By 1 July 1851, Johnson Frederick Hayward and Septimus Boord had established respectively Aroona Station near Wilpena Pound and Oraparinna Station to the east of Aroona.2 At the time, these were two of the most northerly pastoral stations in the colony. Clashes with Aboriginal people in the more southern Mount Arden district of the Flinders Ranges had been regularly occurring throughout 1851 and early 1852. In his reminiscences, Richard Dewdney (a stockman on Oraparinna), refers to ‘Blacks at that time … giving much trouble, to such as extent as to inforce [sic] the use of Fire Arms [sic]’. Arriving at Wilpena station on returning from a trip to Port Augusta, Boord learned that ‘Aroona was stuck up and surrounded with Blacks’. The flimsy huts, made of ‘pine and thatched roofs’, were ‘barricaded with Station hands unable to get out and sadly in need of assistance’. There were no police in Flinders Ranges at this early stage of European occupation and ‘nor were they sought for’. On hearing the news, Boord immediately went to the assistance of his neighbour Frederick Hayward. He collected 'what men and instruments of protection or Slaughter available made a B line for Aroona. Result a speedy retreat of the Blacks. History -in those days- did not record casualties, any way trouble ended'.3 ['in those days' crossed out]

Dewdney goes on to recall that immediately following this, a shepherd was murdered by Aboriginal people at Youngoona (an Aroona outstation). Government correspondence indicates that Hayward’s shepherd, Robert Richardson, was killed by Aboriginal people in March 1852. Although the police arrested suspects, they were eventually released because of a lack of evidence. Nonetheless, Hayward’s memoir reported taking the law into his own hands, with Hayward and his men raiding an Aboriginal camp and reportedly killing as many as fifteen men.4 Dewdney refers to the Aboriginal group taking refuge in the ABC Range East of St Mary’s Peak, and a stockman named Johnny Rose shooting ‘an impudent black’, but ‘in his wisdom kept out of the way till matters quietened’.

Adnymathanha oral histories recall Hayward as a brutal man who was largely responsible for the deaths of many Aboriginal people, including men from a number of different groups who had travelled vast distances and were passing through Brachina Gorge (near Aroona Station) on their sacred journey to collect ochre from the famous Pukardu/Bookatoo mine.5

Although the number of deaths is disputed, the pattern of settlers responding punitively to Aboriginal attacks on men, stock and property became routine. One such case was the reprisal killings in the wake of the payback killing of sixteen-year-old James Stacey Brown near (what is today known as) Quorn in September 1842. James had recently arrived in the district to assist his elder brothers. Prior to James’ arrival, Aboriginal people had taken sheep from neighbouring stations and an Aboriginal man named Williamy had been killed by a shepherd employed by the Ragless brothers.6 There had been numerous tense confrontations between Aboriginal people and colonists, over stock and likely over women.

In revenge for James Brown’s death, three separate parties of Europeans set out to pursue the group responsible and recover the 300 sheep taken from the flock James was shepherding. Tracks were followed for over 70 miles over three days, and a group of Aboriginal people were seen ahead of the sheep, making their way to the scrub that lay to the west of a range of hills near Lake Torrens. According to the pursuers’ depositions (taken by Protector Moorhouse several weeks later), on seeing the Europeans, women and children apparently ran into the thick mulga scrub to the west, where pursuit was difficult, and four Aboriginal men were pursued up a rocky bluff, from where they reportedly resisted arrest and threw stones and boomerangs at the Europeans. Several of the depositions state that the Aboriginal men called the white men ‘bloody rogues’ and ‘bloody liars’. They pointed out that only one white man (James Brown) had been killed, and that ‘ blackfellows got no “butter” white fellows plenty butter’. They taunted the whites, saying ‘come on you white buggers’.7 According to the depositions collected by Moorhouse, four Aboriginal men were shot, however settler reminiscences and Aboriginal oral histories suggest many more Aboriginal people were killed than the number reported to Moorhouse.

Visitors to the Flinders Ranges in the late 1850s and early 1860s often reported on settler/Aboriginal violence. John Bowyer Bull, taking sheep to a station near present day Beltana, wrote that he ‘was surprised to see nothing but Black women there, no Black men’. On asking the women where the men were, he was told “crackaback, dead … alabout white fellow shoot am”.8 In the 1980s, Claude Demell who was born in the northern Flinders Ranges in 1908 stated in an oral history interview that

There was a lot of people shot in the old days …Them days a lot used to be frightened. Mustn’t talk about it because the white fella will come and shoot you. Trying to bluff us out of it so we didn’t talk about it see. Only kill your kangaroo, wallaby, emu and rabbits but never touch sheep9

Claude spoke of killing of Aboriginal people at Arcoona and Wirrapa stations.

As the frontier advanced northward, Mounted Police, usually operating in pairs, followed close behind, especially in the aftermath of reported clashes. In July 1863, Corporal Wauhop and Police trooper Poynter came upon a party of about forty Aboriginal people who they believed had been killing cattle and robbing huts north-west of Beltana. The Aboriginal party threw waddies and boomerangs at them as they approached, and Wauhop reported they were forced to ‘defend themselves with our revolvers’. He noted that they were a group that had come down from the Lake Hope region in the north to collect red ochre.10 Aboriginal parties from the north regularly travelled south to Parachilna to collect the special ochre, and clashes often occurred during those trips. In late 1863, Police Commissioner Warburton led a major police expedition to the South Eastern and Eastern side of Lake Eyre. Protector Moorhouse expressed concern about the number of men and munitions being sent north, describing them as ‘War-Like preparations’.11 If Warburton’s own account of the expedition is to be trusted, they encountered very few Aboriginal people and the expedition served primarily as a ‘show of force’.12

Many settlers identified an Aboriginal man known as Pompey as a leader of the Aboriginal resistance in the region. He was believed responsible for ‘burning a station and spearing two men’ in the late 1850s. Station owner, Robert Bruce, considered him ‘the leader of all the plots and depredations both of the Hill and Saltwater’ tribes, while Mounted Constable Burt wrote that he was ‘the ringleader of all the strife’. He was arrested at the time, but soon escaped custody. In 1863 Pompey led a party of men robbing an outstation on Samuel Stuckey’s Umberatana property where he was reported at an encampment of Aboriginal people at the station ‘inciting his companions to further violence’. When Stuckey investigated Pompey started to flee, so he shot and killed him. Two subsequent inquiries into Stuckey’s actions both found it to be ‘justifiable homicide’.13

In 1865 a catastrophic drought took hold in the north; pastures were bare, waterholes were drying up, stock was dying, as were the native flora and fauna. When a shepherd was killed near Mount Fytton in April 1865, a local settler wrote of the Aboriginal people in the district:

They see our people settle in their country, occupy it all, and wantonly destroy the animals on which the natives had depended for food. They cannot prevent or obtain redress for this; but when they are reduced to the verge of starvation, and, following the example of the white men, seek it from the flocks and herds of the white men, they are hunted, captured, and chained; and this, and this only, is the need of care hitherto bestowed on them in the Far North by the government of South Australia.14

Competition for scarce resources was clearly a source of conflict in the region. From August to December 1865 there were a series of clashes between Aboriginal people and settlers on Perigundee station near Lake Hope. Men on the station seem to have been making a concerted effort to drive Aboriginal people off. A newspaper reported that Dean had burnt down a number of Aboriginal camps ‘and then proceeded to drive the natives backwards.’15 On the night of 8 December, William Dean, with a party of 10 men, were camped on the run while tracking cattle that had been driven off. They were attacked by a party of 160 Aboriginal men, with one station worker killed and three others injured. The station workers fired upon their attackers until they retreated. A local Police Trooper later reported that four had been killed and several others injured.16 In response, the government ordered a large police expeditionary force to recover stock and provide protection. A fourteen-man party set off from Lake Hope with eighteen days of supplies. Inspector Roe and his party returned to Port Augusta in March 1866, but no details of what transpired seem to exist.17 These clashes on Perigundee station were among the last episodes of frontier conflict in the district for which we have documentary evidence. However, Aboriginal oral histories recorded by the Lutheran missionary Johann Reuther in the late 1800s-early 1900s and Luise Hercus in the 1980s refer to Aboriginal people being shot by police at Poeppel Corner, Koonchera waterhole, Kaparamara, and near Beltana. Reuther also recorded an oral history of two white men, Lines and Damet, shooting a Dieri man named Ngardutjankana.18

1 W. Meinig, One the Margins of the Good Earth: The South Australian Wheat Frontier (Adelaide, SA Govt. Printer, 1988), 44-46.

2 Johnson Frederick Hayward’s pastoral lease is dated 1 July 1851, State Records of South Australia [SRSA] GRS 3570 file 80.

3 Richard Dewdney, ‘Reminiscences Past to Present’, handwritten manuscript, State Library of South Australia (SLSA), D736(L), 9.

4 Johnson Frederick Hayward, ‘Reminiscences of Johnson Frederick Hayward’, in Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, South Australian Branch, vol. XXIX (1927-28), 138-9.

5 Vince Coulthard, Cliff Coulthard and Des Coulthard, interview with Skye Krichauff, Aroona Junction, 20 April 2022.

6 C.W. Stuart, Inspector of Police, to Commissioner of Police, 20 April 1852 GRG 24/6/1852/1252, SRSA; Protector’s quarterly report for the period ended 31 March 1852, South Australian Government Gazette, 17 June 1852, 366.

7 Benjamin Ragless & George Ragless deposition, 14 October 1842, Edward Polhill deposition, 11 October 1842, Thomas Gilbanks deposition, 15 October 1852, SRSA, GRG 24/6/1852/3215.

8 John Bowyer Bull, handwritten manuscript, PRG 507/8, SLSA.

9 Claude Demell, interview with Adele Pring, Port Germein, 1987.

10 Corporal Wauchop to Chief Inspector Hamilton, 29 July 1863, GRG 5/2/1863/306, SRSA.

11 Protector of Aborigines, docket note on file, 11 August 1863, GRG 5/2/1863/306, SRSA.

12 Police Commissioner Warburton to Chief Secretary, 16 October 1863, GRG 5/2/1863/306, SRSA.

13 South Australian Register, 4 May 1864 3; South Australian Register, 6 May 1864, 2.

14 South Australian Register, 13 October 1865, 2-3.

15 South Australian Register, 30 December 1865, 2.

16 South Australian Register, 5 September 1866, 4; Police Trooper Poynter to Inspector Roe, 25 December 1865, GRG 5/2/1866/56, SRSA.

17 Police Commissioner Warburton to Inspector Roe, 15 January 1866, GRG 5/2/1866/56, SRSA; Inspector Roe to Police Commissioner Warburton, Lake Hope, 29 January 1866, GRG 5/2/1866/56, SRSA.

18 See the oral history page o(https://frontiersa-uofadel.hub.arcgis.com/pages/oralhistories/) on Robert Foster, Skye Krichauff and Amanda Nettelbeck, The South Australian Frontier and its Legacies,

The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, 2024, The South Australian Frontier and its Legacies,

Contributors: Robert Foster & Skye Krichauff

Data generously shared by: Robert Foster, Skye Krichauff and Amanda Nettelbeck, The South Australian Frontier and its Legacies, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, 2024, http://ua.edu.au/south-australian-frontier