| Narrative | According to Ian Clark, 'this massacre is significant in that knowledge of it has survived through Aboriginal oral history.' Reconstructing from these oral records, Clark believes the incident happened in the early 1850s at a site 'known to the Kerup gundidj (more commonly known as the Kerreupjmara) as Murderers Flat,' or Darlot's Creek, Lake Condah Mission (Clark, 1995, p 52). Aboriginal woman Rose Donker nee Lovett (Donker, 1985, p 18, cited in Clark, 1995, p 52) has recounted what she knows of the massacre: '"My grandmother was Hannah MacDonald [later Lovett]. When she was small she walked with her brother Alfred and her mother from Macarthur to Condah Swamp. My grandmother was carried on her mother's back. They were looking for some place to live. They came to the Condah Swamp and there they found other Aboriginal people and families living there. There was a massacre there and they hid with their mother in the reeds until the fighting was over and then they headed off looking for somewhere safe. We were always told that Murderers Flat was where the fighting was. They were taken in and lived on the Condah Mission. I then understood they lived there as children, then as time went on they grew up there"' (Donker, 1985, p 18 cited in Clark, 1995, p 52). According to Clark, 'In Jo Sharrock's reminiscences of Lake Condah (see Savill, 1976, cited in Clark, 1995, p 52), he refers to "Harelip" Johnny Dutton, who claimed to have been one of the few survivors of the "Murdering Waterhole Massacre" as a small boy. He hid in the water among the reeds' (Savill, 1976 cited in Clark, 1995, p 52) As both accounts refer to hiding in the reeds in the same area, they most likely are two accounts of the same incident. |
