Forrest River Massacre - Lumbia Trial

Lumbia Trial

After being arrested, Lumbia was brought back for trial via the Forrest River Mission. There, the Rev. Gribble, who was both the local Protector of Aborigines and Justice of the Peace, insisted on a preliminary hearing. Mrs Angelina Noble, wife of Aboriginal deacon James Noble and an expert in a number of the local Aboriginal dialects, acted as interpreter. Lumbia and several other witnesses were ordered detained and the rest of the Aborigines brought in with them were released. Mrs Noble also acted as interpreter at a later coroner's inquest. There, one of Lumbia's child-wives, Anulgoo, testified that Hay had ridden up shouting, had struck Lumbia with a whip and Lumbia had speared him. She also testified that "the other natives killed the bullock."

On 28 October, at the trial for the murder of Hay, Lumbia had neither legal representation nor a translator. While in the dock he slipped his chains and fled but was recaptured in the street where he was chained to a post. The trial continued and the verdict delivered in his absence. Historian Neville Green claimed that the Kimberley prosecutor refused to mention Lumbia's defence as, with the exception of the Rev. Gribble, no one wanted it known that Hay had raped a child. The prosecutor presented the situation to the court as a settler murdered while protecting his stock from a cattle killer. Green also claimed, based on Gribble's 1934 memoir, that Gribble had expected the Inspector of Aborigines, E. C. Mitchell, to give the court Lumbia's account of the rape of Anulgoo on his behalf but he too had decided, along with the prosecutor, to suppress the claim stating to another missionary that he would keep anything unpleasant out of the evidence "for the sake of the fair name of my native state". This exchange was referred to in the final report of the Royal Commission and Mitchell made several unsuccessful attempts to have the report recalled and the references removed.

The initial death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after it was successfully argued that Hay had provoked the attack.