Eumeralla Wars
The Eumeralla Wars were the violent encounters between European settlers and Gunditjmara Aboriginal people in the Western District area of south west Victoria.
The conflict is named after stations on the Eumeralla River between Port Fairy and Portland where much of the conflict was located.
The conflict is considered to be a significant part of the Australian frontier wars.
Coastal Gunditjmara people came into contact with European whalers in the first decades of the 19th century.
The conflict mostly consisted of guerrilla tactics against sheep and property by Aboriginal men. The Aboriginal groups in Victoria concentrated on economic warfare, killing tens of thousands of sheep. Large numbers of British settlers arrived in Victoria during the 1840s, and rapidly outnumbered the Indigenous population. Mass killings and massacres of Indigenous people, including women and children, were carried out by whalers, settlers, station workers, and the Native Police Corps.
The wars lasted about 20 years, and conflict was so violent that the Native Police Corps were deployed from Melbourne to assist. Many Aboriginal people were killed, with estimates of casualties ranging from as little as 442 to as many as 7,000.
The remains of people involved in the conflict are at the Deen Maar Indigenous Protected Area.
The Convincing Ground Massacre
The Convincing Ground Massacre was a dispute between whalers and the Kilcarer gundidj clan over the ownership of a beached whale. The conflict turned violent, and the whalers shot between 60 and 200 people, leaving only two members of the clan alive. A 'convincing ground' is a term of the time for a sporting match. The massacre was recorded in the diary of Edward Henty, first permanent settler in the Port Phillip district who began whaling and sheep farming in the area in late 1834.At this time, settling on the land was not yet legal, but in 1836 the new Port Phillip District was declared as part of the Colony of New South Wales, to cover settlement in Melbourne and Portland.
Ongoing conflicts
In 1837 settlers in the Portland Bay District appealed to Governor Bourke for protection from attacks by Aborigines. In 1838 a group of 82 settlers threatened to declare a 'black war' if authorities did not give them further protection. Along with other conflicts in areas outside Melbourne, this led to the creation of the Native Police Corps. During this period the Murdering Gully massacre took place, and another massacre reported at a track called Waterloo Lane.Escalation (1841-42)
The contest over rights was reported by Edward Henty and Police Magistrate James Blair in a meeting with George Augustus Robinson, the Protector of Aborigines in 1841. Robinson visited the area to speak to squatters in 1841, and to the Gunditjmara people in 1842.In 1842, white inhabitants from the Port Fairy area wrote a letter to then superintendent of the Port Phillip District, Charles La Trobe requesting support from Melbourne for the damage to people and property in the area. The superintendent responded:
The destruction of European pro-perty, and even the occasional sacrifice of life, by the hands of the savage tribes among whom you live, if unprovoked and unrevenged, may justly claim sympathy and pity. But the feeling of abhorrence which one act of savage retaliation or cruelty on your part will rouse, must weaken, if not altogether obliterate every other, in the minds of most men ; and I regret to state, that I have before me a state-ment in a form which I dare not discredit, showing that such acts are perpetrated among you.La Trobe describes the nighttime 'murder of no fewer than three defenceless aboriginal women and a child in their sleeping-place'.
The letter included the settler's complaints of conflicts in that 'principally occurred' in February and March 1842.
| Name of complainant | Settlers killed | Settlers injured | Animals taken | Weapons taken | Other items |
| Mr. Ritchie | 1 | 100 sheep | 1 | 2 huts cleared | |
| Mr. Campbell | 200 sheep | 10 tons of potatoes | |||
| Messrs. Kilsom and Bernard | 2 | 5 horses; with 7 cows and 40 calves killed | |||
| Mr. Loughnan | 600 sheep taken, 130 recovered | 2 | 2 huts cleared | ||
| Messrs. Bolden | 1 | 10 cows and 40 calves killed | |||
| Mr. Whitehead | 2 | 1 flock of sheep, mostly recovered | |||
| Mr. Muston | 1 | 200 sheep | |||
| Mr. Burchet | Shepherd fired at | ||||
| Mr. Cox | 1 | 2 horses, flock of sheep | |||
| Mr. Hunter | 1 flock of sheep | huts robbed | |||
| Messrs. Hutcheson and Kid | 1 | ||||
| Messrs. Carmichael and Jamieson | 1 horse | ||||
| Messrs. Kemp | 30 sheep | ||||
| Mr Farie | 50 sheep | ||||
| Captain Webster | 1 | 350 sheep | |||
| Mr. Black | 50 sheep | ||||
| Mr. Thompson | 1 | 260 sheep | |||
| Mr. Gill | 300 sheep | ||||
| Mr. Cameron | 700 sheep, mostly recovered | ||||
| Mr. Bromfield | 1 | 180 sheep | station robbed | ||
| Mr. Faloye | 1 'very valuable bull', some calves | ||||
| Dr. Martin | 6 cows, 3 bullocks, 20 calves | ||||
| Dr. Woolley | 1 | Cattle driven off | |||
| Mr. Aylman | 200 ewes and lambs | ||||
| Mr. Barnet | 450 ewes and lambs |
The attack that La Trobe described is the most famous massacre of the period, Lubra Creek, in which three women and a child were shot, and another woman died later of wounds. Because the victims included women and children, and the attack was unprovoked--the group were not found with sheep nor western clothing, and the families were asleep at the time--the massacre was widely condemned. Unusually, three of the men involved in the attack were tried at the Supreme Court in Melbourne. There is therefore extensive documentation and evidence of this massacre, although the men were found not guilty by the jury.
Clashes with Native Police (1843)
In 1843, the Native Police were brought in from Melbourne to take part in fighting against other Aboriginal people which included attacks upon the Gunditjmara and Jardwadjali at the Crawford River, Mt Eckersley, Victoria Range and at Mt Zero. Henry EP Dana was the commander of the Native Police Corps and encouraged the police to shoot rather than make arrests. Under the white Sergeant Windridge the Corps were engaged in a number of violent and fatal engagements.In 1843, a skirmish broke out between the Corps and local Aboriginal people with a large number of stolen sheep. The fight continued all night. During the fight, information came that Basset the owner of the sheep had been murdered and 200 sheep had gone. 8 or 9 Aboriginal men were shot.
19 October 1843, Mr Lockhart's dray had been attacked and robbed, in the attempt to recover the stolen items and arrest some of the men responsible resulted in 2 local Aboriginal men being killed.
Another search during this tour of duty led to more deaths. One of the troopers was recorded by Assistant Protector William Thomas as claiming 17 Aboriginal men had been killed, though this number was later disputed.
It was about this time that T.A. Browne settled at the property he called Squattesmere. T.A. Browne became a popular author, writing as Rolf Boldrewood, and wrote a chapter about the Eumeralla war in his book Old Melbourne Memories.
Before I arrived and took up my abode on the border of the great Eumeralla mere, there had been divers quarrels between the old race and the new. Whether the stockmen and shepherds were to blame—as is always said—or whether it was simply the ordinary savage desire for the tempting goods and chattels of the white man, cannot be accurately stated. Anyhow, cattle and sheep had been lifted and speared; blacks had been shot, as a matter of course; then, equally so, hut-keepers, shepherds, and stockmen had been done to death.
Later conflict
Settlers went on 'hunting parties', for example 13 hunting parties described by the writer and diarist Annie Baxter of Yambuk in 1845-1847.Gunditjmara Elder Aunty Iris Lovett-Gardiner from Lake Condah recalled the information passed down to her from her family who had survived:
there was massacres all over the place but they probably weren’t recorded, because they had a shooting board that they had with Aboriginal people…they went out an’ they shot ‘em an’ they come from every where to have a shoot against the Aboriginal race…an’ they shot women, kids and everything else…an’ that wasn’t…you know they wouldn’t say how many they shot, they wouldn’t put that down, because it was sport to them, it was like shooting animals…The last massacre was at Murder's Flats in the early 1850s. Another proposed final date is 1859 for the Lake Bolac massacre of 11 people.
Displacement
Many Aboriginal people were displaced by the settlers, and the Victorian Government created Aboriginal reserves to house them; some were moved to Lake Condah Mission after its establishment in 1867.Artistic representations
AO wrote based on the Eumeralla Wars. The work was performed in Port Fairy and .Indigenous artist Rachael Joy has created which she describes as 'like my Guernica'.
A monument was unveiled in 2011 in "memory of the thousands of Aboriginal people who were massacred between 1837 and 1844 in this area of Port Fairy".