George Murray Black

They soon died from frontier violence and introduced diseases, and George Watson amassed a large collection of Aboriginal relics and implements which had belonged to them.

Professor Watson was a former blackbirder who had a strong interest in collecting the human remains of Indigenous Australians for his university.

[1] By the late 1930s, Black had collected a large quantity of Aboriginal bones from across Victoria and southern New South Wales by ransacking Indigenous burial sites across this area.

From 1940 to 1950 he systematically and "cheerfully" ransacked most Aboriginal burial sites along a large section of the Murray River valley for the university's collection.

[11] Black's haphazard methods of looting the graves resulted in no analysis of the antiquity of the remains nor of the burial sites.

He is buried at Tarwin Lower Cemetery in a grave well-protected by a concrete slab, wrought iron fencing and an elaborate Egyptian-style stone obelisk.