Three women killed

Date: 1 Jun 1824
Place: 8-mile Swamp.
After the attack on Hollingshead on 31 May, according to Grant, ‘consternation among the men on the estate increased’, and the Hassall's overseer William Lane and some men arrived ‘equipped for an expedition after the natives’. Lane ordered Grant to accompany them ‘as he had so lately seen a party’. Some of the other convict stockworkers apparently begged ‘to be allowed arms, that they might go in pursuit of the natives, else they would all be murdered’. Of Lane’s scratch force, only four of the party had muskets, and the fifth (Henry Castles) ‘could only obtain a sword’. They went out to where Hollingshead had been pursued (the southeast direction, ‘close to the main road leading from O’Connel-plains’) and apparently returned that night after a ‘fruitless … expedition’, failing to fall in ‘with any of the natives’. Grant said that when they were ‘scouring the woods’ he became separated from the others, so he went to ‘ascertain the safety of the flocks, and the stock-keepers’. Then ‘at a place called the 8-mile swamp, 7 miles from the main road, he espied the same tribe he had seen in the morning’. Grant called out to ‘Joe, one of the chiefs’, who replied ‘in an abusive and insolent way’. He called to another man he obviously recognised, ‘Simon’, and in reply was ‘answered with a shower of spears’. The three women’s bodies were later found by Henry Trickey, a ‘crown servant’ in the employ of merchant and whaling entrepreneur Captain Thomas Raine. Trickey said he lived ‘on his master’s estate at the two-mile creek, distant five miles from O’Connel-plains, and eighteen from Bathurst’, called ‘Rainville’. While he was travelling ‘between Sidmouth Valley and the two-mile creek, a trifling distance from the main road to Bathurst’, Trickey’s ‘attention was arrested by a large quantity of crows, eaglehawks, and other birds of prey’. He was then ‘surprised to find the bodies of three black women’, on ground ‘called the Government reserve’. William Lawson Junior was to write two weeks after the event that the women were killed in sheer frustration at not finding any warriors. He believed Lane’s party ‘fell in with a horde of their women and despatched them in return for the men’.

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Sources

  • Gazette, 10 June 1824, p. 2, Gazette, 12 August 1824, p. 2; Salisbury and Gresser, Windradyne of the Wiradjuri, pp. 25, 48. William Lawson Junior to Nelson Lawson, 14 June 1824, in Beard (ed.), Old Ironbark, p. 37.

Event mentions

  • Three women killed
    1 Jun 1824 — 8-mile Swamp.
    After the attack on Hollingshead on 31 May, according to Grant, ‘consternation among the men on the estate increased’, and the Hassall's overseer William Lane and some men arrived ‘equipped for an expedition after the natives’. Lane ordered Grant to accompany them ‘as he had so lately seen a party’. Some of the other convict stockworkers apparently begged ‘to be allowed arms, that they might go in pursuit of the natives, else they would all be murdered’. Of Lane’s scratch force, only four of the party had muskets, and the fifth (Henry Castles) ‘could only obtain a sword’. They went out to where Hollingshead had been pursued (the southeast direction, ‘close to the main road leading from O’Connel-plains’) and apparently returned that night after a ‘fruitless … expedition’, failing to fall in ‘with any of the natives’. Grant said that when they were ‘scouring the woods’ he became separated from the others, so he went to ‘ascertain the safety of the flocks, and the stock-keepers’. Then ‘at a place called the 8-mile swamp, 7 miles from the main road, he espied the same tribe he had seen in the morning’. Grant called out to ‘Joe, one of the chiefs’, who replied ‘in an abusive and insolent way’. He called to another man he obviously recognised, ‘Simon’, and in reply was ‘answered with a shower of spears’. The three women’s bodies were later found by Henry Trickey, a ‘crown servant’ in the employ of merchant and whaling entrepreneur Captain Thomas Raine. Trickey said he lived ‘on his master’s estate at the two-mile creek, distant five miles from O’Connel-plains, and eighteen from Bathurst’, called ‘Rainville’. While he was travelling ‘between Sidmouth Valley and the two-mile creek, a trifling distance from the main road to Bathurst’, Trickey’s ‘attention was arrested by a large quantity of crows, eaglehawks, and other birds of prey’. He was then ‘surprised to find the bodies of three black women’, on ground ‘called the Government reserve’. William Lawson Junior was to write two weeks after the event that the women were killed in sheer frustration at not finding any warriors. He believed Lane’s party ‘fell in with a horde of their women and despatched them in return for the men’.
    Source: Gazette, 10 June 1824, p. 2, Gazette, 12 August 1824, p. 2; Salisbury and Gresser, Windradyne of the Wiradjuri, pp. 25, 48. William Lawson Junior to Nelson Lawson, 14 June 1824, in Beard (ed.), Old Ironbark, p. 37.