William George Murray

William George Murray (1884 – 2 December 1975) was a constable in the Northern Territory Police force who, in 1928, led a series of punitive expeditions against Aboriginal Australians that became known as the Coniston massacre.

He grew up on the "Horton Vale" family farm near Yarck where he remained until around 1910 when Murray and his parents moved to the inner Melbourne suburb of Northcote.

[2] Murray wrote about how the advancing Turks were mowed down with machine gun and artillery fire and how it was "great fun and very exciting."

Murray would either chain those he captured and escort them for judicial hearings in larger settlements such as Alice Springs or he would hand out summary punishment as he saw fit.

[3] In August 1928, Murray was ordered to investigate the killing of a white man named Fred Brooks who was allegedly bludgeoned to death by several Aboriginal people at a waterhole to the west of Coniston cattle station near the modern-day settlement of Yuendumu.

In early September, Murray went on another police mission to arrest Aboriginal cattle killers around the Coniston and Barrow Creek areas.

From late September until mid October, Murray conducted a third punitive expedition to the north of Coniston along the Lander and Hanson Rivers.

Officially, 31 men, women and children were killed during this police operation, although analysis of the existing documentation and surviving Aboriginal testimonies indicate that somewhere between 100 and 200 people were shot dead.

Murray's admissions in court however led to widespread publicity about the massacres and a governmental Board of Inquiry was set up to investigate his actions.

[3] The Board of Inquiry which ran from late December 1928 until the end of January 1929 was a whitewash set up to protect Murray and the colonial system in the Northern Territory.

He took prospecting leases out for himself and also demanded Aboriginal people bring him samples of gold in return for the government rations that he was supposed to hand out to them.

There is also a suggestion that Murray participated in another massacre or mass poisoning of Aboriginal Australians at the nearby Sandover River while he was posted at Arltunga.

In this year his title of Protector of Aborigines was terminated and he left the Northern Territory to retire to Adelaide in the state of South Australia.

He is buried at the Centennial Park Cemetery in the Adelaide suburb of Pasadena and his grave is marked with an honourable ANZAC veteran's plaque.