In response Hugh Bryan, a shepherd, and James Neill, a hut keeper were killed in May 1839 by Taungurung people, who had robbed a hut of bedding, clothes, guns and ammunition and also ran a flock of 700 sheep off the property, possibly as retribution for the earlier Aboriginal deaths.
[2] Hutton immediately put together an armed party of settlers who tracked and finally caught the Aboriginals with a flock of sheep 48 kilometres (30 mi) away near the Campaspe Creek.
[2] The following month Hutton led a party of mounted police and came upon a party of local Dja Dja Wurrung whom Hutton had previously forced off his run, even though these people had been friendly to him since his arrival.
[1][2] Charles Parker, the Assistant Protector of Aborigines for the region, described the massacre as: ...it was a deliberately planned illegal reprisal on the aborigines, conducted on the principle advocated by many persons in this colony, that when any offence is committed by unknown individuals, the tribe to which they belong should be made to suffer for it.
[2]George Robinson described Charles Hutton and his attitude to "the blacks" in his journal of 24 January 1840: Mr H. avowed [his approach to the natives] to be terror; to keep the natives in subjection by fear, and to punish them wholesale, that is, by tribes and communities.