The Fighting Hills massacre occurred on 8 March 1840 when Victorian Western District squatters killed 51 Aboriginal people of The Hummocks, near Wando Vale, Victoria Australia. [1]
The Whyte brothers (William, George, Pringle and James Whyte) and cousin John Whyte managed the Konongwootong run near Hamilton, Victoria. On 8 March, the Whytes and three convict employees, Benjamin Wardle, Daniel Turner and William Gillespie, set off to recover sheep stolen the previous day. [2]
The party found Aboriginal people cooking and eating the missing sheep; the subsequent attack killed 51 Jardwadjali men. The party recovered all but 45 sheep. There was one Aboriginal survivor, who was killed a month later. [1]
Aboriginal protector Charles Sievwright investigated the incident but the depositions he took were disallowed by Crown prosecutor James Croke as they were not "taken in accordance to the rules of law". [3] John Whyte went personally to report the "affray" to Superintendent Charles La Trobe, then Chief Protector George Robinson. No further action was taken. [2]
A subsequent massacre known as the Fighting Waterholes massacre took place only months later involving some of the same party.
In 1843, an employee from the Whytes' station was killed - believed to be in retaliation for the massacres. [4] [5]
The Western District comprises western regions of the Australian state of Victoria. It is said to be an ill–defined district, sometimes incorrectly referred to as an economic region,. The district is located within parts of the Barwon South West and the Grampians regions; extending from the south-west corner of the state to Ballarat in the east and as far north as Ararat. The district is bounded by the Wimmera district in the north, by the Goldfields district in the east, by Bass Strait and the Southern Ocean in the south, and by the South Australian border in the west. The district is well known for the production of wool. The most populated city in the Western District is the Ballarat region, with 96,940 inhabitants.
Foster Fyans was an Irish military officer, penal colony administrator and public servant. He was acting commandant of the second convict settlement at Norfolk Island, the commandant of the Moreton Bay penal settlement at Brisbane, the first police magistrate at Geelong, and commissioner of crown lands for the Portland Bay pastoral district in the Port Phillip District of New South Wales. He is the great-great-grandfather of actor Sam Neill.
James Whyte was a Scottish-born Australian politician who served as the sixth Premier of Tasmania, from 20 January 1863 to 24 November 1866. Before moving to Tasmania, Whyte was a pioneering sheep-farmer in western Victoria. He and his brothers perpetrated the Fighting Hills massacre of 40–80 Aboriginal people in Victoria while recovering stolen sheep.
The Cullin-la-ringo massacre, known historically as the Wills tragedy, was a massacre of white colonists by Indigenous people that occurred north of modern-day Springsure in Central Queensland, Australia on 17 October 1861. Nineteen men, women and children were killed in the attack, including Horatio Wills, owner of Cullin-la-ringo station. It is the single largest massacre of colonists by Aboriginal people in Australian history. In the weeks afterwards, police, native police and civilian posses carried out "one of the most lethal punitive expeditions in frontier history", hunting down and killing up to 370 members of the Gayiri Aboriginal tribe implicated in the massacre.
Henry Edmund Pulteney Dana (1820–1852) established the Native Police Corps in the Port Phillip District in 1842, he was responsible for two massacres of Aboriginal people one at Barmah Lake in 1843 and the other at Snowy River in 1846. Dana was born in England, his father being Captain William Pulteney Dana of the 6th Regiment. Henry Dana migrated to Van Diemen's Land in 1840, but in 1842 he relocated to the Port Phillip District where he renewed acquaintance with Superintendent Charles La Trobe, whom he knew in London. The two men became firm friends and Latrobe appointed Dana to establish a native police corps.
Dja Dja Wurrung, also known as the Djaara or Jajowrong people and Loddon River tribe, are an Aboriginal Australian people who claim they were the traditional owners of lands including the watersheds of the Loddon and Avoca rivers in the Bendigo region of central Victoria, Australia. They are part of the Kulin alliance of Aboriginal Victorian peoples. There are 16 clans, which adhere to a patrilineal system. Like other Kulin peoples, there are two moieties: Bunjil the eagle and Waa the crow.
The Jardwadjali (Yartwatjali), also known as the Jaadwa, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of Victoria, whose traditional lands occupy the lands in the upper Wimmera River watershed east to Gariwerd (Grampians) and west to Lake Bringalbert.
Murdering Gully, formerly known as Puuroyup to the Djargurd Wurrung people, is the site of an 1839 massacre of 35–40 people of the Tarnbeere Gundidj clan of the Djargurd Wurrung in the Camperdown district of Victoria, Australia. It is a gully on Mount Emu Creek, where a small stream adjoins from Merida Station.
The Gadubanud (Katubanut), also known as the Pallidurgbarran, Yarro waetch or Cape Otway tribe (Tindale), are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of Victoria. Their territory encompasses the rainforest plateau and rugged coastline of Cape Otway. They were thought to have become extinct quickly following the onset of European colonisation, and little is known of them. However, some may have found refuge at the Wesleyan mission station at Birregurra, and later the Framlingham mission station, and some people still trace their descent from such a remnant.
The Campaspe Plains massacre in 1839 in Central Victoria, Australia was as a reprisal raid against Aboriginal resistance to the invasion and occupation of the Dja Dja Wurrung and Taungurung lands. Charles Hutton took over the Campaspe run, located near the border of Dja Dja Wurrung and Taungurung, in 1838 following sporadic confrontations.
The Girai wurrung, also spelt Kirrae Wuurong and Kirrae Whurrung, are an Aboriginal Australian people who traditionally occupied the territory between Mount Emu Creek and the Hopkins River up to Mount Hamilton, and the Western Otways from the Gellibrand River to the Hopkins River. The historian Ian D. Clark has reclassified much of the material regarding them in Norman Tindale's compendium under the Djargurd Wurrung, a term reflecting the assumed pre-eminence of one of their clans, the Jacoort/Djargurd.
The Rufus River Massacre was a massacre of 30–40 Aboriginal people that took place in 1841 along the Rufus River, in the Central Murray region, after three consecutive ambushes with "overlanders" on the recently opened overland stock route, which followed an old Aboriginal route. The massacre occurred after an official party, including Protector of Aborigines, Matthew Moorhouse, along with police, was sent out by the Governor of South Australia, George Grey.
The Battle of Broken River, also known as the Faithfull Massacre, sometimes spelt Faithful Massacre, is a battle that took place in 1838 when 20 Aboriginal Australians attacked 18 European settlers, killing eight of them.
Frederick Taylor was an English mass murderer, colonial property manager and agricultural capitalist in the Victoria region of Australia. He is best known as the main perpetrator of the Murdering Gully massacre which occurred in 1839 along Mount Emu Creek near Mount Noorat. This massacre resulted in the deaths of about 40 men, women and children of the Tarnbeere gundidj clan of the Djargurd Wurrung people. Taylor was also involved in other shooting deaths of Aboriginal people near Geelong and Lake Colac. After moving to Gippsland, he was involved in the frontier conflict there with the Gunai people. Despite his responsibility for the killings being well known and well documented, Taylor was never convicted and enjoyed high esteem in British colonial society until his death in 1872.
The Eumeralla Wars were the violent encounters over the possession of land between British colonists and Gunditjmara Aboriginal people in what is now called the Western District area of south west Victoria.
Charles Wightman Sievwright was a British army officer before being appointed Assistant Protector of Aborigines in part of the Port Phillip District of the colony of New South Wales, now Victoria, Australia.
In April 1840 the Fighting Waterholes massacre of up to 60 Jardwadjali Aboriginal people of the Konongwootong Gundidj clan occurred near the current day Konongwootong reservoir, near present-day Coleraine, Victoria, Australia.
The Warrowen massacre was an apparent mass killing of Bunurong people by a group of Kurnai people in the vicinity of present-day Brighton, Victoria, Australia. It is dated to the early 1830s, close in time to the founding of Melbourne. The killing was recorded separately several years later by William Thomas and George Augustus Robinson, based on testimony from Aboriginal sources. Thomas stated that at least 60 people had been killed. According to Robinson, the massacre contributed to the end of an entire Bunurong clan, the Yowengerre, allowing a Kurnai clan to take over their territory.
The Waterloo Plains massacre occurred in June 1838 when 8 to 23 Djadjawurrung Aboriginal people were killed in a reprisal raid for the killing of two convict servants and theft of sheep.
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