Richmond River massacres

The Richmond River massacres refer to a series of violent incidents in the region around the Richmond River in north-eastern New South Wales during the mid-nineteenth century, involving killings of both Indigenous Australians and European Australians.

In 1842, five European men and a boy were left to guard a storehouse of supplies at Pelican Creek, roughly 10 kilometres north of Coraki, where sailing vessels collected loads of red cedar. According to a 1928 reminiscence attributed to T.J. Olive of Woodburn, whose father George was said to have been a squatter and participant in the later reprisal, Aboriginal people attacked the storehouse at dawn, killing the five men; only the boy escaped into the bush. When teamsters later arrived, they reportedly found the bodies mutilated and the goods stolen or destroyed. News of the killings spread among European settlers, who organised a mounted party of eleven men to retaliate, believing the killings were carried out by a coastal tribe.

This reprisal became known as the Evans Head massacre, in which approximately 100 Bundjalung Nation Aboriginal people were killed by Europeans in 1842. Accounts vary as to the stated justification, with some attributing it to retaliation for the killing of a small number of sheep, and others to the deaths of the five men at Pelican Creek. The event is also referred to as the Goanna Headland massacre.

In 1853-4, in an area near the old East Ballina Golf Course, a contingent of the Native Police, including both Native Police trackers and European troopers, killed between 30 and 40 Aboriginal people of the Arakwal tribe of the Bundjalung people, including men, women, and children, while they slept. Many others who fled were badly wounded. The killings reportedly followed a belief that Aboriginal people from north of the Tweed River, who were being sought for the killing of some Europeans, had fled south to the Richmond River area. The Native Mounted Police patrol stayed the previous night at a local public house before riding out at approximately 3am to a camp of 200 to 300 people near Black Head, surrounding it and opening fire at close range. The matter was reported to the New South Wales Government, but no action was taken against those involved. Aboriginal oral tradition describes people being shot, some being driven off the cliff at Black Head, and bodies left unburied at Black Head or Angels Beach.

During the early 1860s, a mass poisoning was attempted against the Nyangbal South Ballina clan, who numbered around 200 people at the time. Poisoned flour was reportedly given to the clan to make damper; when older people and children initially refused to eat the unfamiliar food, they survived, but nearly 150 adults were found dead the following morning.