Attack on stockworkers

Date: 10 Jul 1824 – 20 Jul 1824
Place: Lawson's 'upper station' on Campbell's River
As the Gazette put it: while holding the Commandancy of the Settlement of Bathurst [Lawson], behaved in the most kind and conciliatory way regarding the mountain tribes, and was supposed, in return, to enjoy their good will, and be without the reach of their ingratitude and treachery; but recent lamentable instances demonstrate the contrary. At Lawson’s ‘upper station’ on ‘Campbell’s River’, ‘Mr. Lawson … lost four men, who were cut off by the savages; and, very lately, three others have also fallen victims to aboriginal barbarity’. Some of Lawson’s men had been killed and their bodies mutilated in a particularly gruesome manner. It may have been that the killing of three women by William Lane’s men had been avenged, perhaps by the ‘chiefs’ Joe and Simon and their warriors. The Hassalls’ overseer, Thomas Fisher, wrote that unarmed stockworkers took refuge together in their huts and some shepherds had been ‘drove quite away’.

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Sources

  • Gazette, 5 August 1824, p. 2; Australasian Pocket Almanack … 1822–1826, p. 134; Fisher to Hassall, 20 July 1824, ML, Hassall Correspondence, vol. 3, pp. 1563–64; William John Dumaresq, ‘A ride to Bathurst, 1827’, in Mackaness (ed.), Fourteen Journeys, p. 192

Event mentions

  • Attack on stockworkers
    10 Jul 1824 – 20 Jul 1824 — Lawson's 'upper station' on Campbell's River
    As the Gazette put it: while holding the Commandancy of the Settlement of Bathurst [Lawson], behaved in the most kind and conciliatory way regarding the mountain tribes, and was supposed, in return, to enjoy their good will, and be without the reach of their ingratitude and treachery; but recent lamentable instances demonstrate the contrary. At Lawson’s ‘upper station’ on ‘Campbell’s River’, ‘Mr. Lawson … lost four men, who were cut off by the savages; and, very lately, three others have also fallen victims to aboriginal barbarity’. Some of Lawson’s men had been killed and their bodies mutilated in a particularly gruesome manner. It may have been that the killing of three women by William Lane’s men had been avenged, perhaps by the ‘chiefs’ Joe and Simon and their warriors. The Hassalls’ overseer, Thomas Fisher, wrote that unarmed stockworkers took refuge together in their huts and some shepherds had been ‘drove quite away’.
    Source: Gazette, 5 August 1824, p. 2; Australasian Pocket Almanack … 1822–1826, p. 134; Fisher to Hassall, 20 July 1824, ML, Hassall Correspondence, vol. 3, pp. 1563–64; William John Dumaresq, ‘A ride to Bathurst, 1827’, in Mackaness (ed.), Fourteen Journeys, p. 192