Aiatsis Library Waterloo Creek: the Australia Day massacre of 1838, George Gipps and the British conquest of new South Wales. Sydney: UNSW Press, 1994. January 26, 1838. On a remote stream in northern New South Wales soon known as Waterloo Creek, a party of Mounted Police and convict stockmen under Major J.W. Nunn marks the occasion by massacring up to 300 Aboriginal people. Late in February, a new governor, George Gipps, arrives determined to introduce a new deal for the Aboriginal people and orders an inquiry into the atrocity. Three months later, stockmen in the same area slaughter twenty-eight Aborigines at Henry Dangar’s Myall Creek station. Gipps has the perpetrators rounded up and in December 1838 seven of them are hanged, the first time in the colony’s history whites have paid this penalty for killing Aboriginal people. The white backlash sent Gipps reeling, the Waterloo Creek inquiry proceeds in obscurity and ends in the complete exoneration of Nunn and his men. Step by step Gipps abandons his humanitarian policy under pressure from the white colonists. This book is a very comprehensive and intricately drawn account of these dramatic and horrifying events, meticulously researched. Index, bibliography and a huge number of comprehensive end notes support the lengthy text. AIATSIS Library call number B M655.33/W2
Posted on: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 05:43:06 +0000
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