| Site Name | Tartarr (Blackfellows Knob) |
| Aboriginal Place Name | Tartarr |
| Language Group | Ngarinman, Bilinara |
| Present State/Territory | NT |
| Colony/State/Territory at the time | SA |
| Police District | Gordon Creek |
| Latitude | -17.371 |
| Longitude | 130.811 |
| Date | Between 1 Jan 1924 and 31 Dec 1924 |
| Attack Time | Day |
| Victims | Aboriginal People |
| Victim Descriptions | Warrior(s) |
| Victims Killed | 15 |
| Victims Killed Notes | |
| Attackers | Colonists |
| Attacker Descriptions | Police, Pastoralist(s) |
| Attackers Killed | 0 |
| Attackers Killed Notes | |
| Transport | Horse |
| Motive | Reprisal |
| Weapons Used | Firearm(s) |
| Narrative | Ronnie Wavehill Wirrpngyarri says, in Charola and Meakins (2016, p 42): 'The ngumpin [Aboriginal people who had been butchering a beast] ran away southwards, away from Tartarr. They went downstream a bit and then out across the rocks. The kartiya [whitefellas] were chasing them on horseback, galloping like mad... The ngumpin stopped there in the dry creek and hooked up their spears. "Don’t go", the kartiya boss was saying. "Don’t get close otherwise we'll get speared." They were frightened of the ngumpin. The horsemen never caught up to them, so a lot of them got away. A horse can gallop but those ngumpin were very good runners'.
Phillip Yamba Jimmy spoke to the Northern Territory News about Tartarr (Hope, 2016, p 12): 'Men with rifles and Aboriginal trackers returned soon after and shot anyone they could. The version told by Mr Jimmy has it that people were sat around a tree and murdered one by one. He said the families let the dead decompose in the sun then collected the bones in paperbark and carried them 10km to Seale Gorge, a sacred site of the Gurindji and associated tribes...The Tartarr story featured on the 1967 land petition signed in thumbprint by Vincent Lingiari and other Wave Hill walk-off leaders...'. The 1967 Gurindji Petition to the Governor-General (National Museum of Australia 1967, para. 2) included: 'Our people have lived here from time immemorial and our culture, myths, dreaming and sacred places have evolved in this land. Many of our forefathers were killed in the early days while trying to retain it'. And (para. 3): 'We have begun to build our new homestead on the banks of beautiful Wattie Creek in the Seal [sic] Yard area, where there is permanent water. This is the main place of our dreaming only a few miles from the Seal [sic] Gorge where we have kept the bones of our martyrs all these years since white men killed many of our people'. This oral history appears to be the same massacre which Charlie Ward dates at about 1924: 'Meanwhile, the last massacre in Gurindji country occurred in about 1924 on a small knoll, midway between Vestey's cattle station and the police outpost at Bow Hill. Decades later, an old man remembered: "They been coming with the horses and found this mob [at] Blackfellow's Knob. They trying to race away from them but they shot them like a dog [...]. One or two can get away. They shoot that bloke climb up the tree [...]; he fell over. Warlatarrka was his name. He was Jungurra [skin]"' (Ward, 2016, p 24) This is also mentioned in Thomas Mayo's article 'A dream that cannot be denied' (Mayo, 2017). |
| Sources | Charola & Meakins, 2016, pp 42-44; Hope, NT News, 19 August 2016, p 12 https://kooriweb.org/foley/news/2000s/2016/ntnews19aug2016.pdf; National Museum of Australia, Collaborating for Indigenous Rights, Wave Hill Walk Off, Petition to the Governor-General 1967 https://indigenousrights.net.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/384123/f23.pdf (Accessed 26 January 2020); Mayo, 2017, np. https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/a-dream-that-cannot-be-denied/; Ward, 2016, A Handful of Sand: The Gurindji Struggle, After the Walk-off Monash University Publishing. (Sources PDF) |
| Corroboration Rating | *** |
Colonial Frontier Massacres
in Australia, 1788-1930
