| Narrative | When settler William Brown was killed by Aborigines in the "New Country" over the South Australian border in July 1845, John Oliver and neighbours gave chase and "some" Aborigines were killed (Blair to La Trobe , 31 July 1845, cited in Critchett, 1990, p 254). According to Michael Cannon (1990, p 154), 'Many years later, James C. Hamilton, whose family worked at "Bringalbert", some distance to the north, described what happened: "A call to arms was made – the footmen going one way and the horsemen another. They were all armed with flintlock muskets and pistols of some sort – heavy, clumsy weapons they were, but effective enough. (I have put a ball into a tree at a hundred yards with one of these pistols, and used the musket successfully as a fowling piece.) It was a bad day for the ill-fated darkies. The horsemen came up with them in the ranges, behind Narracoorte, and saw one fellow carrying poor Brown's gun, and a lubra wearing his coat. They opened fire, and many of the blacks went under. They made no show of resistance, but scattered and ran for their lives" (Hamilton, cited in Cannon, 1990, pp 154-155). |
