Cullin-la-ringo massacre

In mid-October 1861, a large party of squatters led by Horatio Wills established a temporary camp at Cullin-la-ringo, a newly formed cattle station north of present-day Springsure in Central Queensland. The group, which had travelled from Brisbane over eight months with bullock wagons and more than 10,000 sheep, had drawn considerable attention from other settlers and from local Indigenous people because of its size.

On 17 October 1861, according to survivor John Moore, Aboriginal people passed through the camp throughout the day, gradually building up in numbers to at least 50, before attacking the settlers without warning using nulla nullas. The settlers attempted to defend themselves with pistols and tent poles, but nineteen of the twenty-five people present were killed, including Horatio Wills, the overseer David Baker and members of his family, the Mannion family, and several other station workers. The dead were buried at the massacre site, and some graves bear headstones. Six people survived, either because they were absent from the camp or, in Moore's case, avoided detection; survivor Edward Kenny rode to Rainworth Station to report the attack the following day. It was later reported that the attack may have been in response to the killing of Gayiri men by a neighbouring squatter, Jesse Gregson, who had wrongly accused Gayiri people of stealing cattle.

In the weeks following the massacre, police, native police and armed civilian parties carried out an extended punitive campaign against Gayiri people believed to be responsible, described as one of the most lethal reprisal operations in Australian frontier history. Contemporary accounts describe pursuers estimating opposing camps of several hundred people, and one account describes police "shot down sixty or seventy" before ceasing fire due to expended ammunition, after which native police were reported to continue pursuit. Historical estimates of the total Aboriginal death toll during these reprisals have varied, with some historians estimating around 370 dead, while a more recent study by University of Newcastle researchers estimated 90 deaths. A 1895 Chicago Tribune article claiming survivor Tom Wills had boasted of participating in reprisal killings was later examined by Australian historians and found to contain multiple factual inaccuracies inconsistent with known events.

The massacre had lasting effects on regional settlement patterns; the Old Rainworth Stone Store, built in 1862 at nearby Rainworth Station, was constructed of stone partly as a defensive measure in response to the attack. The event has since been the subject of historical scholarship, including a 1981 study by Gordon Reid, and has appeared in later literary and dramatic works.