate friends, by these harmless, innocent denizens of the wild of Gipps Land . Our land of migrants, from the very first in their canoes or who even walked here. He also stated: There are many persons congregated in Alberton, without any visible means of earning a livelihood, a parcel of the most lawless rogues. A second version of Hoddinotts story was published in the Gippsland Times and Bairnsdale Advertiser in 1940. 0000020971 00000 n Gardner cites other versions of the death of Macalister and the massacre to build his narrative, all based on Gippslander or otherwise post-Dunderdale. [22] Sydney Morning Herald 15 April 1844, p. 4; the article appears to have Lachlan Macalisters turn of phrase. The Van Diemens Land convict economy provided the economic motives for the European settlement of Gippsland, which in turn led to conflict with the Kurnai. Please try again. 0000029696 00000 n But that creek, Warrigal, has seen unimaginable horrors. 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warrigal creek massacre documentary