Site NameSeale Gorge
Aboriginal Place NameWarluk
Language GroupNgarinman, Bilinara
Present State/TerritoryNT
Colony/State/Territory at the timeSA
Police DistrictPalmerston
Latitude-17.411
Longitude130.792
DateBetween 1 Apr 1886 and 30 Jun 1886
Attack TimeDawn
VictimsAboriginal People
Victim DescriptionsAboriginal
Victims Killed30
Victims Killed NotesMen, women and children
AttackersColonists
Attacker DescriptionsStockmen/Drover(s)
Attackers Killed2
Attackers Killed Notes
TransportHorse
MotiveReprisal
Weapons UsedFirearm(s)
NarrativeThe North Australian (April 30, 1886, p 3) and NTTG (May 1, 1886, p 2) reported (non-fatal) spearings of Victoria River Station workers on 30 April 1886 and 1 May 1886. The NT News (Hope 2016, p. 12) reported: ‘According to his stories [Phillip Yamba Jimmy], Seale Gorge is not just a resting place for the murdered, but a massacre site in itself. "Two (white) men heaped up wood until there was a large pyre," he said. Author and historian Darrell Lewis wrote extensively of the region's violence in his book A Wild History: Life and Death on the Victoria River Frontier and knew the stories. "I don't know of any documentation, but it doesn't mean it's myth and legend” he said’.
Ronnie Wavehill Wirrpnghayarri, (cited in Charola & Meakins 2016, pp 32-39) recounted: "This happened right at the start when kartiya (Europeans) found the place on the east side of the Victoria River (the site of original Wave Hill Station) and they made their camp...Those kartiya had a lot of rifles and they had men with them too, Aboriginal men. Where could they have been from? Maybe Darwin or Queensland — Aboriginal people who used to live alongside kartiya. They came to shoot. ‘Well,’ they asked each other, ‘where to go from here?’ ‘We can go up west to Warluk (upstream from Daguragu).’ Right here to the west they went on horseback, along the river at Daguragu, going to Seale River (Steven’s Creek). At Warluk, ngumpin mob lived as different tribes mixed together: Mudburra, Gurindji, Ngarinyman perhaps and Nyininy. They used to travel north, south, east, west. The Pirlingarna tribe as well…They went down there and heard voices calling out. ‘True! There are blackfellas here!’ Then they camped the night, that lot of kartiya. Early in the morning they ambushed people there and shot all the ngumpin there. They shot the whole lot of them right there at the yards at Warluk. You can go there and see where the yards are today. All around there, where that waterhole is on the eastern side and waterlilies grow, that’s the place where it happened. They shot them there where that yard is. Later it became a stock camp there for station workers…They shot everybody, perhaps on a sunny day like today. Then they went back down to the river. But in the afternoon, two of the kartiya returned. ‘You two young blokes go back!’ Why did they go back there? What for? They went up-river to the same place near the yard, that very clearing where the dead bodies remained: children, grown men and women who had been shot dead en masse. They had been killed off like dogs from their own country. White people, with their violence and aggression, had come down from Darwin and massacred people. They just left them there, dead on the ground. The two men heaped up wood until there was a large pyre. Then they dragged them one by one — an old man … another woman … another man, dragging them across. They threw them all on the fire. They didn’t bury them the decent way. They just threw them on the fire and burnt them like dogs. In those times, they would just burn those ngumpin where they shot them, not put them up in tree platforms. In the old way, ngumpin used to put their dead on platforms in trees to protect them and let their spirits finish up properly. There was nothing like that; they just piled them up! Let the fire burn them till they’re done! Another body was dragged along. The horses were tied up a little further to the east of the burning fire. They told me this story. I’m not making it up. The horses were tied up on the eastern side and the rifles were in the saddles. To the west, bodies were still being dragged onto the heap...‘Wait a minute!’ The two ngumpin moved in. From the east they were watching the kartiya, who didn’t notice anything. Their guns were in the saddles on the horses. The kartiya over there were unarmed. ‘Well, wait on now!’ They watched them drag the rest of the bodies over. Then the two kartiya took some grass, maybe spinifex, and lit the pyre from below. The fire started burning. Holding their spear bundles ready, the two ngumpin kept coming in from the east. One moved along north and the other along the south. The two kartiya stood and watched, facing west where their fire was burning those people. They were standing just like that, when suddenly they spotted the ngumpin, who were standing there with their spears hooked up. The kartiya put their hands up but those two ngumpin didn’t know what hands up meant. They went in closer and the first one took aim and hurled a spear. It was a straight shot. He got him right in the chest. The other ngumpin hooked up a spear and got the other kartiya in the same way. They fell flat with the spears still stuck in them. The two ngumpin both went over to them. With a stone they struck first one kartiya to the back of the neck, and then the other. Then they dragged them over to the fire and threw them on top, burning both of them." The two men were later speared by Aborigines and thrown on the same pyre. "That's how ngumpin would sometime get their own back. It wasn't all one-sided with just kartiya killing Aboriginal people. Nqumpin used to kill Kartiya too. It was revenge when they killed those two (white men)". (Wirrpnghayarri cited in Charola & Meakins 2016, pp 32-39).
SourcesCharola & Meakins, 2016, pp 32-29; North Australian, April 30, 1886, p 3 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article47995543; NTTG May 1, 1886, p 2 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3159411; Zach Hope, NT News, ‘Bones tell of a past steeped in horror’, 19 August 2016, p 12 http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/news/2000s/2016/ntnews19aug2016.pdf (Accessed 26 January 2020). (Sources PDF)
Corroboration Rating***