Forrest River massacre

In 1926, Leopold Overheu and Frederick Hay jointly held the Nulla Nulla pastoral property near Wyndham, Western Australia, bordering the Forrest River Aboriginal Mission run by Reverend Ernest Gribble. Hay had a history of assaulting and sexually abusing Aboriginal women, and he and Overheu had complained about Aboriginal people spearing their cattle. On 18 May 1926, Overheu made a formal complaint prompting Constable James St Jack to investigate. St Jack's patrol attacked an Aboriginal ceremonial gathering at Durragee Hill on 24 May 1926; survivors later described people being beaten, shot, and in some accounts pushed from a cliff, though St Jack and Overheu claimed only dogs were shot.

On 23 May 1926, Hay attacked and raped an Aboriginal woman, Anulgoo, in front of her husband Lumbia at Johnson Billabong. When Hay attempted to ride off, Lumbia fatally stabbed him with a spear. Hay's body was found badly decomposed days later, and authorities initially believed a group of Aboriginal people, rather than Lumbia alone, was responsible.

A larger punitive expedition, including constables St Jack and Denis Regan, special constables, settlers, and Aboriginal trackers, set out from Wyndham and combined forces on 5 June 1926. Over the following weeks the patrol rounded up and killed Aboriginal captives at several sites, including Gotegotemerrie, Mowerie, "Police Camp No. 3," and Dala, burning the remains in makeshift ovens and bonfires and disposing of ashes and bone fragments in waterholes. Lumbia was eventually captured on 1 July 1926 near the Lyne River.

Reports of killings reached Gribble and Wyndham authorities during and after the expedition. Investigations by Inspector E. C. Mitchell and Inspector William Douglas in August 1926 recovered burnt human remains, including teeth and bone fragments, at multiple sites. Douglas's report to the police commissioner stated that sixteen Aboriginal people were burned in three separate incidents. This led to the 1927 Wood Royal Commission, chaired by George Tuttle Wood, which found that 11 people had been murdered and burned at Gotegotemerrie, Mowerie, and Dala, with a further nine killed at Police Camp No. 3. The Commission noted witness disappearances and unreliable testimony from patrol members.

On the Commission's recommendation, St Jack and Regan were arrested and charged with the murder of a victim named Boondung at Dala in May 1927. A preliminary hearing before Magistrate Alfred Kidson dismissed the case as insufficient for a jury, and the case never went to trial. Both constables were reinstated and later transferred elsewhere in the police force.

Lumbia was separately tried and convicted for killing Hay in October 1926, sentenced to death, and later had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Estimates of the total number of Aboriginal victims of the punitive expedition vary widely, from the Royal Commission's finding of around 20 to unverified claims of up to several hundred. Denials that the massacre occurred persisted among some commentators into the early 2000s, despite official investigative findings.