REMEMBERING MYALL CREEK Oh! Listen to my story and rise and live with me!

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Just as injustice and massacres of innocent people appear to be part of the history of the human species, so too is the wonder and constant resilience of the human spirit, that continues its effort to resist violence and seek peace.

The Myall Creek Massacre is probably one of the most widely known and officially documented acts of terrorism committed upon Aboriginal people in this country. However, it was not the only one, or the most serious, that took place in north-western New South Wales during 1838.

Strangely, it followed from an act of kindnes to a group of Wirrayaraay people by a white convict stockman who offered them shelter where he lived at Myall Creek Station. Because of other recent killings, he feared for their lives. They lived there in rare friendship for some weeks.

One wintry Sunday in June the younger men of the clan went with a neighbouring settler to help him cut bark. Hearing there was trouble afoot, they circled back to the station. Arriving back that night, they found that all the women and children, and a couple of older men left behind for their protection, had been roped together by white stockmen and dragged screaming away from the huts. All twenty-eight were hacked and slashed to death, their headless bodies left where they had fallen. In fear now for their own lives, the men rode off, but they too were hunted down and murdered.

The killing spree went on for days, and another thirty to forty people were killed on a station further south along the Gwydir. These weren’t the only killings at this period—an estimated three hundred Aborigines died and a further three hundred or more in nearby areas. The individual identities of those killed were mostly unknown.

Eleven stockmen were tried for the murders. Initially they were all acquitted. However Governor Gibbs—sent to the colony with specific instructions to protect Aboriginies—ordered a retrial of seven of the eleven. It was hoped that the other four would become crown witnesses. The seven were found guilty and hanged on 18 December 1838. This was the first and the last hanging of non-Aboriginal people for the murder of Aborigines. The verdict forced a recognition, of sorts, for the basic human rights of Aborigines.
Unease among whites about the Myall massacre had long existed. The proposal in 1965 by a Bingara resident, Len Payne, to erect a memorial met with strong opposition. Just before his death in October 1994, he said, ‘I just can’t let this go’.
Nor did others.

Len Payne’s unflagging devotion over thirty years inspired Paulette Smith and other non-Aboriginal people—Ted Stubbins, Fr Ron Perrett and Rev John Brown among others—with a strong desire to erect such a memorial.

John Brown, the designated Reconciliation Coordinator of the Uniting Church from 1991, was well placed to act on their desire. Groups of Aborigines invited him to sacred places and told their stories. His passionate, determined personality and infinite patience allowed him to wait until some move came from those Aboriginal people directly involved with Myall Creek Massacre sites.

Sue Blacklock, a direct descendant of John Munro, who as a boy escaped the slaughter, suggested that the 1998 Uniting Church Conference of Reconciliation be held on the site. It was much publicised, so that about one hundred and twenty people came, each bringing a stone from their own place to erect a temporary cairn. At least something was finally happening!

A committee of ten Aboriginal and ten non-Aboriginal people, with John Brown as convenor, was set up to plan a permanent memorial. Here were black and white Australians working closely and fruitfully together for a common goal. The first meetings were meetings of strangers, but the process became ‘a journey of understanding, acceptance and healing’.

The result of this journey we will see in the next issue.

The Bronze Plaque on the main Memorial Stone reads:

In memory of the Wirrayaraay people who were murdered on the slopes of this ridge in an unprovoked but premeditated act in the late afternoon of 10 June 1838.

Erected on 10 June 2000 by a group of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians in an act of reconciliation, and in acknowledgment of the truth of our shared history.

We remember them. Ngiyani winangay ganunga.