| Narrative | This massacre survives as oral history in the Borroloola region in the NT. 'Massacre Inlet' was named because Aboriginal people were rounded up, herded into an inlet and shot. The name of the inlet is well known to the people of the Gulf country. The Garawa Land and Sea Country Plan, p 7 states, 'In the mid-1800s, European explorers, stockmen, drovers and pastoralists began to pass through our country using our tracks and rivers as stock routes. Our country was well suited to grazing cattle and by 1874 permanent pastoral occupation had been established. Much of their settlement on country was not done peacefully. As more settlers came it became harder for us to access the places we visited for food and water. Our Elders were chased away and even shot at and killed. We called this time is [sic] our history Wabulinji (‘Wild Time’) and is especially painful as our people struggled and died fighting to stay on country and keep their families alive.' The history of the Burke Shire (Queensland Places, nd) carries this account: 'Further west along the unsealed Doomadgee road is the Hells Gate roadhouse for tourists and travellers. The name is a reminder of the pass through the Constance Range where travellers in the 1870s faced Aboriginal attack. Massacre Inlet, north of Hells Gate, marks the place where European settlers from the Westmoreland homestead slaughtered nearly all the Ngyanga Aborigines in 1884 in reprisal for an attack.' Massacre Inlet is marked on 1936 and 1945 pastoral maps of Northern Australia. |
