Merriman and his brothers were said to have led the raid on the Dora Dora homestead, date unknown but probably between 1836-42. The raid lost the element of surprise when King George, a Wiradjuri Elder warned Elliot Herriot the overseer, what was planned. Elliot Herriot ordered his men into the main hut where they waited with guns ready. (1)
Yet all accounts agree that Elliot Herriot was on good terms with the Blacks for the first year or so but after that, a lot of strangers joined the little mob that frequented the station. Some of the Mitchell’s thought these Blacks were from the Tumut area and the trouble was over the spearing of cattle. When reprimanded and threatened these Blacks laid plans to kill the white men. (2)
There are many accounts of the raid but most of them are fanciful tales designed to make the Indigenous people sound foolish and incompetent which is far from the truth. (3) Lady Jane Franklin heard from a police constable at Benalla in 1839 that Aboriginal people were masters of moving about in the darkness. (4)
CA Smithwick wrote that seven of eight of the Blacks came too close to the hut and were shot but this is hard to believe when we remember Aboriginal people knew the firing range of the white men’s guns. (2) Tom Mitchell said the raid came as Aboriginal attacks usually did, in the pre-dawn darkness. (5) And Tom Mitchell’s uncle, JFH Mitchell who was a boy at the time of the attack said the Blacks set fire to the outbuildings which provided enough light for the men in the hut to shoot them with accuracy.
THE REFERENCES;
(1) AA Andrews, First Settlement of the Upper Murray.
(2) CA Smithwick, Early History of the Upper Murray, pg 2
(3) Desmond Martin, A Tale of Twin Cities. 1981. The author dramatises events making Indigenous people out to be foolish and childlike.
(4) Lady Jane Franklin’s Diary, This Errant Lady
(5) Desmond Martin, A Tale of Twin Cities. 1981. pg 48.
