| Narrative | Mounted Constable William Willshire, having been acquitted of a Central Australian murder at a trial in Port Augusta, was posted to the Victoria River District between 1893 and1895 where, according to Mulvaney (1990, np), he was able 'to commit mayhem at will'.
Willshire, writing in 1896 (pp 40-41), said: ‘In the month of June, 1894, we came across some tracks of natives that had been recently killing cattle on the Victoria Run…They scattered in all directions, setting fire to the grass on each side of us, throwing occasional spears, and yelling at us. It’s no use mincing matters — the Martini-Henry carbines at this critical moment were talking English in the silent majesty of those great eternal rocks. The mountain was swathed in a regal robe of fiery grandeur, and its ominous roar was close upon us. The weird, awful beauty of the scene held us spellbound for a few seconds’.
Rose (1992, p 12) quoted Lindsay Crawford, the first Manager of Victoria River Station, in 1895: '"…during the last ten years, in fact since the first white man settled here, we have held no communication with the natives at all, except with the rifle. They have never been allowed near this station or the outstations, being too treacherous and warlike"'.
The Gurindji referred to massacres on their land in their 1967 petition to the Governor-General following the Wave Hill Walkoff. Zach Hope, reporting in the Northern Territory News, 19 Aug 2016 (p 12) wrote: 'According to [Darrell] Lewis, Willshire talks of several violent encounters in his memoirs Land of the Dawning. One of those encounters was at Black Gin Creek, not far from Tartarr...'. |
| Sources | Roberts 2009; Willshire, 1895, pp 40-41; Morrison, https://australianfrontierconflicts.com.au/; Hope, NT News, 19 Aug 2016, p 12 'Bones tell of past steeped in horror'; D. J. Mulvaney, 'Willshire, William Henry (1852–1925)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol 12, 1990; Meakins, 2017, pp 75-77; Rose, 1992, p 12. (Sources PDF) |
