Coniston Massacre - Background

Background

For administrative reasons, from 1927 to 1931, the Federal Government divided the Northern Territory into North and Central Australia . By July 1928, Central Australia was in its fourth year of a particularly severe drought with fewer than 25 millimetres (0.98 in) of rain falling in the previous seven months. Overgrazing by stock had denuded the country of its vegetation, leaving little feed for wildlife. Waterholes were drying up and even the most experienced Aborigines were finding game and water almost unobtainable. Almost all the permanent waterholes and soaks were on station properties and as Aborigines began to die from thirst and hunger they moved to the stations for the water where they became an "aggravation" by begging for food and spearing cattle. The pastoralists were forced to chase the Aborigines away from their water to ensure the survival of their cattle.

Sixty-seven year old Fred Brooks had worked as a station hand on Randall Stafford's Coniston station, 240 mi (390 km) north-west of Alice Springs, since the end of World War I, but due to the drought had not been paid for some time. In July he bought two camels and on 2 August, left with two 12 year-old Aboriginal children, Skipper and Dodger, to trap dingoes for the 10s (2011:A$35.65) bounty on their scalps. Approaching a soak 14 mi (23 km) from the homestead, he found around 30 Ngalia-Warlpiri people camped. Brooks knew some and decided to camp with them. The first two days were uneventful and Brooks caught several dingoes. On 4 August, Charlton Young and a companion who were exploring the area for a mining company, stopped by and warned Brooks that the Aborigines had been getting "cheeky" lately by visiting the mining camps heavily armed, demanding food and tobacco. Brooks had been approached several times to trade but had so far refused. On 6 August, Bullfrog with his wife Marungali asked him to trade and Brooks offered some food in exchange for Marungali washing his clothes. Bullfrog camped nearby but Brooks neither paid him the promised food nor did he return his wife. In the morning Bullfrog became enraged when he found his wife in bed with Brooks and attacked him, severing an artery in his throat with his boomerang. Bullfrog, his uncle Padirrka and Marungali then beat Brooks to death. Aboriginal elders fearfully banished Bullfrog and Padirrka and ordered Brooks' two boys to return to the homestead and say that he had died of natural causes. The following day an Aborigine named Alex Wilson camped at the now deserted soak and finding the body rode back to the station, where he described hysterically how Brooks had been "chopped up" by 40 Aborigines and the parts stuffed in a rabbit burrow.

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, 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 Aborigines 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 eye-witnesses, 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.