| Narrative | This massacre occurred at the time same Mounted Constable George Murray was leading the Coniston reprisals, but did not occur as part of the Coniston expeditions.
Kimber (2003, np) wrote that Fred Raggatt, then owner of Glen Helen, discovered that Warlpiri people had killed and butchered one of his draught horses. Raggatt, “his only long-term mate George [Paddy] Tucker, Archie Giles of neighbouring Redbank station, and [Harry] Tilmouth [part-owner of Napperby Station] had followed their tracks.” The likely number of people estimated by both Kimber and Warlpiri man Dinny Japaltjarri, was 10 to 15.
He continued: “…the families took their horse-meat and their fire-sticks into some rock shelters, perched a little way up on a range section west of Central Mount Wedge. Dinny believed that, as the station men approached, a draft of wind had caused the fire-sticks to flare and given their hiding place away. The station men had taken up position among the boulders beneath the rock shelters, from which there was no escape other than coming out into the open. Their rifles had poured the bullets in, and ricocheting bullets had been deadly. After a time the shouts of the men, and the screams of the women and children, ceased. No one ever came out of the rock shelters alive, and Dinny’s family never used them again.” |
