The Coniston massacre, or series of massacres, took place in the region around the Coniston cattle station in the territory of Central Australia (now a part of the Northern Territory) between 15 August to 13 September 1928. It is the last known officially sanctioned massacre of Indigenous Australians and is considered by some to be one of the last events of the Australian frontier wars.
The massacre occurred in response to the murder of dingo hunter Frederick (Fred) Brooks, who was killed by a Aboriginal man on 7 August 1928 at a place called Yukurru. After the massacre the site became known as Brooks Soak. In a series of punitive expeditions led by Northern Territory Police constable William George Murray, many Warlpiri, Anmatyerre, and Kaytetye people were killed.
Official records, based of Murray's reports at the time state that 31 people were killed, however, analysis of documentation, remains found and Aboriginal oral histories reveal that the fatalities were likely to have ranged between 70 and 300 people. A recent study estimated that 90 people were killed.
Background
Central Australia was Australia's last colonial frontier, sparsely populated and, by 1928, was facing the fourth year of the harshest drought on record. Parched conditions, though later discounted by authorities as a precipitating factor, were to play a key role in events at Coniston. Appropriating water resources was fundamental to pastoral economy, and exclusive control over water was a priority to maintain cattle in good condition on any station. With the worsening of the drought, as waterholes dried up, the starving nomadic Aboriginals were forced to move back in towards the permanent waterholes and soaks located on the new station properties. It was generally believed in the white community that the interests of traditional Aboriginal land owners and those of cattle stations could not be reconciled. Either one or the other must prosper. Pastoralists regarded their presence, begging for food or spearing cattle, as an "aggravation", and would drive the incoming Aboriginals from these few remaining water sources, according to Cribbin, to ensure the survival of their cattle.
The killing of Fred Brooks
61-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, in a number of stints since World War I. In July 1928 he asked Stafford if he could have a go at dingo hunting. Stafford warned him that he and the woman he cohabited with, Alice, had been threatened by "Myalls" (an offensive term denoting traditional living Aboriginal people) and that venturing any further than 22 km (14 mi) west would be unsafe. Alice was believed to have broken kinship rules by living with the white man. Brooks bought two camels and on 2 August, left with two 12-year-old Aboriginal children, Skipper and Dodger, as his camel handlers, to trap dingoes for the 10 shilling (equivalent to AU$45.49 in 2022) 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.
According to evidence in a later inquiry, on 4 August, Charlton Young and a companion who were exploring the area for a mining company, stopped by and warned Brooks that the Aboriginal people had been getting "cheeky" lately by visiting the mining camps heavily armed, demanding food and tobacco. About the same time several Aboriginal children were being taken away to Alice Springs. According to one version, Brooks had been approached several times to trade but had so far refused, until 6 August. The Aboriginal tradition, related to Peter and Jay Read by Alec Jupurrula and Jack Japaljarri, holds that a Warlpiri, Japanunga Bullfrog and his wife were approached by Brooks who asked Bullfrog if he could take his wife, Marungardi, to do Brooks' washing in exchange for food and tobacco. Marungardi performed her chores but, either returned to Japanunga's camp without the promised supplies or did not return, so at dawn the next day, Japanunga killed Brooks. A third account is more detailed, stating that Japanunga became enraged when he found his wife in bed with Brooks and attacked him, severing an artery in his throat with his boomerang. This account claims that Bullfrog, his uncle Padirrka, and Marungardi then beat Brooks to death, and that Aboriginal elders, in fear for the foreseeable consequences, then banished Bullfrog and Padirrka and ordered Brooks' two boys to return to the homestead and say that he had died of natural causes.
Discovery of Brooks' body and responses
Accounts vary as to who first came across Brooks' body. Until the publication of Cribbin's book in 1984, it was believed that Bruce Chapman, the prospector, was first on the scene.
The following day an Aboriginal person 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 Aboriginal people 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 John C. Cawood sent Constable William George 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 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.
Massacre
Brooks was killed on or about 7 August 1928, and his body was partly buried in a rabbit hole. No eyewitnesses to the murder were ever identified, and there are conflicting accounts of the discovery of the body and subsequent events.
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. 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. Woolingar was then chained to a tree for the next 18 hours. 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.
During the night, Murray captured three young boys who had been sent by their tribe to find what the police party was doing. Murray had the boys beaten to force them to lead the party to the rest of the Warlpiri but had they done so, they would have been punished by their tribe. To resolve the dilemma, the three boys smashed their own feet with rocks. Despite the injuries Murray forced the now crippled boys to lead the party; according to Cribbin. By nightfall they reached Cockatoo Creek where they sighted four Aboriginal people on a ridge. Paddy and Murray captured two but one ran with Murray firing several shots at him which missed, Paddy then knelt and fired a single shot hitting the fleeing man in the back and killing him instantly. After questioning the other three and finding they had no connection with the murder Murray released them. The next two days saw no contact with Aboriginal people at all as word had spread with many Aboriginal people heading into the desert, preferring to risk dying of thirst rather than face the police patrol. Returning to Coniston, Murray left Padygar, Woolingar and one of the three boys, 11-year-old Lolorrbra (known as Lala, who would become a chief witness at the enquiry), whose crushed feet had become infected, in Stafford's custody before heading north to continue the search.
Following tracks, the patrol came upon a camp of 20 Warlpiri, mostly women and children. Approaching the camp Murray ordered the men to drop their weapons. Not understanding English the women and children fled while the men stood their ground to protect them. The patrol opened fire, killing three men; three injured died later of their wounds and an unknown number of wounded escaped. By Murray's account, he met four separate groups of Warlpiri, and in each case was obliged to shoot in self-defence – a total of 17 casualties. He later testified under oath that each one of the dead was a murderer of Brooks. The Warlpiri themselves estimated between 60 and 70 people had been killed by the patrol.
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 240 mi (390 km) to Alice Springs. Arriving on 1 September, Arkirkra and Padygar were charged with the murder of Brooks while Murray was hailed as a hero. 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 person he was chasing away from the homestead; this incident was included in the later enquiry. On 19 September, 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 Warlpiri people who were also in the same area.
Morton, a former circus wrestler, had a reputation for his sexual exploitation of Aboriginal women and violence against both his white employees and Aboriginal people. On 27 August, he left his camp to punish Aboriginal people for spearing his cattle. At Boomerang waterhole he found a large Warlpiri camp; what happened here is unknown but the Warlpiri decided to kill Morton. During the night they surrounded his camp and at dawn 15 men armed with boomerangs and yam sticks rushed Morton. His dogs attacked the Aboriginal people, and after breaking free Morton shot one and the rest fled. Morton returned to his main camp and was taken to the Ti Tree Well mission where a nurse removed 17 splinters from his head and treated him for a serious skull fracture.
From the station, on 24 September, a party consisting of Murray, Morton, Alex Wilson and Jack Cusack (the latter two being of Aboriginal descent), embarked on a series of encounters: three incidents were later described by Murray, in which 14 more Aboriginal people were reportedly killed, but it is likely that there were more. At Tomahawk waterhole four were killed, while at Circle Well one was shot dead and Murray killed another with an axe. They then moved east to the Hanson River where another eight were shot. Morton identified all of them as his attackers. The party now returned to Broadmeadows to replenish their supplies before travelling north. No records of this patrol were kept. According to the Warlpiri, this patrol encountered Aboriginal people at Dingo Hole where they killed four men and 11 women and children. The Warlpiri also recount how the patrol charged a corroboree at Tippinba, rounding up a large number of Aboriginal people like cattle before cutting out the women and children and shooting all the men. There is anecdotal evidence that there were up to 100 killed in total at the five sites.