This was the research I read out at the Wonnerup Massacre March in Busselton on 22nd February 2022 at the invitation of Bill Webb Wardandi Traditional Owner from the Wardan Centre at Injidup.
‘I begin today by acknowledging the Wardandi people, Traditional Custodians of the land on which we gather today, and pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. I recognise their continued connection to the land and waters of this beautiful place, and acknowledge that they never ceded sovereignty. I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here today.’
On 18th April 1834 the colonisation of Wardandi country began when John, Charles, Vernon and Lenox Bussell arrived by boat from Augusta with servants Phoebe Bower and Elijah Dawson. They were met at the beach by some Wardandi men who showed them one of their wells, in keeping with the accommodating attitude to strangers shown by Noongar and Pibelmen people. The Bussells were accompanied by George Layman who had arrived in the Augusta district in 1831.[1] The next day George, Henry and James Chapman arrived overland with soldiers from the 21st Regiment who would set up a barracks out at Wonnerup with the help of Lieutenant Bunbury.[2] Later in that year, in October 1834, Governor Stirling led 25 police, soldiers and settlers in the Pinjarra massacre in retaliation for the theft of flour in Perth.[3] This example would later be followed by the Vasse settlers, as the district was now called, with Gaywal, the senior birdiya of the Wardandi at the Vasse a particular target over the following years.
In 1837 in July two massacres occurred that were conducted by the Bussell brothers Charles, Vernon, Lenox and Alfred. John Bussell was away in England at the time. Later on, in 1839 Captain John Molloy and his wife Georgiana left Augusta and moved up to the Vasse. John Bussell had returned from a trip to England with a new bride, and Captain Stirling had been replaced by Governor Hutt.
In 1841 a much larger punitive massacre took place on Wardandi country. The cause of this new incident was the ongoing conflict with Wardandi birdiya (leader) Gaywal. Trouble had started a year earlier when Henry Campbell was killed in the Leschenault district by Nungundung, Duncock and Gerback[4] for raping Gaywal’s daughter or perhaps for beating up one of the men who speared him. My research is still investigating the cause.[5] These three Wardandi men were flogged by the Resident Magistrate of the Leschenault district and then released. John Bussell was infuriated by this lenient treatment and later he arrested Nungundung when he came across him in the bush, confined him at Cattle Chosen and sent him up to Perth to be tried for murder. Wardandi people were very upset about this, fearing that Nungundung would be summarily killed without trial like Midgegooroo had been in 1833. Nungundung was, however, sent to Rottnest and John Bussell was instructed by Governor Hutt to not to arrest anyone else.[6]
On February 21, 1841, Gaywal and other Wardandi people were working for George Layman out at Wonnerup, helping harvest and thresh a crop. That evening around the campfire outside of Layman’s hut a dispute broke out between Wardandi men Dr Miligan and Gaywal. George Laymen came out and intervened, telling Gaywal to share his damper, the wages for his work, with Dr Miligan. He pulled Gaywal’s beard for emphasis, a huge insult in Wardandi culture. Gaywal stepped back, shouted ‘George!’ and speared him. Layman ran back into his hut and died within minutes. The settlers, led by Resident Magistrate Captain John Molloy and Justice of the Peace John Bussell, then undertook several punitive expeditions over the next weeks. On 25 February five Wardandi people were shot after being tracked through the sandhills by the settlers. Gaywal was not among the dead, so the hunt continued.[7] On 26 February Fanny Bussell noted in her diary ‘Capt. Molloy drank tea here. 7… killed. Gaywal supposed to be wounded’.[8]
The pursuit of Gaywal continued and a large punitive party went out, led by Captain John Molloy and John Bussell. They pursued the Wardandi up to Lake Minninup, shooting several, but ‘were not satisfied’.[9] According to testimony taken down by Warren Bert Kimberly in 1896 from Weelah, a Wardandi Birdiya, several other Wardandi people and colonial settlers it is known that a punitive expedition went out. Finally, on a sandbar near Lake Minninup:
“The soldiers and settlers pushed on, and surrounded the black men on the sand patch. There was now no escape for the fugitives… [Person after person] was shot, and the survivors, knowing that orders had been given not to shoot the women, crouched on their knees, covered their bodies with their bokas, and cried, “Me yokah” (woman). The white men had no mercy. The black men were killed by dozens, and their corpses lined the route of march of the avengers.” [10]
It has been noted by historian J.S. Battye in 1924 that ‘there is a sandpatch near Minninup where skulls and bones are still to be seen, and near which even present-day [Wardandi People] will not go’.[11]
Bill Webb has recounted that his ancestral grandmother was a witness to the killing of George Layman, being tied up so that she ‘couldn’t go off and warn’ the Wardandi when the Bussells and Captain Molloy gathered there two days after George Layman was killed. Bill goes on to recount:
“She said she could hear the gunshots and the screams all day, right off into the distance. And they used carbine rifles. They click up and put the shell in and you put that down, you know, and bayonets and sabres. So she said when they went off, later in the afternoon they came back and the men and the horses were completely covered in blood. The horses were foamed up and nearly dead on their feet. They couldn’t look each other in the eyes over what happened.”[12]
Governor Hutt had previously issued instructions on the treatment of Indigenous people, and this definitely broke those rules. The Vasse colonial settlers found these ideas ‘impractical, pettifogging’ and ‘closed ranks against further enquiry’ after John Bussell and Captain Molloy submitted reports on the earlier, less deadly skirmishes.[13]
Finally on 7 March 1841, Gaywal was shot and killed after a Wardandi man called Crocodile led Captain Molloy, John, Charles and Alfred Bussell and others to where he was hiding. Gaywal’s sons Woberdung, who was accused of also throwing a spear at Layman, and Kenny and Mungo were tricked aboard the boat of Captain Plaskett and detained. After a week or so, Mungo was released and Kenny and Woberdung were taken to Perth for trial.[14]
Life for the Wardandi continued to be very difficult. There were a number of further incidents of shootings of Wardandi people by the Bussell family and other settlers. The massacres undertaken by the Bussells, Captain Molloy and other colonial settlers in the Geographe Bay area are, however, largely forgotten today, with Bussell family members ignorant of their family’s history.[15] In contrast, Wardandi people have a strong oral history concerning the massacre. This forgetting of massacres on Wardandi land is an aspect of wadjela history that needs to be addressed to help reconciliation between Indigenous and white Australians.
Note
The Wonnerup Massacre is on the map of Colonial Frontier Massacres compiled by researchers working with the University of Newcastle. The researcher responsible for the Western Australian part of the map is Dr. Chris Owen.
https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/detail.php?r=889https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/detail.php?r=889
Footnotes
[1] Jennings, R. (1983). Busselton : “-outstation on the Vasse,” 1830-1850. Shire of Busselton. P. 34.
[2] Lines, W. J. (1994). An all consuming passion : origins, modernity, and the Australian life of Georgiana Molloy. Allen & Unwin. pp. 190-191
[3] Lines, W. J. (1994). An all consuming passion : origins, modernity, and the Australian life of Georgiana Molloy. Allen & Unwin. p. 199.
[4] Green, N. (1984). Broken Spears : Aborigines and Europeans in the Southwest of Australia. Focus Education Services. p. 215.
[5]White, J. (2017). ‘Paper talk,’ Testimony and Forgetting in South-West Western Australia. Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature : JASAL, 17(1), 1-13. p. 6.
[6] Shann, E. O. G. (1978). Cattle chosen : the story of the first group settlement in Western Australia, 1829 to 1841 (Facsimile ed. ed.). University of Western Australia Press. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cattle_Chosen https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cattle_Chosen/Chapter_8
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Kimberly, W. B. (1897). History of West Australia https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/History_of_West_Australia/Chapter_13 paragraph 116.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Battye, J. S. (1978). Western Australia : a History from Its Discovery to the Inauguration of the Commonwealth. University of Western Australia Press. p. 161.
[12] Webb, B. (2021). [Interview]. Wardan Aboriginal Centre Injidup 21 August 2021 p. 54.
[13] Hardwick, G. (2000a). Capt. John Molloy of the Vasse First published April 2000 in Reece R.H.W. (ed.), The Irish in Western Australia Studies in Western Australian History, Vol. 20 Department of History, University of Western Australia. pp. 11-12.
[14] Hasluck, A. (1955). Portrait with background : a life of Georgiana Molloy. Oxford University Press. p. 219.
[15] In September 2021 Sam Carmody, a descendant of John Bussell did a podcast about his discovery that his family had been involved in the Wonnerup Massacre. See Carmody, S. (Sun 19 Sep 2021, 8:05am). In The Ghosts are not Silent. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/the-ghosts-are-not-silent/13545048
Western Australian History 