Henry Munro arrived in the colony in November 1834 as a man of means with introductory letters and a prestigious family background. His father was Professor Munro of Edinburgh College.
The ship which brought Henry Munro to the colony also carried Mr Charles Christie, his wife Jane and their three children.
Upon arrival in Sydney, Mr Munro established himself as a grazier in Boro creek NSW and employed Charles Christie to oversee his station.
Mrs Jane Christie was much younger than her husband and by all accounts a very attractive woman. Her beauty was not lost on Henry Munro who pursued her and eventually, she consented to marry him. It is likely Mr Munroe connected with the Christies during the voyage to the colony even though Munroe travelled in a private cabin while the Christie family was crammed into steerage.
Whether Munro’s desire for Mrs Christie began during the voyage or after Mr Christie came into his employ can only be speculated upon.
After three years in NSW, Henry Munro overlanded with the Christie’s and took up new holdings on the Campaspe River, 110 miles north of Melbourne and 40 miles northeast of Bendigo.
In April 1838 Henry Munro took up land on Dja Dja Wurrung country and called it ‘Spring Plains’, Charles Christie was his overseer.
In January 29, 1840, Mr Munro told GA Robinson that when he first came to his sheep station there were numerous huts of the natives on the creek and a few miles below the junction the huts of the natives were very numerous.
Mr Munro and his neighbours caused diabolical problems for the Dja Dja Wurrung.
Among Mr Munro’s neighbours were ‘Barfold’ taking up 57000 acres, owned by William Yaldwin and managed by overseer, John Coppock. Coppock had little control over his men and according to accounts Coppock later gave his nephew, his men shot Aboriginal people, men, women and children and there was nothing he could do to stop them.
Another neighbour, William Bowman, had ‘Sutton Grange’ and was described by Aboriginal assistant protectorate, ES Parker as a man who shot Aboriginal people on sight. Bowman had only been at his station a few weeks when he began complaining to the superintendent in Melbourne about troubles his men were having with the Blacks.
It is difficult to believe this ‘trouble’ was instigated by the Dja Dja Wurrung as Bowman’s men were known to abscond and spend time with Aboriginal people. Just what is meant by ‘spending time’ can only be guessed. The luring of Aboriginal girls with promises of sugar and tobacco and then holding these girls captive to repeatedly rape was known to occur. An early account of this happening can be found in Murder and Misfortune on the Mount Alexander Road, by Lenore Frost, pg 10.
GA Robinson wrote that when Aboriginal men accosted the perpetrators of such crimes – who were usually shepherds with remote outstations. The shepherds would give sheep in return for their life. Then, when the flocks were counted and sheep found missing the shepherds would say armed Aboriginal men had stolen them.
One of Bowman’s men had his spree of ‘spending time’ cut short as his body was found showing signs of being repeatedly speared.
G. A. Robinson gives further information on a shepherd capturing and raping an Aboriginal woman – on Saturday 23rd May 1840. On page 182 of Dr Ian D Clark’s extracts from GA Robinson’s Journal. This incident describes the killing of Mr Rutledge’s man in early 1839 where 10 to 18 armed Aboriginal men came to the shepherd’s hut and killed him. These men told the whites they did it because this man had abused Aboriginal women. The white men reported the killers took the victim’s kidney fat. Mr William Rutledge, an overlander of 1838 founded Port Fairy and held the contract for overland mail from 1839 for several years. The murder of the shepherd occurred near the Goulburn River according to Port Phillip Gazette.
This article failed to mention the killing of the shepherd was a reprisal for the rape of an Aboriginal woman.
The pressure upon the Dja Dja Wurrung was immense and within twelve months, the best-squatting sites in the Campaspe district were secured. This covered an area of two thousand square kilometres and was stocked with an estimated 35,000 sheep, 4,000 head of cattle and 200 men, most of whom were assigned, convicts.
Trouble between the Dja Dja Wurrung and the establishing stations continued to escalate resulting in a handful of deaths of shepherds and an unrecorded number of Aboriginal people.
The situation deteriorated until June 1838 when Barfold station was on the receiving end of a reprisal attack where two convicts (a hut keeper and watchman) were found dead and 1200 sheep went missing. It must be remembered that Barfold was the station where overseer John Coppock admitted his men were in the habit of randomly shooting dead Aboriginal people, men, women and children. wikipedia Waterloo Plains massacre Read John Coppocks letter
John Coppock alerted his neighbours of the theft and between 16 and 19 men were mustered from surrounding stations. These included Barfold, Charles Ebden’s Carlsruhe station, William Bowman’s Sutton Grange and Henry Munro’s Spring Plains station. wikipedia Waterloo Plains massacre
The following year, 1839, Henry Munro was speared by Aboriginal people while recovering his stock from a raiding party. Apparently, a hut was robbed and Mr. Munro and Mr Christie rode furiously into the midst of the Aboriginals thought responsible. Spears were thrown and the white men began firing. Mr. Munro received a spear wound that disabled him whereupon the Aboriginal people allowed their attackers to leave the scene. It is remarkable that Mr Munro and Mr Christie were allowed to depart without further harm after instigating the attack and firing upon those present. – This account is from Port Phillip Patriot and Melbourne Advertiser’ Monday 22nd July 1839
In November 1839 Henry Munro wrote to the newspaper complaining of loss of stock and the general fear among his men due to attacks by Aboriginal people. He wrote, he had, ‘never in anyway encouraged or provoked them.’
Henry Munro’s letter neglects to mention provocative acts such as the massacre of Aboriginal people the year before known as the Waterloo Plains massacre nor the indiscriminate shooting of innocent Aboriginal people by the men of Barfold station, the random killings made by William Bowman of Sutton Grange as stated by ES Parker or the atrocities against Aboriginal girl’s as noted by GA Robinson.
Mr Munro’s letter goes on to threaten, ‘I expect every moment that we shall be obliged to use harsher means, otherwise, suffer our men to be killed, and our sheep taken from us.’
GA Robinson and ES Parker visited Henry Munro in Jan-Feb 1840 and during this time were shown around the various stations on the Campaspe by Charles Christie.
Mr Munro and Mr Christie expected action to be taken against Aboriginal people responsible for trouble on the stations however the protectorate and his assistant began an investigation to see if there were two sides to the story.
GA Robinson and ES Parker were told by Mr Munro that when they first arrived the plains were covered with murnong and the kangaroo were so abundant one once came to the door of their tent and knocked down a child. Emu were also abundant but now there are none to be seen.
GA Robinson encouraged an open discussion on the trouble and the Blacks made a bold front and stood their ground armed with spears. They demanded food and threw their beads and knives on the ground saying they wanted jumbuc (sheep) and flour. These people were hungry and trinkets were of no use to them. 26th Jan. GA Robinson’s journal.
It appeared to Robinson that the Aboriginal people were being impacted by the squatter’s pastoral pursuits to the point of starvation. The native animals which were abundant at the time of the squatter’s arrival were now scarce as were the once plentiful fields of murnong tubers. The Aboriginal people were rightly angry – they could not find land they could safely traverse. They had been made scapegoats by dishonest shepherds, their women violated and their people shot on sight. When they fought back they were attacked and massacred.
GA Robinson was disgusted with the greed of the squatters and noted they had no desire to share the land. They took everything they could. He wrote the squatters were in control of more land than an English Lord yet complained they had to pay £10 a year in lease.
One of Mr Henry Munro’s neighbours was Capt. Charles Hutton of ‘Campaspe Plains’ station. He had soil deep and rich and to prove it he thrust a stick two feet into the soil. GA Robinson wrote that Mr Hutton’s house was in a beautiful position surrounded by extensive plains of some thousands of acres of good sheep country with mainly open forest hills extending tens of thousands of acres. His house has two large rooms, plastered inside and out and plastered ceilings and well-built doors and windows and boarded floors, good kitchen and stove. The garden grows excellent vegetables, carrots, turnips, kohl, peas in abundance beans and potatoes and an English garden of flowers.
GA Robinson wrote on 24th Jan 1840 that Mr Hutton vows to keep the Blacks living in terror. To keep them in subjection by fear and to punish them wholesale. On Jan 25 GA Robinson wrote that Mr Hutton said, ‘it was never intended that a few miserable savages were to have this fine country’.
GA Robinson wrote that when Mr Henry Munro first came to his sheep station in April 1838 there were numerous huts of the natives on the creek and a few miles below the junction the huts of the natives were very numerous, like villages. 29 Jan 1840. It took just two years to bring the Aboriginal people to the point of starvation.
GA Robinson spoke with a man at Mr Munro’s station about the shooting of Blacks and the fellow replied, ‘what if I was? Do you think I would be fool to tell you, to be hung?’
Henry Munro and his neighbours were furious they were under suspicion for any wrong-doing. Outraged but unable to prevent Robinson and Parker’s investigation Charles Christie wrote a scathing letter to the newspapers dated 9th April 1840 and published on Wednesday 15th April 1840.
Previously, Mr Christie had been arrested and fined over £80 for operating a sly grog shop. Charles Christie believed Mr ES Parker was responsible for the reporting of his sly liquor manufacture and wrote a letter to the newspapers published on 25th April 1840 accusing him of the act.
During the period of GA Robison’s visit, Henry Munro was busy conducting his wooing of Mrs Jane Christie. They married one year later and a notice in the newspaper advertised their union.
MELBOURNE, Saturday 13th February 1841 .—Fashionable Marriages.—Married a few days ago, Henry Munroe, Esq., of Campaspe Plains, son of Professor Munro of Edinburgh College, to the widow of the late Mr Christie.
Mr Charles Christie was not dead. The explanation for Mrs Christie being described as a widow was that before being married to Charles Christie she was married to his brother, James Christie. James and Charles Christie had run a shipping business in Venezuela which had run into financial trouble and it is thought James’ death was the result of foul play during an investigation into the loss of funds.
Henry Munro’s house on the Campsape was described in a letter from Munro’s brother who spent some months there in 1842.
The cottage and things are very comfortable; his cottage is built of upright slabs of wood and plastered inside which is quite sufficient protection against any weather here, and is divided into half a dozen rooms of convenient size. In front there is a verandah which we enjoyed very much in the fine evenings. Detached from the cottage and behind it is a cottage which contains a kitchen and a store room. It is a great luxury in a hot climate to have the kitchen separate from the house. By this arrangement, both heat smell and noise are avoided and when the temperature is above 100, this is no slight comfort.
After Jane formalized her relationship with Henry Munro, Charles Christie took to drink and left the district.
However, the marriage between Henry Munro and Jane Munro ended too soon as the poor woman passed away one year later aged 43 through illness.
Charles Christie’s story was retold by Cuthbert Fetherstonhaugh (1837-1925) in his reminiscences titled ‘After Many Days’ published in 1917. He wrote of meeting Charles Christie in 1854 when Charles would have been 61. Mr Fetherstonhaugh was at the time surveying the Goulburn River. In this extract, Charles Christie refers to Jane as his wife;
When we camped at Kerrisdale on King Parrot Creek. We had for a cook a nice old man named Christie, who had certainly seen better days. He let out to me one day that he had been fairly well off at one time at a place called Bona Creek, near Goulburn in NSW, but his wife, who was much younger than he, and a very handsome woman, had run away with a Victorian squatter from near Portland Bay and had taken their only son with her. He told me that he had taken to drink and gone right downhill.
Cuthbert Fetherstonhaugh can be found in the Australian Dictionary of Biography
After the death of his wife, Henry Munro was in charge of the Christie children and resettled the family in 1843 to the tiny hamlet of Portland in southern Victoria, close to the South Australian border at the Crawford River taking ownership of a station of that name.
In 1846, Henry Munro remarried. His new bride was Catherine (Kate) Power and the marriage ceremony was held at Portland, the union produced ten children. (1)
One of Jane and Charles Christie’s boys, Francis, was thirteen years of age at the time of his mother’s death. Perhaps the turmoil of his parent’s breakup and loss of his mother along with being in the vicinity of the cruel and unfair treatment of the Dja Dja Wurrung caused the boy to lose his way. In 1850 Francis began a career in crime. He stole horses from the Campaspe area and was eventually arrested and imprisoned. After release, he joined forces with Ben Hall and Francis Gardiner (as he was then known) gained infamy for his lead role in the robbery of a gold escort at Eugowra, New South Wales in June 1862. It is considered the largest gold heist in Australian history. Frank Gardiner Bush Ranger
The following gruesome information about Mr Henry Munro’s father may shed light on Henry Munro’s brutal treatment of Aboriginal people. Henry Munro grew up in an eminent family being the son of Professor Munro of Edinburgh College who was famous for presiding over the public autopsy of serial killer William Burke. Bourke supplied fresh cadavers for dissection in anatomy lectures and after execution, Professor Munro, attended Bourke’s public autopsy. Professor Munro was noted for dipping his quill into the blood of William Burke and writing, “This is written with the blood of Wm Burke, who was hanged at Edinburgh. This blood was taken from his head.”
Charles Christie was recorded as passing away on the 16th of February at his daughter Archina’s residence in Pitt Street Sydney following a long and painful illness:
(1) Much information about the Christie family and Mr Munro can be found on this site
