The Australian, 23 April 2016
In an extract from her new book, Thicker Than Water, published by HarperCollins on 26 April 2016, Cal Flyn talks about the massacre at Warrigal Creek in July 1843 in which between 80 to 200 Gunai (Kurnai) people were slaughtered. Ms Flyn also lists other massacres that happened in Gippsland. She reveals that the leader of the men who perpetrated the killings was ‘the Butcher of Gippsland’, her great-uncle Angus McMillan, a Scot whose people had suffered the Highland Clearances to make way for sheep. Read more at: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/cal-flyn-the-terrible-truths-in-my-family-history/news-story/7785e4d89d6cd479139be969a88f4047
Peter Gardner has written two books about Angus McMillan and the activities of colonists in Gippsland:
Our Founding Murdering Father: Angus McMillan and the Kurnai Tribe of Gippsland 1839–1865, self-published, 1987 and
Gippsland Massacres: The Destruction of the Kurnai Tribes 1800–1860, Ngarak Press, Ensay, Victoria, 1993
Two other papers on Gippsland massacres by Gardner are available online: ‘Another Gippsland Massacre–Holland’s Landing?’, accepted for publication in the Gippsland Heritage Journal in 2008, see https://petergardner.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Hollands-Landing-Massacrerev.edpdf_.pdf: and ‘Some Random Notes on the Massacres 2000–2015, see https://petergardner.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Notes-on-Massacres-rev.ed_.pdf
Resesarch for this website (ongoing) has so far discovered the following killings and massacres of Aboriginal people in Gippsland:
October–December 1840: Nuntin Station
Unknown number of Aboriginal people killed by Angus McMillan’s men.
22 December 1840: Boney Point
Unknown number of Aboriginal people killed by Angus McMillan and his men.
Between 1840 and 1850:
Boole Boole:mentioned in the Tyers’s diary. Exact date and number killed unknown.
Holland’s Landing: mentioned in local folk history. Exact date and number killed unknown.
Lake’s Entrance: mentioned in local folk history. Exact date and number killed unknown.
Medusa Point: mentioned in local folk history. Exact date and number killed unknown.
The Heart: mentioned in local folk history. Exact date and number killed unknown.
1841: Butcher’s Creek
30–35 Aboriginal people shot by Angus McMillan’s men.
1842: Bruthen Creek
‘Hundreds killed’.
1842: Skull Creek
Unknown number of Aboriginal people killed.
June? 1843: Warrigal Creek
Between 60 and 180 Aboriginal people shot by Angus McMillan and his men.
1844: Maffra
Unknown number killed.
1846: Snowy River
Eight Aboriginal people killed by Captain Dana and the Native Police.
1846: South Gippsland
14 killed.
November 1846: Unknown deaths in Gippsland
1846–47: Central Gippsland
50 or more Aboriginal people shot by a party searching for a white woman who, if she existed, was never found.
1850: Brodribb River
15–20 Aboriginal people killed.
1850: East Gippsland
15–20 Aboriginal people killed.
1850: Murrindal near Orbost
16 Aboriginal people poisoned.
1850s–1860s: Boomerang Point, Lake Reeve
Unknown number of Aboriginal people killed.