| Narrative | Richard Addey, stock-keeper to Andrew Gatehouse, was killed by Oyster Bay Aborigines. The reprisal killings that followed were not made public for nearly 50 years when historian James Bonwick published the interview he conducted thirty years after the incident with a stockman, James Gumm, employed by George Meredith. He told Bonwick that a party of thirty colonists – comprising constables, soldiers [of the 40th Regiment], and neighbours, the master of the slain stock-keeper, John Radford and himself - set off in bloody revenge. They heard that a large group of Aborigines were camped for the night in the gully by Sally Peak, ten kilometres from Bushy Plains, on the border of Prosser’s Plains. James Gumm told Bonwick: “They proceeded stealthily as they neared the spot; and, agreeing upon a signal, moved quietly in couples, until they had surrounded the sleepers. The whistle of the leader was sounded, and volley after volley of ball cartridge was poured in upon the dark groups around the little camp-fires. The number slain was considerable.” |
