Warrigal Creek is the site of an 1843

massacre A massacre is an event of killing people who are not engaged in hostilities or are defenseless. It is generally used to describe a targeted killing of civilians Glossary of French words and expressions in English#En masse, en masse by an armed ...

of Gunai/Kurnai people in colonial Victoria, during the

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 ...

. The creek is on a farm near Sale, east of

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

, in the

South Gippsland South Gippsland, a region of Gippsland in Victoria, Australia, is a well-watered region consisting of low, rolling hills descending to the coast in the south and the Latrobe Valley in the north. It is part of the larger Gippsland Basin bioreg ...

area of

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Queen Victoria (1819–1901), Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India * Victoria (state), a state of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, a provincial capital * Victoria, Seychelles, the capi ...

, Australia.

Massacre

In July 1843, a man named Ronald Macalister was killed by Aboriginal men near

Port Albert Port Albert is a town in Victoria, Australia, Victoria, Australia, on the coast of Corner Inlet on the Yarram - Port Albert Road, south-east of Morwell, Victoria, Morwell, south-east of Melbourne, in the Shire of Wellington. At the , Port Alb ...

, on the coast of Victoria. The Scottish colonist and pastoralist,

Angus McMillan Angus McMillan (14 August 1810 – 18 May 1865) was a Scottish-born explorer, pioneer pastoralism, pastoralist, and perpetrator of several of the Gippsland massacres of Gunai people. Arriving first in New South Wales in 1838, McMillan rose sw ...

, led a group of around 20 colonists to attack and kill several groups of

Aboriginal people There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...

across a number of days. The group of

Gaelic Gaelic (pronounced for Irish Gaelic and for Scots Gaelic) is an adjective that means "pertaining to the Gaels". It may refer to: Languages * Gaelic languages or Goidelic languages, a linguistic group that is one of the two branches of the Insul ...

-speaking Scotsmen was known as the "Highland Brigade". The attack on the Brataualung people camped at Warrigal Creek was one of several incidents resulting in loss of life among the Gunai Kurnai people. The estimates of numbers of deaths vary: some historical accounts say that 60 people were killed, while other sources suggest that up to 150 people may have been killed. Some historians assert that the number of 60 is an exaggeration, despite the witness accounts. The statistical discrepancies likely emerged because Macmillan's group killed Aboriginal people at five different locations in the area. A witness, William Hoddinott of East Bairnsdale, wrote an account of the Highland Brigade in 1925 under the pseudonym of 'Gippslander'. Hoddinott wrote a similar account in 1940. Hoddinott said that more than 100 Aboriginal people were killed on that day. About two years later, Assistant Protector of Aborigines William Thomas learnt that because of the deaths, there were not many Aboriginal people left in the area. Historian Peter Gardner, in a review of all accounts of the massacre, wrote that MacMillan and the Highland Brigade aimed to wipe out all the Aboriginal people in the area. Gardner concludes that McMillan's group initially killed two family groups at Warrigal Creek waterhole and then a few days later killed another 60 people at the mouth of Warrigal Creek, then killing three other groups at Freshwater Creek, Gammon Creek, and Red Hill. Despite the widespread belief that MacMillan led several massacres, there are over 12

monument A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, historical ...

s in the

Gippsland Gippsland () is a rural region in the southeastern part of Victoria, Australia, mostly comprising the coastal plains south of the Victorian Alps (the southernmost section of the Great Dividing Range). It covers an elongated area of east of th ...

region dedicated to him.

References

Bibliography

* The Book of the Bush * "The Settling of Gippsland - A Regional History", by Patrick Morgan, published by Gippsland Municipalities Association, Traralgon, 1997 * Gardner, Peter, 'The Warrigal Creek massacre', Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, pp. 47–51, June, 1980.

Massacre

See also

References

Bibliography

Further reading