John Murray (native police officer)

Any resistance to European colonisation was couched in terms of criminal behaviour, while those responsible for enforcing colonial law, the Native Mounted Police, were frequently brutal in their treatment of Aboriginal prisoners.

Prominent squatter James Leith Hay, accompanied by Native Police Commandant Frederick Walker, overlanded to the settlement not long after with what was supposed to be the first bales of wool to be shipped from the new port, but these had been destroyed by Aboriginals along the way.

In the process, Murray, like a Medieval crusader building a castle to dominate a trade route, was able to control the landscape and deny to the indigenous owners of the land the use of a vital economic asset; the water, fish, fowl, tortoises, plant life and game that was attracted to the area.

[28] The nature of the contact, cooeeing from the opposite bank and calling out the name Willmott, suggests that it was done in a friendly manner, as in Aboriginal society it is considered polite to announce oneself.

[32] In response, Murray and the NMP death squad pursued the attackers to Farmer's Island, located about 600 metres upstream from McCabe's camp, and shot them while swimming across the river, killing two and wounding others.

[35] Murray's troopers also acted as the early postal service from Port Curtis to the main barracks at Traylan near Eidsvold[36] In April 1854, the fledgling settlement was visited by Sir Charles Augustus Fitzroy, the Governor of New South Wales, who arrived on the 28-gun naval corvette HMS Calliope.

During the visit of the Governor, Captain John Coghlan Fitzgerald of HMS Calliope wrote in his private diary on 19 April of the killing of Aboriginal people by Murray and his troopers the previous month, "Mr McCabe's party was attacked a short time since, and a man speared.

Repeated massacres, violence and disease took a devastating toll on the Tulua people whose country stretched from the Calliope River south to the Boyne and east to Barney Point.

Murray, his troopers, together with local constables and several volunteer squatters from the area formed a force of more than twenty well armed people which tracked down a large group of about 200 Aboriginals camped near what is now the township of Raglan.

"The position seems strong enough to enable the party in possession to hold it easily against an advancing foe, but spears and boomerangs after all could do little against the carbines of the relentless trackers, and bleached skulls and bones still bear evidence that the story is more than legendary.

[16] The stationing of NMP troops on Eurombar and Hornet Bank had resulted in both the troopers mixing with local Aboriginal people (hunting together and raiding squatter's huts) in violation of standing orders, and heightened tensions caused by the taking of Jiman women.

This became known as the Hornet Bank massacre and resulted in a long and bloody campaign against local Aboriginal Australians conducted by various armed groups of European squatters, Native Police and regular citizens.

"[63] George Dunmore Lang wrote, "I learned from various sources that a party of twelve squatters and their confidential overseers went out mounted and armed to the teeth and scoured the Country for blacks, away from the scenes of the murder of the Frazers altogether, and shot upwards of eighty men women & children.

[68] During this period the new Commandant of the Native Police, Edric Norfolk Vaux Morisset, deployed NMP troops from various areas to conduct patrols of summary punishments against Aboriginals in the Dawson River region.

"[69] Murray and his troopers were in the region for months after the events of Hornet Bank, his energy in carrying out extrajudicial killings as punishment for the continued acts of resistance by Aboriginals being noted by government officials, squatters[70] and the contemporary press.

[73] In the aftermath of Hornet Bank, New South Wales Government officials were keen to re-organise and strengthen the Native Police as an instrument of violent repression of Aboriginal people on the northern frontier of colonial settlement in Australia.

While denying that the actions of the Native Police were an "attempt to wage a war of extermination against the Aborigines", the 1858 government report into the force concluded that "there is no alternative but to carry matters through with a strong hand and punish with necessary severity all future outrages".

In 1859, she gave birth to his first son, John James Athelstane Murray, who, in an apparent tradition with the offspring of Native Police officers, shared a middle name with the barracks in which he was born.

Toby "disappeared" after being escorted into the bush by some troopers and was later reported murdered by Lieutenant Rudolph Morisset in 1861, while Alma was shot dead at a riverbank by his captor while "trying to escape" despite being in leg-irons and handcuffs.

"[81] He quotes a contemporary source, an acquaintance of Murray who wrote "The troopers undoubtedly took a fiendish delight in shooting the hapless Aborigines ... From one point of view, it is horrible to think of the helpless blacks flying from the ruthless avenger, who indiscriminately killed young and old and, at times, women and children though this is often denied.

Ruldolph together with Mr William Cashbrook Giles, the overseer at Widgee pastoral station, led the troopers to the area and conducted three raids which resulted in the deaths of at least 8 Aboriginals near Manumbar.

They wrote "Rather than give it (the NMP) a perpetuity of existence, our legislators had far better accord to the pioneer squatters the privilege of self defence, for we believe the interests of humanity- and Christianity too- would be more effectively furthered by this means than the present detestable method of hiring treacherous savages to slay those of their own race and colour.

The most sincere philanthropist must foresee that extermination- the inevitable fate of all such irreconcilable races- awaits the Australian aborigine, but it is culpable in us to further and countenance by governmental authority the speedier consummation of this terrible doom.

[93] Davidson's journal and Charles Eden's biography flesh out the intimate and entwined relationships between colonial invaders, government administration and the workings of the Native Mounted Police, at the ragged edges of British Empire.

[95] On 7 January 1866 Davidson wrote that on their way back to Cardwell after having scouting locations for Davidson's future plantation, Uhr and his troopers had massacred a group of Girramay whose only offence was to be visible: "Rode back by the road party's track, near where they were attacked by the blacks- some were seen, pursued and shot down; it was a strange and painful sight to see a human being running for his life and see the black police galloping after him and hear the crack of the carbines; the gins and children all hid in the grass: nothing is ever done to them, though we examined the contents of their dilly bags.

One little girl took refuge under my horse's belly and would not move: of course, I took no part in these proceedings, that being the duty of the police: it is the only way of insuring the lives of white men to show that they cannot be attacked with impunity, for though the road party drove them off, if a dog had not given the alarm they would most probably have all been murdered as they slept.

At 1 p.m. stopped in the middle of a stream; discovered another wild black's camp, and secured [stole] their dinner- fish, prawns and scrub hen's eggs, all cooked to a nicety.

141-2) three boatman; Saxy, Atkinson and Fitzgerald, Leefe the Police Magistrate, sub Inspector Reginald Uhr and seven NMP killers began what can only be described as a military campaign to occupy Girramay land.

Taking him at his word, Magistrate Eden's Kanaka slaves had attacked the local Girringun clans and "that every Sunday for months had been spent hunting 'man of bush' [and they had] ... fallen in with and vanquished the blacks on several occasions."

[113] Murray's tombstone, unloved and uncared for, is located at Meunga Creek, squashed up against a chain link fence at the back of a dustbowl Caravan Park on the side of the Bruce Highway in Ellerbeck near Cardwell.