MURDER OF BLACKS.

Grey River Argus, 8 December 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

MURDER OF BLACKS.

FEELING IN AUSTRALIA. POL IC E A (’TIO N D ENOUNCE D. Press, pulpit and the general public unanimously agree with the jury’s verdict in the aboriginal murder trial, and arte /by candid admissions of the police that they shot to kill on sight all the male aboriginals they came across, admittedly 17, but locally believed to greatly exceed that number (says a report from Darwin). Some of them were 80 miles from the scene of the murder, and all of them miserable, half-starved wretches physically incapable of dangerously attacking a police party. Driven out by drought, and hunted a\\*a.y from the 'waterholes by pastoralists, the natives are wandering the wilderness in starvation and despair. Miss Annie Lock, of the Pioneer Missionary Society., who is now in Darwin, having 'been driven out of her mission camp near the scene of •the murder for want of water, tells a woeful story. She had lived there for the past 20 months without arms or protection of ony kind. The only thing she feared was the number of white men tramping north in search of railway work. She says that as all the small waterholus or soaks have dried up. the blacks were forced to come into the big waterholes, where they captured kangaroo< coming in at night for water. But the cattlemen had driven them off, and the cattj o had destroyed all native plant food. Vater was scarce and so precious that when they found any, the. natives gorged themselves yvith it, small naked children having their stomachs distended to fearful dimensions.

The story given at the trial by a small black boy was that eight na lives planned to kill a grey-bearded old dog trapper named Brooks in order to get his tucker. Eearly in the morning they sent a decoy lubra into his camp,, and at a given signal they rushed in and belaboured the old man to death with boomerangs and sticks, the lubra preventing the deceased from procuring weapons. Then, some time after, the police came on the scene with expert trackers, who followed the tracks for many days. The constable said, “We came up with a party of six natives and several women and children. All the men were shot.” In four instances they overtook parties of natives and in each instance all the male adults except the two accused, who were captured. There were only two witnesses at the and the embraces practically all 4ho ewiseriee!M> -