Myall Creek Station

In his book, This Whispering In Our Hearts, Henry Reynolds refers to “the great brutality of the frontier”. He considers how life there in colonial times brutalised the behaviour and attitudes of some settlers towards the indigenous population. Unconscionable acts of cruelty and violence went unchallenged by many. The Myall Creek Massacre in June 1838 forced the wider population to acknowledge the existence of this brutality and do something about stopping it.

Between 20 and 30 Aboriginal people, including women and children, were brutally killed by twelve stockmen at Myall Creek Station, west of Inverell in New South Wales. The following December saw seven of the stockmen convicted and executed for the murders.

LYRICS:
It’s late afternoon, there’s dust on the tracks
A dozen stockmen come searching for “blacks”
Just to frighten them maybe give them a scare
But they’ve guns at the ready And swords in the air.

At Myall Creek Station thirty natives are found
They’ve returned here to camp on old tribal ground
On Henry Dangar’s Myall Creek run
They quietly wait the setting sun.

The horsemen approach, hot and dry from their ride
The natives, fearing danger in the stockmen’s hut hide
They are soon found and led towards the sun
That’s the last they’ll see of the Myall Creek run.

The women and children they wail and they moan
The men are tied up no mercy they’re shown
Twenty minutes later gunshots fill the air
There’ll be none to relate this cowardly affair.

The killers return the following night
And early next morning try to hide the sight
Of bodies they’d killed without shame or remorse
Black bodies they’d mangled as a matter of course.
© Jim Low