January 26, 1788 was the date on which Captain Arthur Phillip took formal possession of the colony of New South Wales and raised the British flag for the first time in Sydney Cove.
In 1838 white people had settled Australia for just 51 years. Pastoralists were pushing into Aboriginal land, dispossessing Indigenous people from the land that nurtured them physically and spiritually.
Aboriginal people did not give up their land that they had looked after for millennia without a fight. White settlers engaged in many clashes with Aboriginal people at the frontier. Fearing to be outnumbered by Aboriginal tribes some settlers escalated low-level skirmishes to the atrocities we now know as Australia's massacres of Aboriginal people.
With the eyes of the law often several days' ride away the settlers had little to fear. Gangs of stockmen went on what was known as 'the Big Bushwhack' or simply 'the Drive': a hunt for Aboriginal people which lasted several months [2]. They thought there was nothing wrong with shooting Aboriginal people or raping Aboriginal women.
Among the massacres, the one at Myall Creek differs from the many other massacres of Aboriginal people in that it is a well documented and extreme example of what white people were capable of perpetrating on Indigenous peoples.
Myall Creek was the tip of the iceberg of frontier violence against Aboriginal people.
"If you do not understand Racism-White Supremacy, what it is, how it works, everything you understand will only confuse you."
- Neely Fuller Jr.
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