| Narrative | Although there is no first hand account of the Slaughterhouse Creek massacre, a second hand account was recorded by magistrate, Edward Denny Day, a few months later, in a letter to NSW Colonial Secretary Edward Deas Thomson, 31 July 1838. He said that Aboriginal people had 'been repeatedly pursued by parties of mounted men and armed stockmen, assembled for the purpose, and that great numbers of them had been killed at various spots, particularly at Vinegar Hill, Slaughter-house Creek and Gravesend, so called by the stockmen, in commemoration of the deeds enacted there.' (Day to Thomson, 31 July, 1836) According to stockman William Telfer, who prepared in 'The Wallabadah Manuscript, Recollections of the Early History of the Northern District of New South Wales' in 1900, (1980, p.37), 'the massacre of the blacks at Slaughterhouse Creek on the Big River where they ran the blacks into the Stockyard and destroyed them without mercy nearly two hundred were shot down.' According to historian RHW Reece, (Reece, 1974, p.34), the Slaughterhouse Creek massacre was part of 'The Bushwhack or The Drive', that took place in the months following the Waterloo Creek massacre on 26 January 1838.
According to Roger Milliss, 'A party of fifteen heavily armed stockmen... quietly surrounded the gorge... When daylight came the fifteen whites positioned on the steep slopes on either side opened up on them with muskets, carbines and shotguns, then clambered down and completed their murderous work with pistols, swords and cutlasses. Up to 300 people are said to have perished.' (1992, pp.200-3) |
| Sources | Day to Thomson, 31 July, 1838, SRNSW CSIL 38/9458, Letters From Police magistrate, Muswellbrook, NSW; Telfer, 1980; Reece 1974, p.34; Milliss 1992, pp 200-3. (Sources PDF) |
