Site NameHornet Bank aftermath (1)
This massacre is part of a group of massacres
Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Place Name
Language Group, Nation or PeopleYiman
Present State/TerritoryQLD
Colony/State/Territory at the timeNSW
Police DistrictTaroom
Latitude-25.761
Longitude149.993
DateBetween 1 Nov 1857 and 23 Nov 1857
Attack TimeDay
VictimsAboriginal or Torres Strait Islander People
Victim DescriptionsAboriginal
Victims Killed80
Victims Killed NotesMen, women and children.
AttackersColonists
Attacker DescriptionsSettler(s), Stockmen/Drover(s)
Attackers Killed0
Attackers Killed Notes
TransportHorse
MotiveReprisal
Weapons UsedFirearm(s), Musket(s), Pistol(s)
NarrativeAfter the Yiman massacre of the Fraser family at Hornet Bank in October 1857, three large scale reprisal massacres were carried out. The first was carried out by a posse of 12 settlers known as 'The Browns', who tracked down Yiman people across the Upper Dawson Valley and shot down 80 of them. The posse included Ernest Davies, 'Arthur (or John) McArthur, George Serocold, Peter Piggot, Thomas Murray-Prior, Alfred Thomas... a man named Olton and two Aboriginal trackers from Brisbane, known as Billy Hayes and Freddy' (Richards, 2008, p 63). Historian Jonathan Richards quotes from a letter Serocold wrote to his brother in England: "Whatever you do be careful as I do not wish anybody to be able to read what I have written ...Twelve of us turned out and taking rations with us, we patrolled the country for 100 miles round for three weeks and spared none of the grownup blacks which we could find" (Richards, 2008, p 64). Settler George Lang, in a letter to a relative Gideon Scott Lang, said that local squatters and their 'confidential overseers' shot 'upwards of eighty men, women and children' (Lang, 1858).
SourcesA63 Autobiographies, George Lang to GS Lang, 31 October 1858; Davies, 1958, pp 36-39; Richards, 2008, pp 23, 63-64. (Sources PDF)
Corroboration Rating***