List of massacres of Indigenous Australians

This is a list of massacres of Aboriginal Australians. For discussion of the historical arguments about these conflicts see the articles on the History Wars and in particular the section on the 'black armband' view of history, plus the section on impact of European settlement in the article on Indigenous Australians.

1700s

 * 1790 In December, Governor Arthur Phillip issued an order for "a party...of two captains, two subalterns and forty privates, with a proper number of non-commissioned officers from the garrison...to bring in six of those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay; or, if that number shall be found impracticable, to put that number to death". This was largely in response to the spearing by Pemulwuy of the Governor's gamekeeper, McEntire, and his subsequent death. McEntire was suspected of violence towards Aboriginal people and Tench writes he was "the person of whom Baneelon had, on former occasions, shown so much dread and hatred." And, "from the aversion uniformly shown by all the natives to this unhappy man, he had long been suspected by us of having in his excursions shot and injured them". On his deathbed, McEntire "began...to accuse himself of the commission of crimes of the deepest dye", but "declared that he had never fired but once on a native, and then had not killed but severely wounded him in his own defence." Tench wrote of this denial, "Notwithstanding his deathbed confession, most people doubted the truth of the relation, from his general character and other circumstances."

1800s

 * The Black War refers to a period of intermittent conflict between the British colonists, whalers and sealers including those of the American sealing fleet and Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) in the early years of the 19th century. The conflict has been described as a genocide resulting in the elimination of the full-blood Tasmanian Aboriginal population, though there are presently many thousands of individuals with degrees of Tasmanian Aboriginal background. The culmination of this period was the transfer of some 200 survivors, in the 1830s, to Flinders Island in Bass Strait by George Augustus Robinson. In 1839, Governor Franklin, appointed a board to inquire into the conditions at Wybalenna that rejected Robinson's claims regarding living conditions and found the settlement to be a failure. Camp conditions had deteriorated and many of the residents had died of ill health and homesickness. The report was never released and the government continued to promote Wybalenna as a success in the treatment of Aborigines. Historians have described the Wybalenna settlement as not suitable: the food and living conditions as poor, and allege that many died of malnutrition and disease. The Aborigines were free to roam the island and were often absent from the settlement for extended periods of time on hunting trips. However, of the 220 who arrived, most died in the following 14 years from introduced disease. 47 survivors were moved to a settlement at Oyster Cove south of Hobart in 1847. Some of the descendants of the Tasmanian Aborigines still live on Flinders Island and nearby Cape Barren Island. Some historians such as Henry Reynolds have described the Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment on Flinders Island, as ‘by far the best equipped, most heavily funded and lavishly staffed of all colonial institutions for Aborigines ’. Josephine Flood notes that they were provided with housing, clothing, rations of food, the services of a doctor and educational facilities. Convicts were assigned to build housing (Henry Reynolds notes that the cottages for Aborigines were extremely well built) and do most of the work at the settlement including the growing of food in the vegetable gardens.

1820s

 * 1824 Bathurst massacre: Following the killing of seven Europeans by Aboriginal people around Bathurst, New South Wales, martial law was declared and many Aboriginal people were killed.
 * 1828, February 10 - Cape Grim massacre, Cape Grim, Tasmania. Four shepherds ambushed and killed 30 Pennemukeer aboriginals.

1830s

 * 1830 Fremantle, Western Australia,: The first official 'punishment raid' on Aboriginal people in Western Australia, led by Captain Irwin took place in May 1830. A detachment of soldiers led by Irwin attacked an Aboriginal encampment north of Fremantle in the belief that it contained men who had 'broken into and plundered the house of a man called Paton' and killed some poultry. Paton had called together a number of settlers who, armed with muskets, set after the Aborigines and came upon them not far from the home. 'The tall savage who appeared the Chief showed unequivocal gestures of defiance and contempt' and was accordingly shot. Irwin stated, "This daring and hostile conduct of the natives induced me to seize the opportunity to make them sensible to our superiority, by showing how severely we could retaliate their aggression." In actions that followed over the next few days, more Aborigines were killed and wounded.


 * 1833-34 Convincing Ground massacre of Gunditjmara: On the shore near Portland, Victoria was one of the largest recorded massacres in Victoria. Whalers and the local Kilcarer Gunditjmara people disputed rights to a beached whale carcass.


 * 1834: Battle of Pinjarra, Western Australia: Official records state 14 Aboriginal people killed, but other accounts put the figure much higher, at 25 or more.


 * 1838 26 January Waterloo Creek massacre, also known as the Slaughterhouse Creek or Australia Day massacre. A Sydney mounted police detachment, despatched by the Acting Governor General Colonel Kenneth Snodgrass, attacked an encampment of Kamilaroi people at a place called Waterloo Creek in remote bushland. official reports spoke of between 12 and 80 killed.  The missionary Lancelot Threkeld set the number at 120. Major James Nunn later boasted they had killed from two to three hundred natives, a figure endorsed by historian Roger Milliss.  Other estimates range from 40 to 70, but judge that most of the Kamilaroi were wiped out.


 * 1838 April 11, by the Broken River at Benalla. A party of some 18 men, in the employ of George and William Faithful, were searching out new land to the south of Wangaratta for their livestock.  According to Judith Bassett, some 20 Aborigines attacked, according to one recent account possibly as a reprisal for the killing of several aborigines at Ovens earlier by the same stockmen and at least one Koori and eight Europeans died. It was long known locally as the Faithfull Massacre though Chris Clark argues that 'there is no reason to view this incident as anything other than a battle which the Aborigines won'.  Local reprisals ensued resulting in the deaths of up to 100 Aborigines. It also seems they were camping on a ground reserved for hunting or ceremonies.


 * Additional murders of these people occurred at Wangaratta on the Ovens River, at Murchison (led by the native police under Dana and in the company of the young Edward Curr, who could not bring himself to discuss what he witnessed there other than to say he took issue with the official reports). Other incidents were recorded by Mitchelton and Toolamba.


 * This "hunting ground" would have been a ceremonial ground probably called a 'Kangaroo ground'. Hunting grounds were all over so not something that would instigate an attack. The colonial government decided to "open up" the lands south of Yass after the Faithful Massacre and bring them under British rule. This was as much to try and protect the Aboriginal people from reprisals as to open up new lands for the colonists. The Aboriginal people were (supposedly) protected under British law.


 * 1838 Myall Creek massacre - 10 June: 28 people killed at Myall Creek near Inverell, New South Wales. This was the first Aboriginal massacre for which European settlers were successfully convicted. Several colonists had previously been found not guilty by juries despite the weight of evidence and one colonist found guilty had been pardoned when his case was referred to Britain for sentencing. Eleven men were charged with murder but were initially acquitted by a jury. On the orders of the Governor, a new trial was held using the same evidence and seven of the eleven men were found guilty of the murder of one Aboriginal child and hanged. In his book, Blood on the Wattle, journalist Bruce Elder says that the successful prosecutions resulted in pacts of silence becoming a common practice to avoid sufficient evidence becoming available for future prosecutions. Another effect, as one contemporary Sydney newspaper reported, was that poisoning Aboriginals became more common as "a safer practice". Many massacres were to go unpunished due to these practices, as what is variously called a 'conspiracy' or 'pact' or 'code' of silence fell over the killings of aborigines.
 * Mid-1838. Gwydir River. A war of extirpation, according to local magistrate Edmund Denny Day, was waged all along the Gwydir River in mid-1838. 'Aborigines in the district were repeatedly pursued by parties of mounted and armed stockmen, assembled for the purpose, and that great numbers of them had been killed at various spots’.


 * 1838 In July 1838 men from the Bowman, Ebden and Yaldwyn stations in search of stolen sheep shot and killed 14 Aboriginals at a campsite near the confluence of the Murrumbidgee and Murray Rivers in New South Wales.


 * May–June 1839 Campaspe Plains massacre, Campaspe Creek, Central Victoria, killing Daung Wurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung people.
 * Mid 1839 Murdering Gully massacre near Camperdown, Victoria wiping out the Tarnbeere Gundidj clan of the Djargurd Wurrung people.


 * 1830s&mdash;1840s Wiradjuri Wars: Clashes between European settlers and Wiradjuri were very violent, particularly around the Murrumbidgee. The loss of fishing grounds and significant sites and the killing of Aboriginal people was retaliated through attacks with spears on cattle and stockmen. In the 1850s there were still corroborees around Mudgee but there were fewer clashes. Known ceremony continued at the Murrumbidgee into the 1890s. European settlement had taken hold and the Aboriginal population was in temporary decline.

1840s

 * 1840 8 March. The Whyte brothers massacred, according to various estimates, from 20-30 to 25-51 to 50 Jardwadjali men, women, and children on the Konongwootong run near Hamilton. Aboriginal tradition puts the death toll as high as 80.
 * 1842
 * Settlers poisoned 50 aborigines to death in the Brisbane valley in 1842
 * On the outskirts of Kilcoy Station owned by MacKenzie, 30-60 people of the Kabi Kabi died from eating flour laced with strychnine or arsenic.
 * 1843 Warrigal Creek massacre, amounting to 100-150 aborigines.
 * 1846 George Smythe's surveying party shot in cold blood from 7 to 9 Aborigines, all but one women and children, at Cape Otway.
 * 1849 By 1849 clashes between Aboriginal people and settlers occurred on the Balonne and Condamine Rivers of Queensland.
 * 1849 Massacre of Muruwari people at Hospital Creek in retribution for a suspected killing of a white stockman.
 * 1849 Massacre of Aboriginal people at Butchers Tree near Brewarrina, along the Barwon River, and on the Narran River.

1850s-1890s

 * 1857 Massacre of the Yeeman. On October 26, 1857, members of the Yeeman tribe attacked the Fraser's Hornet Bank Station in the Dawson River Basin in Queensland (the Hornet Bank massacre) killing 11 people in retaliation for the deaths of 12 members shot for spearing some cattle and the deaths of another a group of Yeeman nine months earlier who had been given strychnine laced Christmas puddings. Following the deaths of his parents and siblings, William Fraser, who had been away on business, began a campaign of extermination that eventually saw the extinction of the Yeeman tribe and language group. Fraser is credited with killing more than 100 members of the tribe with many more killed by sympathetic squatters and policemen. Many of the killings were carried out in public such as the killing of two Yeeman charged with the Fraser murders whom Fraser shot in the courthouse as they were leaving following verdicts of not guilty, the alleged killing of two Aboriginals in the main street of Rockhampton and the killing of a strapper at a Toowoomba race meeting. By March 1858 up to 300 Yeeman had been killed. Public and police sympathy for Fraser was so high that he was never arrested for any of the killings and gained a reputation as a folk hero throughout Queensland.


 * 1861 Central Highlands of Queensland. Between October and November 1861, police and settlers killed an estimated 170 Aboriginals in what was then known as the Medway Ranges following the killing of the Wills family.


 * 1865 The La Grange expedition was a search expedition carried out in the vicinity of La Grange Bay in the Kimberley region of Western Australia led by Maitland Brown that led to the death of up to 20 Aboriginal people. The expedition has been celebrated with the Explorers' Monument in Fremantle, Western Australia.


 * 1868 Flying Foam Massacre, Dampier Archipelago, Western Australia. Following the killing of two police and two settlers by local Yaburara people, two parties of settlers from the Roebourne area, led by prominent pastoralists Alexander McRae and John Withnell, killed an unknown number of Yaburara. Estimates of the number of dead range from 20 to 150.


 * 1874 Barrow Creek Massacre - February (NT): Mounted Constable Samuel Gason arrived at Barrow Creek and a police station was opened. Eight days later a group of Kaytetye men attacked the station, either in retaliation for treatment of Kaytetye women, the closing off of their only water source, or both. Two white men were killed and one wounded. Samuel Gason mounted a large police hunt against the Kaytetye resulting in the killing of many Aboriginal men, women and children - some say up to 90. Skull Creek, where the massacre took place, 50 miles south of Barrow Creek, takes its name from the bleached bones found there long after.


 * 1876 Goulbolba Hill Massacre, Central Queensland: large massacre involving men, women and children. This was the result of settlers pushing Aboriginal people out of their hunting grounds and the Aboriginals being forced to hunt livestock for food. A party of Native Police, under Frederick Wheeler, who had a reputation for violent repressions, was sent to "disperse" this group of Aboriginals, who were 'resisting the invasion'. He had also mustered up a force of 100 local whites. Alerted of Wheeler's presence by a native stockman, the district's aborigines holed up in caves on Goulbolba hill. According to eyewitness testimony taken down from a local white in 1899, that day some 300 Aboriginals, including all the women and children, were shot dead or killed by being herded into the nearby lake for drowning.


 * 1880s-90s Arnhem Land: Series of skirmishes and "wars" between Yolngu and whites. Several massacres at Florida Station. Richard Trudgen also writes of several massacres in this area, including an incident where Yolngu were fed poisoned horsemeat after they killed and ate some cattle (under their law, it was their land and they had an inalienable right to eat animals on their land). Many people died as a result of that incident. Trudgen also talks of a massacre ten years later after some Yolngu took a small amount of barbed wire from a huge roll to build fishing spears. Men, women and children were chased by mounted police and men from the Eastern and African Cold Storage Company and shot.


 * 1884 Battle Mountain: 200 Kalkadoon people killed near Mount Isa, Queensland after a Chinese shepherd had been murdered.


 * 1887 Halls Creek Western Australia. Mary Durack suggests there was a conspiracy of silence about the massacres of Djara, Konejandi and Walmadjari peoples about attacks on Aborigines by white gold-miners, Aboriginal reprisals and consequent massacres at this time.  John Durack was speared, which led to a local massacre in the Kimberley.


 * 1890 Speewah Massacre, Qld: Early settler, John Atherton, took revenge on the Djabugay by sending in native troopers to avenge the killing of a bullock. Other unconfirmed reports of similar atrocities occurred locally.


 * 1890-1920 Kimberley region - The Killing Times - East Kimberleys: About half of the Kimberley Aboriginal people massacred as a result of a number of reprisals for cattle spearing, and payback killings of European settlers.

1900s

 * Kimberley region - The Killing Times - 1890-1920: The massacres listed below have been depicted in modern Australian Aboriginal art from the Warmun/Turkey Creek community who were members of the tribes affected. Oral history of the massacres were passed down and artists such as the late Rover Thomas have depicted the massacres.


 * 1906-7 Canning Stock Route: an unrecorded number of Aboriginal men and women were raped and massacred when Mardu people were captured and tortured to serve as 'guides' and reveal the sources of water in the area after being 'run down' by men on horseback, restrained by heavy chains 24 hours a day, and tied to trees at night. In retaliation for this treatment, plus the party's interference with traditional wells, and the theft of cultural artefacts, Aborigines destroyed some of Canning's wells, and stole from and occasionally killed white travellers. A Royal Commission in 1908, exonerated Canning, after an appearance by Kimberley Explorer and Lord Mayor of Perth, Alexander Forrest claimed that all explorers had acted in such a fashion.


 * 1915 Mistake Creek: Seven Kija people were alleged to have been killed by men under the control of a Constable Rhatigan, at Mistake Creek, East Kimberley. The massacre is supposed to be in reprisal for allegedly killing Rhatigan's cow, however the cow is claimed to have been found alive after the massacre had already taken place. Rhatigan was arrested for wilful murder apparently due to the fact that the killers were riding horses which belonged to him, but the charges were dropped, for lack of evidence that he was personally involved.  The historian Keith Windschuttle disputes the version put forward by former Governor-General of Australia, William Deane, in November 2002.  Windschuttle found the massacre took place on March 30, 1915, not in the 1930s, and was not a reprisal attack by whites over a cow, but "an internal feud between Aboriginal station hands" over a woman.  "No Europeans were responsible. There was no dispute over a stolen cow, and it had nothing to do with theories about terra nullius or of Aborigines being subhuman.". However, members of the Gija tribe, from the Warmun (Turkey Creek) community have depicted the massacre in their artworks (see Warmun Art).


 * 1918 Bentinck Island: Part of the Mornington Island group, Bentinck Island was home to the Kaiadilt clan of just over 100 people. In 1911 a man by the name of McKenzie (other names unknown) was given a government lease for nearby Sweers Island that also covered the eastern portion of the much larger Bentinck Island. Arriving on Bentinck with an Aboriginal woman and a flock of sheep, he built a hut near the Kurumbali estuary. Although the Kaiadilt avoided contact and refrained from approaching McKenzie's property he is alleged to have often explored the island, shooting any males he found while raping the women. In 1918 McKenzie organised a hunt with an unknown number of settlers from the mainland and beginning from the northern tip of the island herded the Indigenous inhabitants to the beach on its southern shore. The majority of the Kaiadilt fled into the sea where those that were not shot from the shore drowned. Those that tried to escape along the beach were hunted down and shot with the exception of a small number who reached nearby mangroves where the settlers horses could not follow. Several young women were raped on the beach, then held prisoner in McKenzie's hut for three days before being released. As the Kaiadilt remained isolated throughout much of the 20th century the massacre remained unknown to the authorities until researchers recorded accounts given by survivors in the 1980s.

1920s
The strong, local indigenous oral history surrounding the massacres around the Kimberley region have been depicted in paintings by Warmun artists such as the late Rover Thomas and his wife, Queenie McKenzie. Rover Thomas' paintings of the Bedford Downs (1985) and Mistake Creek (1990) massacres are part of his series on the "Killing Times", while Queenie McKenzie depicted another massacre at the Texas Downs Station (1996). Thomas' painting of a massacre at Ruby Plains Station (1985) sold for AU$316,000 at a Sotheby's auction in November 2007. A list of indigenous artists who have depicted Kimberley massacres can be found on the Warmun website.


 * 1924 Bedford Downs massacre: a group of Kija or Gija men were jailed for spearing a bullock. On release from jail they had to walk the 200 kilometres back to Bedford Downs, where they were set to work to cut the wood that was later used to burn their bodies. Once the work was finished they were fed food laced with Strychnine by white station hands, and their writhing bodies were then shot, and subsequently burned. This massacre has been depicted in artworks by members of the Gija tribe, the identities of the alleged perpetrators passed down and the events re-enacted in a traditional corroboree that has been performed since the massacre allegedly occurred. It has been questioned whether this massacre actually occurred or if it is merely a myth or local legend with no foundation in fact. An article published by Rod Moran (a Western Australian journalist) argues that there is no evidence for such a massacre and that it is much more likely to be an invention.


 * 1926 Forrest River massacre in the East Kimberleys: in May 1926, Fred Hay, a pastoralist, attacked an Aboriginal man by the name of Lumbia and was speared to death. At trial, Lumbia testified that Hay had attacked him because Hay believed he had butchered one of the station's cattle. Hay flogged Lumbia 20-30 times with his stockwhip and as he was departing Lumbia speared and killed him. A claim that Hay had raped Lumbia's wife was raised at the subsequent Royal Commission but this claim was contradicted by the testimony of both Lumbia and his wives. A police patrol led by Constables James St Jack and Denis Regan left Wyndham on June 1, to hunt for the killer, and in the first week of July, Lumbia, the accused man, was brought into Wyndham. In the months that followed rumours circulated of a massacre by the police party. The Rev. Ernest Gribble of Forrest River Mission (later Oombulgurri) alleged that 30 people had been killed by the police party and a Royal Commission, after sending out an evidence-gathering party, found that 11 people had been massacred and the bodies burned. In May 1927, St Jack and Regan were charged with the murder of Boondung, one of the 11. However, at a preliminary hearing, Magistrate Kidson found there was insufficient evidence to proceed to trial.


 * 1928 Coniston massacre: A WW1 veteran shot 32 Aborigines at Coniston in the Northern Territory after a white dingo trapper and station owner were attacked by Aborigines. A survivor of the massacre, Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, later became part of the first generation of Papunya painting men. Billy Stockman was saved by his mother who put him in a coolamon A court of inquiry said the European action was ‘justified'.

After 1930

 * 1932-34  Caledon Bay crisis: In 1932, two white men, and a policeman were killed by Yolngu people in retaliation for alleged rapes. A punitive expedition from Darwin was proposed, just as had happened at the Coniston massacre four years earlier, but this was averted, and the matter was settled in the courts. This event is marked as a significant turning point in the history of the treatment of Aboriginal people.