Frederick Taylor (25 December 1810 - 14 February 1872) was an English mass murderer,[1] colonial property manager and agricultural capitalist in the Victoria region of Australia.
This massacre resulted in the deaths of about 40 men, women and children of the Tarnbeere gundidj clan of the Djargurd Wurrung people.
Despite his responsibility for the killings being well known and well documented, Taylor was never convicted and enjoyed high esteem in British colonial society until his death in 1872.
In that year, having heard of an encampment of Tarnbeere gundidj and other people at a place called Puuroyuup within the station, Taylor went out to remove and punish them.
While the Djargurd Wurrung people were asleep, Taylor with the aid of a number of shepherds and workers on horseback, formed a cordon around them and then fired at them indiscriminately.
With interest from authorities mounting, Taylor again fled the colony, this time absconding onto an American whaling vessel that was moored in Portland Bay and sailing to India.
[8] After attaining enough influence and organisation, Taylor prepared to return to Australia, choosing the newly occupied Gippsland region to establish himself as a squatter.
In early 1842, Taylor arrived in the Monaro region of New South Wales with Richard Sterling Jones, William O'Dell Raymond and H.N.
Later that year they had established stations on Gunai land near modern-day Bairnsdale with Indian derived names such as Lindenow and Lucknow.
Over the next fifteen years, Taylor was either overseer or license holder of a number of pastoral stations in that region including Deighton, Emu Vale, Swan Reach, Avon/Molly Plains and Lindenow.
Taylor's reputation was again catching up with him, as the local Crown Commissioner, Captain Tyers, banned him from holding a pastoral license in 1844.
He became rich trading cattle and other livestock products out of Port Albert,[15] wrote letters petitioning the Superintendent[16] and advised other squatters on sheep washing innovations.
[17] By the mid 1850s, Taylor gradually removed his interests from Gippsland to the Mount Alexander goldfields area around modern day Castlemaine.
[18] His reputation in British colonial society apparently being so clean by this stage that he actually became a magistrate at Strathloddon[19] and appeared as an expert witness at Legislative Council enquiries into mining[20] and port related investigations.