The Roper River in the Northern Territory, commences near Mataranka and flows east for about 400km before emptying into the Gulf of Carpentaria at the Limmen Bight. The town of Mataranka is near the western end of the Roper and Ngukurr (Pronounced 'Nook-a', formerly known as 'Roper River Mission') is its eastern terminus.

Aboriginal Peoples

Mangarrayi people for Calico Creek, Harris Lagoon, Calder Range, Mole Hill, Crescent Lagoon, Elsey Creek, Red Lily Lagoon; Yanyuwa for Limmen Bight; Alawa for Hodgson Downs and Winiki Pocket.

Yugul Mangi collectively includes Alawa, Wandarrang, Ritharrngu/Wagilag, Ngandi, Nunggubuyu, Marra, Ngalakgan, Rembarrng and Binbinga peoples (ANU Centre for Indigenous Policy Research).

Yolngu people represent the traditional owners of north-eastern Arnhem Land, an area generally known as Miwatj. Yolngu literally means ‘people’, who fall into two moieties and numerous clans (National Museum of Australia). Yolngu had frequent interactions with Macassan people from Indonesia and Yolngu language incorporates many Bahasa loan words (Walker & Zorc, 1981, pp 109-133).

Narrative

The Roper River wars began in the early 1870s and endured until the 1940s. There were two catalysts for these wars: the first was associated with surveying and construction of the overland telegraph line; and the second was associated with the westward expansion of pastoralism and droving from Queensland after telegraph stations, which served as supply depots, opened along the line and provided convenient stops for emerging stock routes.

The earliest conflict appears to have occurred in November 1871 when a telegraph construction gang reported several attacks. Gordon Reid wrote:

HD Packard reported that his party had been attacked three times in November 1871 trying to get to Roper Landing [near Ngukurr, formerly Roper River Mission]. Two horses were speared and he was forced to bury some of his stores and beat a retreat to the Katherine River camp. The number of attackers was estimated at between one hundred and two hundred on each occasion (Reid, 1990, p 52).

The wars included massacres at Calico Creek (1872), Harris Lagoon (1875), Calder Range (1875), Mount McMinn (1875), Mole Hill (1875), Crescent Lagoon (1875), Limmen Bight River (1878), Elsey Creek (1882), Red Lily Lagoon (1882), Hodgson Downs (1903) and Winiki Pocket (1903-04).

In respect of the Calder Range reprisals, Inspector Paul Foelsche issued these instructions to Corporal Geoge Montagu: "I cannot give you orders to shoot all natives you come across, but circumstances may occur for which I cannot provide definite instructions". Foelsche wanted to go with them, but it was a large party, he said, with “too many tale-tellers”. He boasted in a letter to a friend, John Lewis, that he had sent Montagu to the Roper to “have a picnic with the natives” (Roberts, 2005, pp 115-124).

While punitive expeditions were being organised, an overlanding party to Queensland, led by George De Lautour and William Batten, arrived at Roper Bar on 19 July and found Daer’s note and Johnston's body and immediately set off in search of the Mangarrayi people. They left their own note for the police party dated 24 July 1875 saying they had ‘found natives mustered strongly at Mount McMinn’, that they ‘dispersed them and did their best to avenge Johnston's death’ (telegram from JAG Little cited in NTTG, 18 September 1875, p 2).

John Sandefur (1985, p 209) noted that by 1890 the situation began to stabilise after an extremely violent 20 years during which “many Aborigines had been killed” and others retreated into country not yet taken up by colonisers. However: 

This relatively peaceful state of coexistence…was shattered by the large cattle syndicate, the Eastern and African Cold Storage Company. This company leased the entire eastern half of Arnhem Land comprising some 50,000 square kilometres, and purchased several cattle stations in the area, thus taking in virtually all of the country belonging to the seven major tribes of Ngukurr. 

Moreover:

In 1903 the company engaged in what has been described as ‘probably one of the few authenticated instances in which Aborigines were systematically hunted’ (Bauer 1964:157) and without doubt ‘the most systematic extermination of Aborigines ever carried out on the Roper’ (Merlan 1978:87). For a time the company employed two gangs of ten to fourteen Aborigines headed by a European or a part-European to hunt and shoot ‘wild blacks’ on sight. The company went into liquidation in 1908, the year the CMS [Church Missionary Society] established its mission station on the Roper River (Sandefur, 1985, p 210).

Warfare continued into the 1920s and beyond. Alex Smith wrote:

The Reverend Wilbur Chaseling testified at the Gove land rights case in 1970 that he was told by Wonggu while in the Caledon Bay area in 1935 looking for a suitable site for a new mission station, that a Cape Shield clan was ‘effectively wiped out by men on horseback with rifles’. Chaseling formed the impression that all members of the clan were dead by the early 1920s. See Transcript of Proceedings before His Honour Mr Justice Blackburn, in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory between Millirripum v Nabalco Pty Ltd (1st defendant) and the Commonwealth of Australia (2nd defendant) (Smith A,1990, p 134).

These practices are well known to the people of Ngukurr. Peter and Jay Read recorded an interview with Gertie Huddleston Kurrakain about the pastoralists:

Interviewer: These White men in the station, like at Hodgson Downs, they’d pay these Black police1 to come and shoot the Mara and Alawa people. Why didn’t they do it themselves do you think? Why didn’t they go out on horseback and do the shooting?

Kurrakain:  Because they didn’t know where to go, you know.  The native knew where they would hide, you know. They didn’t know where waterholes, too, were (Read and Read, 1991, pp 8-9). 

Claire Smith recorded Bandicoot Robinson’s account of Tom Boddington poisoning workers and their families at Mainoru Station in 1940. The victims were Rembarrng and Nagalkgan people of whom up to 40 died (Smith C, 2004, p 17).

Contributor: Robyn Smith, 2025

Notable People

• Waypuldanya, Winiki Pocket, 1903 (Read and Read, 1991, pp 12-16).
• Charley, Elsey Creek, 1882 (Lucanus cited in Clement & Bridge, 1991, p 20).
• Charley, Red Lily Lagoon, killed in 1885 (Reid, 1990, pp 90-91).
• Old Charlie Waypuldanya, Hodgson Downs 1903 – he was an escapee; unclear whether he was a warrior, too (Ucko and Layton, 1999, p 235).
• Boddington, Thomas ‘Tom’ (Smith, 2004, p 18).
• Conway, George (employed by Eastern & African Cold Storage Co) (Merlan, 1978, p 87).
• Costello, John (Central Queensland Herald, 13 Feb 1930, pp 12-13; see also Roberts, 2009, p 7) Note: The ‘friend’ to whom Foelsche was writing was John Costello, owner of Valley of the Springs in the Gulf Country.
• Eastern and African Cold Storage Company (Merlan, 1978, p 87; Smith, 2024, pp 97-98).
• Farrar, John Samuel, landholder and station manager (Smith, 2024, p 100).
• Gunn, Jeannie, author (Gunn, 1907; Smith, 2024, pp 102-103).
• Hann, Frank (Bolton, 1972, np; Smith R, 2024, np).
• Joynt, Reverend RD, Church Missionary Society (Sandefur, 1998, p 37).
• Lynott, Thomas John ‘Tom’, station manager who named Malakoff Creek and Massacre Waterfalls (Roberts, 2005, p 181).
• Macartney, John Arthur, pastoralist and landholder, half of Macartney & Mayne with Edward Graves Mayne (Gibbney, 1974, np).
• Uhr, Wentworth D’Arcy ‘Darcy’, drover, involved in the Lagoon Creek, Calico Creek and the Cox River massacres (Ryan et al, 2024, np; Roberts, 2005, p 21).
• Watson, John ‘Jack’ aka ‘the Gulf Hero’, drover, serial perpetrator (Roberts, 2005, pp 58-59; Smith, 2024, pp 112-114). See also Frank Hann above.

Sources

• Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (1996) Map of Indigenous Australia https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/map-indigenous-australia
• Bolton GC ‘Frank Hugh Hann (1846-1921)’ in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol 4, 1972 https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hann-frank-hugh-3906
• Centre for Indigenous Policy Research (CIPR), Yugul Mangi: Traditional Owners and area of operation, College of Arts & Social Sciences, Australian National University:
  https://cipr.cass.anu.edu.au/yugul-mangi-traditional-owners-and-area-operation 
• Clement C and Bridge P (eds) (1991) Kimberley Scenes: Sagas of Australia’s Last Frontier, Hesperian Press, Carlisle, WA.
• Gibbney HJ ‘John Arthur Macartney (1834-1917)’ in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol 5, 1974 https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/macartney-john-arthur-624
• Green J, McDinny N, Hoosan S, Kerins S and Ritchie T (c 2019) Lead in my grandmother’s body: https://www.leadinmygrandmothersbody.com/
• Gunn Mrs A (1907) We of the Never Never, 15h Edition, MacMillan, New York.
• Merlan F ‘“Making People Quiet” in the pastoral north: reminiscences of Elsey Station’ in Aboriginal History, Vol 2, 1978, pp 70-106.
• National Museum of Australia (nd) The Yolngu 
  https://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/yalangbara/yolngu
• Northern Territory Place Names Register search:
  https://www.ntlis.nt.gov.au/placenames/index.jsp
• Read P and Read J (1991) Long Time, Olden Time: Aboriginal accounts of Northern Territory history, Institute for Aboriginal Development, Darwin.
• Reid G (1990) A Picnic with the Natives: Aboriginal-European Relations in the Northern Territory to 1910, Melbourne University Press, Victoria.
• Roberts T (2005) Frontier Justice: a history of the Gulf Country to 1900, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane.
• Ryan et al (2024) ‘Calico Creek Massacre’ in Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia 1788-1930, University of Newcastle https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/detail.php?r=720
• Sandefur Joy The Aboriginalisation of the Church at Ngukurr, PhD Thesis, 1998, La Trobe University, Melbourne https://assets.ctfassets.net/ra0r88kvhzmj/4VjnDoUciPlqTfsDzHgiby/7b43d1e01a8bdc1221c7d8c208b72c11/JSthesisF.pdf
• Sandefur J ‘Aspects of the Socio-Political History of Ngukurr (Roper River) and its Effect on Language Change’ in Aboriginal History Vol 9 No 2, 1985, pp 205-219
• Smith A (1990) The White Missus of Arnhem Land: a true story, NTU Press, Darwin
• Smith C (2004) Country, Kin and Culture: survival of an Aboriginal community, Wakefield Press, Adelaide.
• Smith R ‘Australia would do well to have a chat about the truth of its history, and stop memorialising monsters’ in The Guardian, 15 February 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/15/australia-would-do-well-to-have-a-chat-about-the-truth-of-its-history-and-stop-memorialising-monsters
• Ucko P and Layton R (1999) The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape: Shaping Your Landscape, Routledge, UK.
• Unattributed, ‘The Life of John Costello’ in Central Queensland Herald, 13 February 1930.
• Unattributed, ‘Roper River Expedition’ in Northern Territory Times & Gazette, 18 September 1875.
• Walker A and Zorc RD ‘Austronesian Loanwords in Yolngu-Matha of Northeast Arnhem Land’ in Aboriginal History, 1981, Issue 5, No 2, pp 109-133:
  https://zorc.net/publications/030=AustronesianlLoanwordsInYolnguMatha.pdf 

Includes information about colonial violence. Historical sources include racist language and attitudes and descriptions of violence.

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