Mount Cottrell massacre | |
---|---|
Location | Mount Cottrell, Victoria |
Coordinates | 37°46′08″S144°38′02″E / 37.769°S 144.634°E |
Date | 16 July 1836 At dawn – (UTC+11:00) |
Target | Wathaurong people |
Attack type | Attack at dawn following observation during previous evening. |
Weapons |
|
Deaths | Around 10 [1] (up to 35?) Aboriginal people |
Injured | Unknown |
Victims | Names unknown |
Perpetrators | A group of 17 men |
Assailants |
|
No. of participants | 17 assailants and around 10 victims [1] |
Defenders | 50–100 Wathaurong [1] |
Motive | Revenge for killing of Charles Franks and Thomas Flinders |
Inquiry | Investigation by Port Phillip Magistrate William Lonsdale sometime after late September 1836 |
Accused | None |
Convicted | None |
Verdict | None |
Convictions | None |
Charges | None |
Litigation | None |
The Mount Cottrell massacre involved the murder of an estimated 10 Wathaurong people near Mount Cottrell in the colony of Victoria in 1836, in retaliation for the killing of two European settlers.
On 16 July 1836, a number of Aboriginal people of a single Wathaurong (previously thought to be possibly Woiworrung) clan were murdered in retaliation for the killing of squatter Charles Franks and his convict shepherd Thomas Flinders. Estimates of the number of victims vary between 5 and 35, [2] [3] [4] with recent research (as of June 2021 [update] ) by the University of Newcastle's Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788-1930 database putting the number of dead at 10 Wathawurrung people. [1]
Franks, in partnership with George Smith and George Armytage, selected a run near Mount Cottrell, just to the west of where members of the Port Phillip Association had appropriated their land in the Port Phillip District of New South Wales. [5] Franks had arrived at Point Gellibrand (modern day Williamstown) on 23 June with 500 sheep and had reached the Mount Cottrell area by 2 July. Franks and Smith pitched their tent close to thick bushland "eight miles" from the nearest station. [6]
Smith left the camp to get supplies from the port. Soon afterwards, Franks and Flinders were visited by five Aboriginal people (two men, two women and a boy). [7]
Squatters Armytage and Malcolm discovered the remains of Franks and Flinders near their hut after a period of them being missing. [8] Their bodies had been mutilated. [1]
A group of men gathered at Franks’ station to set out to find the murderers, with Aboriginal trackers, including a Bunorong man called Derrimut. [9] A few days later a group of about 80 natives were tracked down. The party of 17 men –Henry Batman, Mr Guy, George Hollins, Michael Leonard, David Pitcairn, Alexander Thomson, William Winberry, John Wood; Aboriginal men Benbow, Derrimut, Baitlange (Ben Benger) and Ballyan, and Sydney Aboriginal men Bullett, Stewart and Joe the marine – went in search of the perpetrators, armed with muskets. [10] They tracked a group of about 80 Aboriginal people ...at no great distance from where the bloody deeds were perpetrated... and watched them during the evening. [11] At dawn, the party attacked from about 91 metres (100 yd), firing on the group, resulting in the death of many Aboriginal people. [12]
Some early media reports of the incident stated that 5 Aboriginal people were killed, while according to Aboriginal oral history, there were 35 victims. 21st-century research by the University of Newcastle suggests that ten were killed. [13] [4]
The Cornwall Chronicle (published in Tasmania) reported a few days later that the party had succeeded in "annihilating them". [14]
Media at the time were divided, as the "Colony has to deplore the loss of one of its brightest ornaments". [11] Some championed the revenge:
The barbarous murders of Mr. Franks and his shepherd, have been, in some degree, revenged, which, we trust, will be a warning to the natives, not in future to commit wanton excesses upon our countrymen. [14]
Others were critical of the lawless nature of the killing. [15] The Tasmanian Colonial Times editorialised:
This will not end here - a tribe swept off from the face of the earth so illegally - so diabolically - will require retributive justice. Good heaven! Is a whole community to be murdered in cold blood for the offence of three? - This is indeed visiting the sins of the father upon the children. Every human being, save the Port Philip jobbers, will look with horror on such proceedings; and this very act alone ought to destroy the settlement. [16]
Newly appointed Port Phillip Magistrate William Lonsdale landed at Point Gellibrand months later (around late September 1836) to formalise the settlement of Melbourne, after which he undertook an investigation into the incident. Party members were interviewed and admitted firing on the Aboriginal group, but said that they were unaware if any were wounded. [17]
The event was notable at the time, as Franks was the first free settler to be killed (convicts had been killed previously) in frontier violence in new European colony of Port Phillip. The reprisal raid foreshadowed similar conflict that would take place across Victoria's western district. [18]
The history of Victoria refers to the history of the Australian state of Victoria and the area's preceding Indigenous and British colonial societies.
William Buckley, also known as the "wild white man", was an English bricklayer, and served in the military until 1802, when he was convicted of theft. He was then transported to Australia, where he helped construct buildings for the fledgling penal settlement at Port Phillip Bay in what is now Victoria, Australia.
Truganini, also known as Lalla Rookh and Lydgugee, was a woman famous for being widely described as the last "full-blooded" Aboriginal Tasmanian to survive British colonisation. Although she was one of the last speakers of the Indigenous Tasmanian languages, Truganini was not the last Aboriginal Tasmanian.
George Augustus Robinson was an English born builder and self-trained preacher who was employed by the British colonial authorities to conciliate the Indigenous Australians of Van Diemen's Land and the Port Phillip District to the process of British invasion and colonialisation.
The Black War was a period of violent conflict between British colonists and Aboriginal Tasmanians in Tasmania from the mid-1820s to 1832 that precipitated the near extermination of the indigenous population. The conflict was fought largely as a guerrilla war by both sides; some 600 to 900 Aboriginal people and more than 200 British colonists died.
John Batman was an Australian grazier, entrepreneur and explorer, who had a prominent role in the founding of Melbourne.
Indented Head is a small coastal township located on the Bellarine Peninsula, east of Geelong, in the Australian state of Victoria. The town lies on the coast of the Port Phillip bay between the towns of Portarlington and St Leonards.
The Boonwurrung, also spelt Bunurong or Bun wurrung, are an Aboriginal people of the Kulin nation, who are the traditional owners of the land from the Werribee River to Wilsons Promontory in the Australian state of Victoria. Their territory includes part of what is now the city and suburbs of Melbourne. They were called the Western Port or Port Philip tribe by the early settlers, and were in alliance with other tribes in the Kulin nation, having particularly strong ties to the Wurundjeri people.
The Werribee River is a perennial river of the Port Phillip catchment that is located on the expansive lowland plain southwest of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The headwaters of a tributary, the Lerderderg River, are north of Ballan near Daylesford and it flows across the basalt plain, through the suburb of Werribee to enter Port Phillip. A linear park follows the Werribee River along much of its course. In total the Werribee River completes a journey of approximately 110 kilometres (68 mi).
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 Wadawurrung nation, also called the Wathaurong, Wathaurung, and Wadda Wurrung, are an Aboriginal Australian people living in the area near Melbourne, Geelong, and the Bellarine Peninsula in the state of Victoria. They are part of the Kulin alliance. The Wathaurong language was spoken by 25 clans south of the Werribee River and the Bellarine Peninsula to Streatham. The area they inhabit has been occupied for at least the last 25,000 years.
Joseph Tice Gellibrand was the first Attorney-General of the British colony of Van Diemen's Land, where he gained notoriety with his attempts to establish full rights of trial by jury. He became an integral part of the Port Phillip Association, producing the Batman Treaty in an attempt to obtain extensive landholdings from the local Aboriginal people around Port Phillip. Gellibrand was also later part of an ill-fated expedition into the region west of Geelong, where he disappeared and was assumed to have been killed by Aboriginal people in the Otway Range.
Lyndall Ryan, was an Australian academic and historian. She held positions in Australian studies and women's studies at Griffith University and Flinders University and was the foundation professor of Australian studies and head of the School of Humanities at the University of Newcastle from 1998 to 2005. She was later a conjoint professor in the Centre for the History of Violence at the University of Newcastle.
The Liffey Falls, a series of four distinct tiered–cascade waterfalls on the Liffey River, is located in the Midlands region of Tasmania, Australia. The falls are a significant massacre site where 30–60 Aboriginal people were murdered in a reprisal killing for the killing of the stockman William Knight by Aboriginal people.
Mount Cottrell is a town in Victoria, Australia, 31 km (19 mi) west of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the Cities of Melton and Wyndham local government areas. Mount Cottrell recorded a population of 496 at the 2021 census.
George Armytage (1795–1862) was a farmer and pastoralist in Australia, builder of The Hermitage in Geelong, Victoria.
Tunnerminnerwait (c.1812–1842) was an Australian Aboriginal resistance fighter and Parperloihener clansman from Tasmania. He was also known by several other names including Pevay, Jack of Cape Grim, Tunninerpareway and renamed Jack Napoleon Tarraparrura by George Robinson.
The Border Police of New South Wales was a frontier policing body introduced by the colonial government of New South Wales with the passing of the Crown Lands Unauthorised Occupation Act 1839.