| Narrative | Dillon Cox, Wentworth D'Arcy Uhr, James Barry, William Harvey, James Broderick, Jimmy Soo and Ah Choo were taking a party of 125 horses from Burketown to Port Darwin in June 1872 when they encountered Aboriginal warriors in the vicinity of Lagoon Creek near the Qld border. According to Tony Roberts (2005, pp16-17):
"As the horse party with four of the men made camp beside a deep creek in the late afternoon, Aboriginals were heard calling out from along the creek. Cox and Ah Choo readied themselves to guard the horses, while Uhr and Barry rode across to the far bank intending to find and confront whoever was there. Each man was armed with a rifle and a revolver. A boomerang was thrown, narrowly missing Barry, and as he charged his horse at the assailant a large number of Aboriginals ran up towards them from the creek bed and the shooting began. The Aboriginals retreated but then emerged on the other side of the creek, trying to surround Cox and Ah Choo. They were driven off and chased back along the creek by Uhr and Barry.
It was Uhr's custom in situations like this not merely to drive the Aboriginals off but to ‘teach them a lesson’."
Each man was armed with a .45 calibre rifle and a pistol. Uhr had a Martini-Henry rifle which could fire accurately to 1000 yards and Barry had a Westley Richards which could fire up to 400 yards.
Barry later published an edited account of the expedition in the Brisbane Courier (October 27, 1874, p 3). As Roberts (2005, p 17) noted: "Barry does not reveal how many Aboriginal casualties there were, but detailed descriptions of numerous frontier battles show that a large force of Aboriginals with vastly superior numbers and little or no knowledge of guns will retreat only after many of their number have fallen." |
