TRIGGER WARNING: Readers are advised that this story contains information about historical massacres of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that may be distressing.
An informative mapping tool developed by Newcastle researchers has challenged common misconceptions about early colonial history, calling for Australia’s national identity to be re-evaluated.
The online map and database project records the violent frontier massacres of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including site locations, details of the individual massacres and corroborative evidence of the killings.
Led by University of Newcastle historian, Emeritus Professor Lyndall Ryan, the Australian- first research project is currently in its eighth year and estimates the tragic loss of more than 10,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives in more than 400 massacres.
This new statistic is up from a previous estimate of 8,400 lives lost in 302 massacres.
Contrastingly, it is estimated that 168 non-Aboriginal people were killed in 13 frontier massacres.
Project researcher, Dr Jennifer Debenham, said new evidence discovered that attacks during the spread of pastoral settlement in Australia did not wane as time passed but instead intensified.
Due to the Hunter Valley being settled in the earlier 1800s, Dr Debenham said the region was largely saved from the height of brutality.
She said the frontier moved inland and weaponry advanced over time, resulting in more brutal and extensive massacres committed after 1860.
“From the entire project, what we do know is that the Hunter Valley massacres occurred at a much earlier time than others, at around the 1820s,” Dr Debenham said.
“We see the methods are a little different due to the kind of weapons technology that was available.”
The map documents five massacres, which Dr Debenham described as the murder of six or more people near Seaham, Dungog, Muswellbrook, Barrington and Stroud.
The killings resulted in the deaths of 57 Aboriginal people in just 15 years and were perpetrated by a range of settlers, including shepherds, workers, government officials and local settler authorities.
Local massacres were “state-sanctioned murder”
Dr Debenham said that despite the early settlement of the Hunter Region and the less brutal killings, there were still a number of violent acts committed in the area.
“Massacres were lower in number and were related to pastoral and agricultural issues … most of the conflict occurred when Europeans moved into the area, and Aboriginal people were dispossessed of their land,” she said.
“There was also a reasonable amount of interference with Aboriginal women by the settlers that caused a lot of conflict around the area as well.”
In a lot of cases, Dr Debenham said massacres were premeditated by settlers, and often “state-sanctioned murder”.
“In many cases, particularly in the Hunter and further north, magistrates and police were involved in massacres,” Dr Debenham said.
“If they were carried out by pastoralists, the magistrates and police just turned a blind eye to it and allowed it to happen without consequence.
On March 3, 1827, Sydney newspapers, The Australian (1824-1848) and The Monitor (1803-1842) reported that a shepherd at the Paterson River in the Hunter Valley had killed a dog belonging to Wonnarua warriors.
According to the newspaper reports, the Wonnarua wounded the shepherd and set fire to the corn crop before the shepherd gathered other settlers on the estate and attacked the mob, killing 12.
In 1877, a man present for the incident told the Maitland Mercury that, in actuality, a party had formed to punish the Aboriginal people for taking cobs of maise to take back to their camps.
The man said the group fired upon a number of men, women and children at the camp, killing some and wounding others.
Dr Debenham revealed that some settlers were aware that the harsh massacres and reprisal killings of Aboriginals often outweighed the crimes that incited them.
“In one newspaper article that reported the massacre, an anonymous writer really puts into question the sanction behind the murders of these people,” Dr Debenham said.
“They say that the murder was over the top for what had happened to incite the massacre in the first place.”
Hunter massacre event begins “code of silence”
Dr Debenham revealed that one tragic massacre near the Hunter was history-making.
“The 1838 Mill Creek massacre was the only one where white settlers were convicted of murdering Aboriginal people,” she said.
The Mill Creek massacre occurred in 1828 in the late Raymond Terrace Police District and was a reprisal act after an Aboriginal mob stole a settler child.
Records from the map reveal that the mob was pursued by a group of armed soldiers before the child was recovered. However, in the rescue process, 11 Aboriginal people lost their lives.
“After that time, the code of silence becomes even denser around massacres … colonisers didn’t want to be put on trial for murder,” Dr Debenham said.
Dr Debenham said the recording of massacre events was eventually associated with an “uncivilised national image”.
“Before the turn of the 20th century, Australia’s historical record is littered with massacres, but after that period, it just disappears,” she said.
“It’s to do with Federation and the fact that Australia wanted to be seen as a modern, progressive society.”
Dr Debenham said that investigating colonial history had been no easy task.
“It’s a painstaking, needle in the haystack kind of history where you confer with government and police reports and a lot of archival evidence, such as diaries and newspapers,” she said.
“Some reports make you cry, and on those days, it affects you more than on other days.
Quest for the truth of white settlement
The team’s map project is already beginning to inform the next generation and has been embedded in the NSW curriculum as an education tool.
“It’s been a huge learning curve for a lot of people … we’ve had comments from the general public telling us that they never knew these kinds of events had happened,” Dr Debenham said.
“I think what we learn from it is that Australia was not settled peacefully.
“It was an ongoing battle that was maintained by Aboriginal people as they tried very hard to prevent settlers from entering their country.”
With National Reconciliation Week in May, Dr Debenham hopes the map will better assist Australians to understand the trauma inflicted on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
“As reconciliation week is coming up, the whole idea that Australia is a stolen country is something people need to better understand,” she said.
“I worry that our reconciliation efforts are being hampered by our ambivalence to these kinds of events … so our project will hopefully enlighten a lot of people.”
Due to funding limitations, Dr Debenham revealed that the map would most likely remain in its existing form, with some minor updates added when necessary.
“Unfortunately, our stage four research is the last time the map is going to be significantly updated – there’s no more funding for the project,” she said.
Maia O’Connor