Myall Creek Massacre: A horrific reminder of Australia's dark past

During the early decades of the nineteenth century, the colony of New South Wales underwent rapid inland expansion, as squatters and pastoralists pushed into Aboriginal territories with little regard for the Indigenous peoples who had lived there for thousands of years.

One such area was the Gwydir River region, home to the Wirrayaraay people, a subgroup of the Gamilaraay-speaking nations, whose beliefs and local laws remained tied to the land.

Settlers, backed by colonial land grants or informal occupation, established sheep and cattle stations across the plains, which forced Indigenous communities from their land and disrupted their food supplies, sacred sites, and family connections. 

By the mid-1830s, conflict between Aboriginal groups and settlers in the New England district had become both frequent and deadly.

Pastoralists often formed groups of armed settlers and carried out revenge killings since they did not fear legal punishment.

Officially, the colonial government in Sydney said it would protect everyone under the Crown, including Aboriginal people, but enforcing those laws on the frontier was rare.

So, settlers served as the final authority in remote districts, and Aboriginal deaths usually went unrecorded or were described vaguely in correspondence as “dispersals.” 

At Myall Creek Station, which was located near the present-day town of Bingara, a group of Wirrayaraay people had established a camp close to the station huts.

They had developed peaceful relations with some of the stockmen, who had given them food and had allowed them to remain nearby.

The group, which included at least eight children alongside women and elderly men, had already suffered loss and displacement in earlier violence and had come to the station in search of safety.

Meanwhile, in early 1838, reports of settler deaths elsewhere in the district stirred anxiety and fear, as many European residents began to believe that all Aboriginal people posed a threat and demanded pre-emptive action to remove that risk. 

On the afternoon of 10 June, eleven mounted settlers arrived at the station. They reportedly included ex-convicts and labourers from surrounding properties who acted under the direction of John Henry Fleming, a young man who had been born free, with no legal authority, but with strong connections to landholding families in the region.

The group claimed they were searching for Aboriginal people who had taken part in earlier killings or thefts, though no proof was offered and none of the Wirrayaraay present had shown any aggression.

They carried swords, pistols, and muskets, and they prepared to take matters into their own hands. 

Initially, the men had reassured the Wirrayaraay camp that they intended no harm.

They had persuaded them to gather peacefully, then had bound them together with rope and had led them away from the station buildings toward a remote gully.

Two station workers, William Hobbs and George Anderson, watched helplessly and later testified that the Aboriginal group had remained calm, unaware of the danger.

Within the hour, the eleven settlers killed the captives. They used blades and firearms to kill at least twenty-eight people, including children, in what became an organised mass killing. 

Soon after, the men had returned to the site to conceal the evidence, and they apparently burned the bodies, scattered the remains, and tried to hide all traces of the killings.

However, a few individuals survived. A young boy had been hidden by a station worker, and another man, who was known as Charley, escaped and later described the events to investigators.

The fact that these killings occurred in daylight, within view of witnesses, and targeted a group under the protection of a station employer made the massacre especially difficult to ignore.

John Henry Fleming was the ringleader, but he would avoid arrest entirely.

Within days of the killings, station manager William Hobbs reported the crime to authorities at Invermein.

He and others who had opposed the violence contacted local magistrate Edward Denny Day, who launched a formal investigation.

Day's commitment to pursue justice was considered unusual for the time, and he travelled to the scene, collected witness statements, and issued warrants for arrest.

Eleven men were taken into custody, though Fleming escaped and was never apprehended.

The colonial government was pressured by charitable groups and missionaries, including the recently formed British-based Aborigines Protection Society, headquartered in London, and it pushed for a trial in the Supreme Court. 

The first trial, R v. Kilmeister (No.1), which opened in November 1838, saw prosecutors face serious obstacles.

The jury was composed entirely of white settlers and did not accept that Aboriginal lives had the same legal standing.

Defence lawyers said the victims could not be identified with certainty and that the killings were not covered by English law.

Within fifteen minutes of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty, and celebrations erupted across many settler communities, who saw the acquittal as a vindication of their position on the frontier.

Editorials in papers like The Sydney Gazette warned that such trials set a "dangerous precedent" for convicting white men based on Aboriginal deaths. 

Yet Governor George Gipps authorised a second prosecution, this time narrowing the case to the murder of a single Aboriginal child whose identity was distinct from Charley, the survivor mentioned earlier, and whose death could be clearly linked to one of the accused.

The trial, R v. Kilmeister (No.2), proceeded in early December and relied on the same witnesses, supported by clearer physical evidence connected to the victim.

This time, the jury convicted seven of the men. On 18 December 1838, they were hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol.

The executed men were William Hawkins, John Johnson, James Lamb, James Oates, Edward Foley, John Russell, and Patrick Kilmeister.

The executions split opinion across the colony. Some praised the verdicts as a rare moment of justice, while others condemned them as an attack on settler rights.

Letters, editorials, and petitions expressed outrage that white men could be punished for killing Aboriginal people, a view that remained common on the frontier.

Following the executions, frontier killings continued, but settlers took greater care to hide the evidence, often buried bodies in secret or staged fights which were made to look like real skirmishes. 

Over the following decades, the Myall Creek Massacre largely faded from public attention.

As new waves of colonisation spread across Queensland, Victoria, and Western Australia, violence escalated, and similar massacres occurred with little documentation or accountability.

Pastoral expansion relied on the quiet removal of Indigenous peoples from valuable land, and the legal system offered them little protection.

Official records often described these events with neutral terms or omitted them entirely.

According to some historians, more than 400 frontier massacres occurred across Australia between 1788 and 1930. 

Eventually, historians and community leaders returned to the Myall Creek story.

From the late twentieth century, Aboriginal elders, descendants of survivors, and non-Indigenous supporters began to raise awareness about the massacre and its legal significance.

Modern scholars, such as Professor Lyndall Ryan, helped to reveal the scale of colonial violence through projects like the online Colonial Frontier Massacres Map, which provided detailed records of similar atrocities.

After years of sustained campaigning, the Myall Creek Memorial opened in June 2000 near the original massacre site.

It includes a walking trail with plaques in both English and Gamilaraay, which outline the events and honour those who died.

The memorial, which was the first formal public recognition of a massacre site in Australia, was supported by both Indigenous descendants and non-Indigenous allies. 

Each year, a remembrance service brings together descendants of both the victims and the attackers to acknowledge the past and promote reconciliation, and today the memorial is both a tribute to those killed and as a public recognition of a truth long denied by official accounts.

Myall Creek challenges Australians to confront the realities of colonisation and to understand the consequences of racial violence carried out in silence.