Words in Action | Myall Creek: a name that stays

So long that I can’t remember when this familiarity began.

Was it in school, in something I read? Maybe in a social studies textbook at high school.

When did it appear in my consciousness?

Myall Creek.

I didn’t even know where it was.

And yet, it was a name that held power.

Even with the knowing of the name, there was a lack of background.

What did this place mean?

Why was it such a slippery thought? Coming and going.

“Yes, I know about it.” Then nothing more.

For so long, this is how it sat in my consciousness.

This slippery thought.

It was as if there was more to find out, but something was in the way.

A blockage? It was like trying to grasp on to something that had no real shape, no real form, still partly hidden.

Then there was a small remembering.

A gap in the wall of resistance.

Could I peer through?

Myall Creek.

Something to do with justice.

A trial.

Men found guilty.

This was the slightly less slippery thought that was now part of my remembering.

A more acceptable thought.

But there was still some echo — a faint knocking.

More to uncover.

I found Myall Creek on the map — a place near the Big River, as the Gwydir was called back then.

I read.

I read more.

And then I realised why the hesitancy, the looping back to just the name.

It was a massacre site.

A premeditated and unprovoked massacre carried out by 13 white men — a settler with a band of 12 former and assigned convicts.

A massacre so horrific, so brutal, so beyond any horrors that can be imagined.

Tweny-eight innocent Aboriginal old men, women, young children and babies hacked to death, decapitated and then burned.

I had been complicit in the ‘great Australian silence’.

The turning away from the violence on which our nation was founded.

I was part of the willingness to focus on the unfortunate impact of disease on the original inhabitants.

On the heroic taming of the land, without understanding what this ‘taming’ was actually code for.

I now understood that the early settlement of the New England area — like many others across the land — was a period of intense frontier violence and massacres, of fierce local resistance resulting in out-of-proportion retaliation for the taking of sheep or cattle.

Of the race to claim land that was considered there for the taking.

So now many years later, on the long weekend in June, I headed north to Bingara, to Myall Creek.

A beautiful part of the country, so different to the flat plains of the Goulburn Valley.

Instead of the long straight roads we’re used to, the roads curved and weaved up and down across the landscape, negotiating hills whose thickly wooded tops gave a feeling of enclosure, of a smaller sky.

Coming into Bingara, an unexpected row of Myall Creek Massacre Memorial flags fluttered, almost as a welcome.

A surprising, but very public naming of the massacre so long ago.

The flags, standing as signposts to my destination, were repeated at the turn on to Delungra Rd.

Driving along, there were occasional glimpses of sunlight on the water of the creek to the left.

Paddocks, a vibrant green from recent rains.

The road traversed the hills’ ups and downs and bends, as again the wooded ridges enclosed the landscape.

At the crest of an open hill was the sign — Myall Creek Massacre memorial.

My destination.

I’d come for a time of quiet contemplation before the crowds the next day.

As I walked down the gently winding downhill path, pausing to read each plaque and absorb the story I felt I now knew, I could feel there was something else about this place.

Something so unexpected I took some time to fully grasp it.

Something so profoundly moving.

As I approached the imposing memorial stone that looked out over the creek at the bottom of the hill, the breeze dropped.

The tree-tops stopped swaying.

In this place of deep pain and unimaginable horror, there was a stillness and sense of peace that gently enveloped me.

I stood quietly for I don’t know how long, just listening.

Then I heard the birds.

As I turned and slowly retraced my steps, I felt different.

I was ready for the commemoration the next day.

The sun was rising over the hills and the mist lifting in the chilly morning as people gathered at the Myall Creek memorial hall.

There were words of welcome and directions about our walk along the road and up the track to the ceremonial ground.

Traditional dance and language formally welcomed us.

Acknowledging words. “As we gather today, we remember, with deep sadness and shame, the massacre that was perpetrated on the slopes below on the 10th of June, 1838. We acknowledge we are all heirs in different ways to this history of injustice.”

A brush of dark red ochre on our foreheads and the healing smoke readied us for the walk to the memorial stone.

Students along the way told us the story of the massacre, always ending with “We remember them”.

Quiet murmurs of conversation petered out as we approached the end of the path.

People moved closer together, making room for everyone.

The sound of the bullroarer informing the spirits of the dead, that a ceremony was about to start.

We heard the voices of both descendants of those who survived the massacre and descendants of the perpetrators. We heard the voices of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students bearing witness to the past.

This gave me pause to reflect on the transformation of Myall Creek from such a dark place of pain to a place of welcome, love and peace.

This transformation made possible by the remarkable gift of forgiveness offered by the local Gomeroi community and the courage of the descendants of the perpetrators to acknowledge the truth about their ancestors.

To speak the truth together.

We left with the healing words of Elder Aunty Sue Blacklock as she spoke about the power of the truth to set us free.

Words that we carried with us.

Words that reminded us that the path to our future passes through the pain of our past.

“So we listen, learn from each other.

“As we come together, we weave a new story for this country.

“We have the power to do this.

“Let’s all work together from ancient dreaming towards a new dreaming for our country.”

These are the words of the first plaque on the walkway at the Myall Creek Massacre memorial.

You are walking on sacred ground,

This path overlooks a place that made Australian history. On June 10, 1838, at least 28 Wirrayaraay and neighbouring Aboriginal people were brutally murdered by a group of 12 stockmen. This horrific event became known as the Myall Creek Massacre.

Just this once in Australian history, there was a linking of honourable people of integrity from all levels of society. For the first time in the colony, seven of the people who committed this crime were brought to justice and hanged.

The conscience of our nation rested with the courageous evidence of convict hut keeper George Anderson and station overseer William Hobbs; landowner Frederick Foot who brought the case to Sydney; police magistrate Edward Denny Day; and the persistent determination of Attorney-General John Plunkett and Governor George Gipps to make the grisly events of Myall Creek a turning point in our shared history.

On the June 10, 2000 — after 162 years — the descendants of both the murdered and the surviving Aboriginal people and white perpetrators joined hands in an act of reconciliation.

As you walk the path, please think of the men, women and children who died here in brutal circumstances and how you can support a more tolerant future for all Australians.

Dhiirranhi ngiyani ganunga — we remember them

To find out more about Myall Creek, visit the Friends of Myall Creek website at myallcreek.org or visit your local library and borrow:

Demons at Dusk by Peter Stewart

Murder at Myall Creek: the trial that defined a nation by Mark Tedeschi QC

Waterloo Creek by Roger Milliss.

These can be borrowed from Shepparton Library as an interlibrary loan.