Description

Extended Data

single_DATE

1 June 1824

PLACE

8-mile Swamp.

ANPS ID

61a1

EVENTS

Three women killed

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

After the attack on Hollingshead on 31 May, according to Grant, consternation among the men on the estate increased, and the Hassalls overseer William Lane and some men arrived equipped for an expedition after the natives. Lane ordered Grant to accompany them as he had so lately seen a party. Some of the other convict stockworkers apparently begged to be allowed arms, that they might go in pursuit of the natives, else they would all be murdered. Of Lanes scratch force, only four of the party had muskets, and the fifth (Henry Castles) could only obtain a sword. They went out to where Hollingshead had been pursued (the southeast direction, close to the main road leading from OConnel-plains) and apparently returned that night after a fruitless expedition, failing to fall in with any of the natives. Grant said that when they were scouring the woods he became separated from the others, so he went to ascertain the safety of the flocks, and the stock-keepers. Then at a place called the 8-mile swamp, 7 miles from the main road, he espied the same tribe he had seen in the morning. Grant called out to Joe, one of the chiefs, who replied in an abusive and insolent way. He called to another man he obviously recognised, Simon, and in reply was answered with a shower of spears. The three womens bodies were later found by Henry Trickey, a crown servant in the employ of merchant and whaling entrepreneur Captain Thomas Raine. Trickey said he lived on his masters estate at the two-mile creek, distant five miles from OConnel-plains, and eighteen from Bathurst, called Rainville. While he was travelling between Sidmouth Valley and the two-mile creek, a trifling distance from the main road to Bathurst, Trickeys attention was arrested by a large quantity of crows, eaglehawks, and other birds of prey. He was then surprised to find the bodies of three black women, on ground called the Government reserve. William Lawson Junior was to write two weeks after the event that the women were killed in sheer frustration at not finding any warriors. He believed Lanes party fell in with a horde of their women and despatched them in return for the men.

EXACT LOCATION

YES. 'The Government Reserve' at 8-mile swamp.

CASUALTIES

Three Wiradyuri women killed

REFERENCES

Gazette, 10 June 1824, p. 2, Gazette, 12 August 1824, p. 2; Salisbury and Gresser, Windradyne of the Wiradjuri, pp. 25, 48. William Lawson Junior to Nelson Lawson, 14 June 1824, in Beard (ed.), Old Ironbark, p. 37.

LEGEND