Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: Who was killed in the Coniston massacre?
The Coniston massacre, which took place near the Coniston cattle station in the then Territory of Central Australia (now the Northern Territory) from 14 August to 18 October 1928, was the last known officially sanctioned massacre of Indigenous Australians and one of the last events of the Australian Frontier Wars. People of the Warlpiri, Anmatyerre, and Kaytetye groups were killed. The massacre occurred in revenge for the death of dingo hunter Frederick Brooks, killed by Aboriginal people in August 1928 at a place now known as Yukurru, also known as Brooks Soak.
List of massacres in Australia List of massacres of indigenous Australians
After the 1890s Kaytetye confrontations with whites became rarer. Later, in the widely known Coniston massacre of 1928, a series of three punitive raids occurred over a number of weeks as a police party of 8 men under Mounted Police Constable George Murray killed, according to a later inquiry, at least 31 Kaytetye, Warlpiri and Anmatyerre indiscriminately, though native oral records suggest a higher figure.
—The Northern Territory Times, 9 November 1928[11]
Coniston is located on the western shore of the northern end of Coniston Water. It sits at the mouth of Coppermines Valley and Yewdale Beck, which descend from the Coniston Fells, historically the location of ore and slate mining. Coniston's location thus developed as a farming village and transport hub, serving these areas. Coniston was situated in the very north-west of the historic county of Lancashire, with Coniston Old Man forming the county's highest point. Today Coniston forms part of the Lake District National Park, the administrative county of Cumbria and the local government district of South Lakeland.
During the trial Murray was billeted with the Northern Territory police. Although Murray officially admitted to only 17 deaths, Constable Victor Hall said he was shocked with Murray's "freely expressed opinions of what was good enough for a blackfellow", and claimed he bragged to fellow officers that he had killed "closer to 70 than 17".[11][20]
On 15 August, dingo trapper Bruce Chapman arrived at Coniston and Murray sent Chapman, Paddy and Alex Wilson and three aboriginal trackers to the soak to find out what happened. The three buried Brooks on the bank of the soak.[lower-alpha 8] In the afternoon two Warlpiri, Padygar and Woolingar arrived at Coniston to trade dingo scalps. Believing them to be involved with the murder Paddy arrested them but Woolingar slipped his chains and attempted to escape. Murray fired at Woolingar and he fell with a bullet wound to the head. Stafford then kicked him in the chest breaking a rib. Woolingaar was then chained to a tree for the next 18hours. The next morning the posse, with Padygar and Woolingar following on foot in chains, set out for the Lander River where they found a camp of 23 Warlpiri at Ngundaru. With the posse encircling the camp, Murray rode in and was surrounded by Aboriginal people yelling, Brisco started shooting with Saxby and Murray joining in. Three men and a woman, Bullfrog's wife Marungali, were killed on the encounter, with another woman dying from her wounds an hour later. A subsequent search of the camp turned up articles belonging to Brooks. Stafford was furious with Murray over the shooting and the next morning returned to Coniston alone.[11]
The final battles took place in the Northern Territory. A permanent settlement was established at modern-day Darwin in 1869 and attempts by pastoralists to occupy Indigenous land led to conflict. This fighting continued into the 20th century, and was driven by reprisals against European deaths and the pastoralists' desire to secure their land. At least 31 Indigenous men were killed by police in the Coniston massacre in 1928 and further reprisal expeditions were conducted in 1932 and 1933.
Brooks was killed on or about 7 August 1928, and his body was partly buried in a rabbit hole. No eyewitnesses to the actual murder were ever identified, and there are conflicting accounts of the discovery of the body and subsequent events.
Following his appointment, O'Kelly had stated his intention that the enquiry would not be a whitewash and it is speculated he had been "got at." To take up his appointment, O'Kelly travelled by train from Canberra to Melbourne with Prime Minister Stanley Bruce, who was campaigning for the upcoming election with the White Australia policy as his party's main platform, accompanying him. O'Kelly later said that had he known how the enquiry would turn out, he would have refused the appointment, stating that if the same circumstances happened again someone would be hanged for the killings.[24]
On 24 August, Murray captured an Aboriginal person named Arkirkra and returned to Coniston, where he collected Padygar (Woolingar had died that night still chained to the tree) and then marched the two 240mi (390km) to Alice Springs. Arriving on 1 September, Arkirkra and Padygar were charged with the murder of Brooks while Murray was hailed as a hero.[11] On 3 September, Murray set off for Pine Hill station to investigate complaints of cattle spearing. Nothing has been recorded about this patrol, but he returned on 13 September with two prisoners. On 16 September, Henry Tilmouth of Napperby station shot and killed an Aboriginal he was chasing away from the homestead; this incident was included in the later enquiry. On the 19th, Murray again departed, this time under orders to investigate a non-fatal attack on the person of a settler, William Nuggett Morton, at Broadmeadows Station, by what Morton described as a group of 15 Myall Warlpiri people who were also in the same area.
Official records at the time stated that 17 people were killed. The owner of Coniston station, Randall Stafford, was a member of the punitive party for the first few days and estimated that at least twice that number were killed between 14 August and 1 September. Word of mouth reports imagine that at least 60, possibly as many as 110 Aboriginal men, women, and children were killed. The Warlpiri, Anmatyerre, and Kaytetye believe that up to 170 died between 14 August and 18 October.[1] A local version of the story is available in Warlpiri language and English.[2]
Constable Murray was back in Alice Springs on 18 October where he was asked to write an official report on the police actions. The report was only several lines long; he wrote: "....incidents occurred on an expedition with William John Morton, unfortunately drastic action had to be taken and resulted in a number of male natives being shot." No mention was made of the number killed, the circumstances of the shootings or where they occurred.[15]
The killings triggered panic in Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory, generating fears that Aborigines — the majority of the population in the Territory at the time — might stage an uprising. A punitive expedition was proposed by police to "teach the blacks a lesson". (In 1928, during a previous punitive expedition in the Northern Territory, police had killed up to 110 Aboriginal men, women and children; an event known as the Coniston massacre.)
Murray: No your honour, what is the use of a wounded blackfellow hundreds of miles from civilization? Justice Mallen: How many did you kill? Murray: Seventeen your honour. Justice Mallen: You mean you mowed them down wholesale!
One of the few survivors was Gwoya Jungarai, who left the area after the massacre destroyed his family. A later picture of him as One Pound Jimmy became an iconic Australian postage stamp.
Cawood expressed his satisfaction with the outcome in his annual report for 1929, writing: "The evidence of all the witnesses was conclusive … the Board found that the shooting was justified, and that the natives killed were all members of the Walmulla (sic) tribe from Western Australia, who were on a marauding expedition, with the avowed object of wiping out the white settlers…"[23]
During his testimony, Murray said that the group had "shot to kill":
Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, a prominent Papunya Tula painter, was a survivor of the massacre. His father was away hunting and survived while his mother had hidden him in a coolamon under a bush before being shot and killed.[26] The strong oral history established after the massacre is recorded in paintings by some indigenous artists and the Warlpiri, Anmatyerre and Kaytetye refer to the period as The Killing Times. Similarly, other massacres that have occurred in the Ord River region have been recorded by Warmun artists such as Rover Thomas.
Randall Stafford had been in Alice Springs requesting police to attend to prevent the spearing of his cattle. He returned to be told of the murder and "dismemberment" of Brooks but chose to wait for the police. No one returned to the soak and no one attempted to retrieve the body. On 11 August, the Government Resident J. C. Cawood sent Constable William Murray, the officer in charge at Barrow Creek who also held the post of Chief Protector of Aborigines,[lower-alpha 6] to Coniston to investigate the complaints of cattle spearing. Told of the murder, Murray drove back to Alice Springs and telephoned Cawood, who refused to send reinforcements, telling Murray to deal with the Aboriginal people as he saw fit. Returning to Coniston, Murray questioned Dodger and Skipper who described the circumstances of the murder and named Bullfrog, Padirrka, and Marungali as the killers. According to his own report, Murray also obtained the names of 20 accomplices (he never recorded the names, or explained how his informants, who were not eyewitnesses, knew them; nor were these inconsistencies ever questioned at later proceedings). Murray organised a posse consisting of tracker Paddy, Alex Wilson, Dodger, tracker Major (elder brother of Brooks' boy Skipper), Randall Stafford and two white itinerants Jack Saxby and Billie Brisco.[lower-alpha 7]
Justice Mallen: Constable Murray, was it really necessary to shoot to kill in every case? Could you not have occasionally shot to wound?
His mother was killed in the Coniston Massacre in the year 1928 and his father was away from the camp hunting and survived. Billy was raised on Napperby Station by his auntie, the mother of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. In the 1960s he was working as a cook at Papunya when many of the Pintupi people were brought in from the west. Like Clifford he began his artistic career carving wooden animals for the arts and crafts marketplace. He is credited with being one of the men who painted the Honey Ant Dreaming on the wall of the Papunya School at Geoff Bardon's request. He was, in the 1970s, one of the first chairmen of Papunya Tula Pty Ltd.
The seventy-fifth anniversary of the massacre was commemorated on 24 September 2003 near Yuendumu organised by the Central Land Council.[28]
Coniston is also home to the Coniston Juniors Football Club who play at McKinnon Park, north of the commercial district.
The board sat for 18days in January 1929 to consider three incidents (Brooks, Morton and Tilmouth) that resulted in the deaths of Aboriginal people, and in one more day, finished its report, finding that 31 Aboriginal people had been killed and that in each case the death was justified.