Early on the morning of Sunday 11th, October 1840 Major Lettsom and his men surrounded a peaceful camp of 400 Indigenous men, women and children and arrested them. One Indigenous man was killed before the people were marched at bayonet point through the streets of Melbourne and locked in the stockade.
Lettsom was looking for Merriman and Harlequin amongst others involved in the siege at Dr George MacKays station at Whorourly and other attacks on squatters.
GA Robinson wrote an account of the arrest in his journal. He said 3 tribes, Boonerong, Waverong and Tar.doon.gerong were camped on the Merri Creek and had been surrounded by the military and police force. A young man named Winberry resisted authorities and was shot dead. The rest of the people were rounded up and taken to the stockade. (1)
GA Robinson went immediately to the stockade and witnessed the horror. He wrote he found men, women and children huddled together in fear of their lives. ‘Thirty-five men and boys were chained, two by two, and separated from the rest.’
GA Robinson was disgusted writing, ‘Their wives and children and mother’s were there and witnessed a harsh and heart-rending scene.’ and that it was an ‘illegal proceeding’.
Robinson said Mr Wilkinson witnessed the bringing in of the natives and said he was shocked by the cruelty of the military and police. He said when the women, many of whom had young children and the old or infirm fell behind they were goaded with bayonets, hit with the butt end of muskets or cut with the sabre. (Mr Wilkinson presumably Thomas Wilkinson of Lonsdale street, 1840 – Ian D Clark)
In Major Lettsom’s own words, ‘I marched the whole of them (amounting in all, men, women, and children, to nearly
400) into Melbourne.
GA Robinson wrote the wounds on the natives bore out the truth of the brutal force used in their capture. Robinson then rode out to the native camp which he said was located 2 miles on the Heidelburg road and found a distressing scene.
He said the native’s utensils were scattered, spears were broken, articles of clothing lay about and a vast number of their dogs had been shot. The peaceful camp had been ransacked and anything of value taken by white ‘ruffians’. Robinson described the perpetrators of the destruction as being, ‘malicious and evilly disposed white persons’.
This outrageous event occurred 5 years after the so-called treaty where Indigenous people agreed to allow white men access to their land.
According to an eye witness, Pudg.ger.re known as Tom, the troops surrounded the camp and commenced breaking the spears. The Goulburn blacks took up their weapons but the Port Phillip natives told them to lay them down, which they did.
REFERENCE:
(1) The Journal of George Augustus Robinson, Chief protector, port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate. Dr Ian D Clark. pg 216. Sunday 11th October 1840.
