12, one blue silk purse, silver tassels and slides, containing seven shillings and sixpence British money, one woman's thimble, two large parcels of silk sewing thread, various colours, 10 new English blankets perfectly clean, shoemakers awls, bees' wax, blacksmith's pinchers and cold chisel, one bridle bit, which had been recently used, as the grass was quite fresh on it; the tube of a thermometer, broken looking glass, bottles of all descriptions, two of which had castor oil in them, one sealskin cap, one musket and some shot, one broad tomahawk, some London, Glasgow, and Aberdeen newspapers, printed in 1837 and 1838.
One pewter two gallon measure, one ditto hand basin, one large tin camp kettle, two children's copy books, one bible printed in Edinburgh, June 1838, one set of the National Loan Fund regulations respecting policies of Life insurance, and blank forms of medical man's certificate for effecting the same.
We observed the men with shipped spears driving before them the women, one of whom we noticed constantly looking behind her, at us, a circumstance which did not strike us much at the time, but on examining the marks and figures about the largest of the native huts we were immediately impressed with the belief that that unfortunate female is a European—a captive of these ruthless savages.
This was the more painful to our feelings, as we have no doubt whatever but a dreadful massacre of Europeans, men, women and children, has been perpetrated by the aborigines in the immediate vicinity of the spot, whence we were forced to return without being enabled to throw more light on this melancholy catastrophe, than what I have detailed above.
[4] Another account says the woman was a mother who sought protection with local Aboriginal people with her baby girl after leaving her callous and brutal husband.
One expedition left special handkerchiefs that she might come across, with a message in English and Gaelic (because it was thought she might be from the Scottish highlands) reading: The Gunaikurnai people, and specifically the Brataualung tribe, were hunted for what they were imagined to have done.
[7] In the increasingly contested space of frontier expansion in the 1840s, the white woman stories facilitated settler occupation of territory already ocuupied by Gunaikurnai tribes.