Flying Foam massacre

The Flying Foam Massacre refers to a series of atrocities committed against Jaburara (also spelled Yaburrara or Yapurarra) Aboriginal people around Flying Foam Passage on Murujuga (Burrup Peninsula) in Western Australia between February and May 1868. The killings were carried out by colonial settlers, including pearlers and pastoralists, in retaliation for the deaths of a police officer, a police assistant, and a local workman. Estimates of the number of Jaburara people killed across the atrocities range widely, from 15 to 150 men, women and children, according to official sources and oral tradition.

The events began after Police Constable William Griffis allegedly abducted a young Aboriginal woman at gunpoint and raped her, then apprehended her husband, Coolyerberri, on 6 February 1868 for allegedly stealing flour from a pearling boat. In response, nine Jaburara men carried out an overnight rescue attempt, during which Griffis was speared and killed while freeing Coolyerberri. An Aboriginal police assistant named Peter and a pearling worker named George Breem were also killed during the same episode, and a pearling lugger captain, Henry Jermyn, disappeared around the same time. Three Jaburara men were subsequently arrested and convicted of Griffis' murder; they were initially sentenced to death, but the sentences were commuted to twelve years' penal servitude on Rottnest Island.

Following the killing of Griffis, Peter, and Breem on 7 February 1868, pearlers and pastoralists from the surrounding region organised two armed and mounted parties of "special constables," with the approval and support of Robert John Sholl, the Government Resident in Roebourne. These parties travelled overland and by sea to Murujuga, the heartland of the Jaburara people, converging on the peninsula in a pincer movement. Official sources and oral tradition indicate that one atrocity, carried out against a Jaburara camp at King Bay on 17 February 1868, killed at least 15 people, including children. The wider series of atrocities is understood to have been a principal factor in the sharp decline of the Jaburara population, and remains significant and contested in native title cases involving Jaburara descendants, as well as in cultural heritage matters concerning the World Monuments-listed Jaburara rock art on Murujuga.

The massacre has since become a focus of public remembrance. On 17 February 2013, the 145th anniversary of the King Bay atrocity, Aboriginal elders and other leaders held the first Flying Foam Massacre Remembrance Day at the King Bay massacre site, with supporting events held at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, the Western Australian and New South Wales Parliaments, the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, the Tandanya Indigenous Arts Centre in Adelaide, and towns in Victoria. As of January 2025, the National Police Memorial in Canberra commemorates Griffis as a police officer who died on active duty, with a description of his death that omits the rape he allegedly committed and the subsequent massacre.