| Narrative | After Aboriginal people killed settler Adam Wood and two shepherds, on 6 December 1828 an armed party of nine soldiers of the 40th Regiment, two constables, and guides, John Danvers and William Holmes, surrounded an Aboriginal camp at Tooms Lake at daybreak. Three days later, the guide, John Danvers, reported to Thomas Anstey, the police magistrate at Oatlands: 'One of them getting up from a small fire to a large one, discovered us and gave the alarm to the rest, and the whole of them jumpt [sic] up immediately and attempted to take up their spears in defense, and seeing that, we immediately fired and repeated it because we saw they were on the defensive part, they were about twenty in Number and several of whom were killed, two only were, unfortunately taken alive' (Danvers to Anstey, 10 December 1828, TAHO CSO 1/320/7578, p 22). The Hobart Town Courier (December 13, 1828, p 2) also reported the incident: 'The party of the 40th regiment which was led into the bush by John Danvers and William Holmes, is returned, bringing with them a black woman and her boy, the only prisoners made in the attack upon the Aborigines at the Great [Tooms] Lake at the source of the Macquarie River. Ten of the natives were killed on the spot and the rest fled.' |
