Stockman killed

Date: 29 Aug 1823
Place: Clear Creek
On 29 August, ‘the body of a man who was found murdered’ at William Lee’s station at Clear Creek, around 10 miles northeast of Bathurst, identified as one of Lee’s workers, ‘hut keeper’ and ‘Crown Prisoner’ Peter Bray. The Sydney Gazette newspaper reported he ‘was found barbarously murdered’. According to the testimony provided to coroner Thomas Fitzherbert Hawkins, on 29 August one of William Lee’s shepherds, John Tanner, came to John Cornwall’s hut looking for Peter Bray. Tanner told Cornwall ‘their Hut was robbed and that the Hut man Peter Bray was missing’. They went to the hut and ‘saw it [in] great Confusion and robbed [of] all their Tea, sugar, Meat and Bread’ as well as axes, knives, cooking equipment and ‘Shot and Balls’ and ‘one Musket’. The two men then went from the hut to the nearby creek and ‘found the tracks of the Black Natives’, before discovering a trail of blood and ‘the Body of the Deceased lying in the Creek by the edge of the Water’. When William Lee arrived on the scene, he proceeded ‘to where it appeared [Bray] had received the first blow, where the Hat of the deceased lay cut in two halves’. From the signs of struggle on the river bank, Lee believed Bray had been dumped in the nearby creek alive and had tried to crawl out of the water before he died. ‘Earing, a Black Chief of the Tabalbucco Tribe’. [Aaron, the Wiradyjuri man who had assisted Lawson, the Coxes, Blackman and others] described 'the tracks of the four Natives known by the names of Jackey, Taylor, Charley and Congo-gal’.

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Sources

  • ‘Re murder of the hut keeper by natives, 2 September 1823’, SRNSW, NRS 938, 6017, 4/5783, pp. 419–27.

Event mentions

  • Stockman killed
    29 Aug 1823 — Clear Creek
    On 29 August, ‘the body of a man who was found murdered’ at William Lee’s station at Clear Creek, around 10 miles northeast of Bathurst, identified as one of Lee’s workers, ‘hut keeper’ and ‘Crown Prisoner’ Peter Bray. The Sydney Gazette newspaper reported he ‘was found barbarously murdered’. According to the testimony provided to coroner Thomas Fitzherbert Hawkins, on 29 August one of William Lee’s shepherds, John Tanner, came to John Cornwall’s hut looking for Peter Bray. Tanner told Cornwall ‘their Hut was robbed and that the Hut man Peter Bray was missing’. They went to the hut and ‘saw it [in] great Confusion and robbed [of] all their Tea, sugar, Meat and Bread’ as well as axes, knives, cooking equipment and ‘Shot and Balls’ and ‘one Musket’. The two men then went from the hut to the nearby creek and ‘found the tracks of the Black Natives’, before discovering a trail of blood and ‘the Body of the Deceased lying in the Creek by the edge of the Water’. When William Lee arrived on the scene, he proceeded ‘to where it appeared [Bray] had received the first blow, where the Hat of the deceased lay cut in two halves’. From the signs of struggle on the river bank, Lee believed Bray had been dumped in the nearby creek alive and had tried to crawl out of the water before he died. ‘Earing, a Black Chief of the Tabalbucco Tribe’. [Aaron, the Wiradyjuri man who had assisted Lawson, the Coxes, Blackman and others] described 'the tracks of the four Natives known by the names of Jackey, Taylor, Charley and Congo-gal’.
    Source: ‘Re murder of the hut keeper by natives, 2 September 1823’, SRNSW, NRS 938, 6017, 4/5783, pp. 419–27.