Cullin La Ringo
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The Cullin-la-ringo massacre, also known as the Wills tragedy, was a massacre of white colonists by
Indigenous Australians Indigenous Australians are people with familial heritage from, or recognised membership of, the various ethnic groups living within the territory of contemporary Australia prior to History of Australia (1788–1850), British colonisation. The ...
that occurred on 17 October 1861, north of modern-day
Springsure Springsure is a rural town and Suburbs and localities (Australia), locality in the Central Highlands Region, Queensland, Australia. In the , the locality of Springsure had a population of 950 people. Geography Springsure is situated by road ...
in
Central Queensland Central Queensland is an imprecisely-defined geographical division of Queensland ( a state in Australia) that centres on the eastern coast, around the Tropic of Capricorn. Its major regional centre is Rockhampton. The region extends from the Cap ...
, Australia. Nineteen men, women and children were killed in the attack, including Horatio Wills, the 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 Australian native police were specialised mounted military units consisting of detachments of Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal troopers under the command of European officers appointed by British colonial governments. The units existed in va ...
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 The Gayiri, people, also spelt or known as Kairi, Kararya, Kari, Khararya and Kaira, Bimurraburra, Gahrarja, Gara Gara, Ara Ara, and Kara Kara, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of Queensland. Country According to an estimation ...
Aboriginal tribe implicated in the massacre.


Massacre

In mid-October 1861, a party of
squatters Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building (usually residential) that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there wer ...
from the
colony of Victoria The Colony of Victoria was a historical administrative division in Australia that existed from 1851 until 1901, when it federated with other colonies to form the Commonwealth of Australia. Situated in the southeastern corner of the Australian ...
, under Horatio Wills, set up a temporary tent camp to start the process of establishing a
cattle station In Australia and New Zealand, a cattle station is a large farm ( station is equivalent to the American ranch), the main activity of which is the rearing of cattle. The owner of a cattle station is called a '' grazier''. The largest cattle stati ...
at Cullin-la-ringo, a property formed by amalgamating four blocks of land with a total area of . Wills's party, an enormous settlement train, including
bullock wagon An ox-wagon or bullock wagon is a four-wheeled vehicle pulled by oxen (draught cattle). It was a traditional form of transport, especially in Southern Africa but also in New Zealand and Australia. Ox-wagons were also used in the United States. ...
s and more than 10,000 sheep, had set out from
Brisbane Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...
eight months earlier. The size of the group had attracted much attention from other settlers, as well as the Indigenous people. It was later reported that the attack on the party was as revenge for the murder of Gayiri men by Wills' neighbour, Jesse Gregson, a squatter from the nearby Rainworth Station, who had erroneously accused the Gayiri of stealing cattle. According to the account of one of the survivors, John Moore, Aboriginal people had been passing through the camp all day on 17 October 1861, building up numbers until there were at least 50. Then, without warning, they attacked the men, women, and children with nulla nullas. The settlers defended themselves with pistols and tent poles, but nineteen of the twenty-five defenders were killed.


Deaths and survivors

Those killed were Horatio Wills, David Baker, the overseer, his wife, Catherine Baker, their son, David Baker Jr., the overseer's daughter, Elizabeth Baker (aged 19), Iden Baker (a young boy), an infant Baker (8 months old), George Elliott, Patrick Mannion and his wife, their three children, Mary Ann Mannion (8 years old), Maggie Mannion (4 years old), baby Mannion (an infant), Edward McCormac, Charles Weeden, James Scott, Henry Pickering, George Ling, and a bullock driver known as Tom O'Brien, who had been engaged at Rockhampton. A total of 19 people were killed. The dead were buried at the site of the massacre. Some of the graves have headstones. The six surviving members were
Tom Wills Thomas Wentworth Wills (19 August 1835 – 2 May 1880) was an Australian sportsman who is credited with being Australia's first cricketer of significance and a founder of Australian rules football. Born in the British penal colony of Colo ...
, Horatio's son and an outstanding
cricket Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...
er and co-founder of
Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an Australian rules football playing field, oval field, often a modified ...
, James Baker (David Baker's son), John Moore, William Albrey, Edward Kenny, and Patrick Mahony. Those men either were either absent from the camp or, in Moore's case, managed to avoid being seen. It was Edward Kenny who subsequently rode away to report the massacre, arriving at Rainworth Station the following day. Moore was the only white eyewitness to the event.


Response

Settlers reacted with shock and horror at the massacre, and the Queensland Government, including the settlers, was determined to punish any Aboriginals in the vicinity (and many of whom killed in the aftermath were innocent). The first to go out in pursuit were a
vigilante Vigilantism () is the act of preventing, investigating, and punishing perceived offenses and crimes without legal authority. A vigilante is a person who practices or partakes in vigilantism, or undertakes public safety and retributive justice ...
party of eleven heavily armed white settlers assisted by two trackers. Judging by the more than fifty camp fires, they pursued what was estimated to be "probably not under 300, and of these 100 may be assumed as the number of fighting men". The Aboriginal people continually used ground that prevented the whites from using their horses to full advantage: "they chose stony and difficult ground wherever they had it in their power". Yet the whites eventually managed to catch up with them on 27 November 1861 and at "half-past two a.m. on Wednesday morning their camp was stormed on foot with success". From this account, the number of Aboriginal casualties was very high, although there was no further detail. Another contemporary account said the police "overtook a tribe of natives, shot down sixty or seventy, and ceased firing when their ammunition was expended". They left the remainder to the
native police Australian native police were specialised mounted military units consisting of detachments of Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal troopers under the command of European officers appointed by British colonial governments. The units existed in va ...
to take on the next run. Historians later estimated the number of dead as around 370 people, and an anonymous article in the ''
Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...
'' was discovered in 2021 stating that Tom Wills had bragged about his participation in reprisal killings. The article was published in 1895, fifteen years after Wills' death. In 1862, the
Old Rainworth Stone Store Old Rainworth Stone Store is a heritage-listed storehouse and now museum at Wealwandangie Road, Cairdbeign, south of the town of Springsure, Central Highlands Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built in 1862 by George Goldring. It is also ...
was built at Rainworth Station (also in the Springsure area). It was built from stone in order to reduce threats of fire and to act as a safe haven during any Aboriginal raid as a response to the Cullin-la-ringo massacre.


Legacy

The Cullin-la-ringo massacre was the largest massacre of white settlers by Aboriginal people in Australian history, and a pivotal moment in the frontier wars in Queensland. The caption of ''The Wills Tragedy'' (an artwork by T. G. Moyle) reads: "The arrival of the neighbouring squatters and Mon collecting and burying the dead, after the attack by the blacks on H.R. Wills ESQ. Stationed Leichhardt district, Queensland."


In literature

In
Archibald Meston Archibald Meston (26 March 1851 – 11 March 1924) was an Australian politician, civil servant, journalist, naturalist and explorer. Personal life Archibald Meston was born at Towie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, the son of Alexander Meston. Mest ...
's 1893 short story, "The Cave Diary", the narrator relates the story of a fictional Queensland adventurer, Oscar Marrion, based on the contents of a diary found in a cave. After his love interest is murdered in the Cullin-la-ringo massacre, Marrion considers getting revenge on her killers, but abandons the idea after talking to an Aboriginal friend named Talboora. The first scholarly assessment of the massacre, "From Hornet Bank to Cullin-la-Ringo", by Gordon Reid, was published by the Royal Historical Society of Queensland in 1981. The massacre is central to
Alex Miller Alex Miller (born 4 July 1949) is a Scottish football manager and former player. As a player, he had a 15-year career with Rangers, winning several trophies. As a manager, he won the 1991–92 Scottish League Cup with Hibernian. He subsequen ...
's 2007 historical novel ''
Landscape of Farewell ''Landscape of Farewell'' is a 2007 novel by the Australian author Alex Miller. Awards and nominations *Commonwealth Writers Prize, South East Asia and South Pacific Region, Best Book, 2008: shortlisted *Miles Franklin Literary Award, 2008: s ...
''. The massacre is also explored in fictional accounts of Tom Wills, including Martin Flanagan's 1996 novel '' The Call'', as well as its 2004 stage adaptation.De Moore, Gregory. "Review of M. Flanagan's The Call", ''Sporting Traditions'', vol. 16.


See also

*
Australian frontier wars The Australian frontier wars were the violent conflicts between Indigenous Australians (including both Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders) and mostly British settlers during the colonial period of Australia. The first conflic ...
* List of massacres in Australia


References


Citations


Sources

*, a biography of Horatio Wills containing his prolific correspondence *Dillon, Paul (2020). ''Inside The Killing Fields Hornet Bank, Cullin-la-Ringo & The Maria Wreck'' , Connor Court Publishing, Brisbane. * *


Further reading

* * * * {{Campaignbox Australian frontier wars Massacres in 1861 Massacres by Indigenous Australians History of Australia (1851–1900) 1861 in Australia Springsure Mass shootings in Australia October 1861 19th-century mass murder in Australia Massacres of ethnic groups