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

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An exploration party comprising Dillon Cox, Wentworth Darcy Uhr, James Barry, William Harvey, James Broderick, Jimmy Soo and Ah Choo were at a place they named Calico Creek (there is nothing by that name now) at the Cox River en route from Burketown to Port Darwin. The number of deceased is unclear but was described by Roberts (2005, p 18): 'Shortly after the party had resumed their journey, through the scrub beyond the river, the leading cattle turned and rushed back as they approached a creek. The men galloped to the front to investigate and were "saluted with a shower of spears"'. The Brisbane Courier (27 Oct 1874, p. 3) quoted Barry: 'Quickly unslinging their rifles, they retaliated with a brisk fire, the Westley Richards telling with deadly effect even at 350 and 400 yards. Still the blacks showed a bold front, and were not driven back without an obstinate resistance. When they had at length been fairly driven off the field, the victors ran the creek upwards and downwards till the camp was discovered deserted, and there found numerous bundles of spears, nulla-nullas and boomerangs, which were quickly broken up and burnt'.

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As Roberts (2005, p 25) described the event: 'Walker's party [Joe Walker aka Joe Pettit, Tommy McBride and Billy Banks] travelled a good distance the next day, probably into the country of another tribe, and had no trouble. As the men were having breakfast the following morning at first light, they noticed about fifty Aboriginals in the distance jogging along in their horse tracks. Without waiting to see if they were friendly, Walker said he would "give them a lesson". Jumping on a one-eyed horse he kept saddled near the camp, he galloped straight at the leaders. Only one spear was thrown before they all turned and ran. Joe followed and galloped on to them one at a time, the blind side of his horse on the nig, and he emptied his revolvers on them and then turned back���Joe said "I don't think they will trouble us any more". They didn't and the party saw no more Aboriginals until it reached the Roper River'. This was corroborated by Merlan (1978, p 78): 'Commenting on a later incident in which he and a companion shot some Aborigines farther east towards the Roper Bar Ashwin added: "This was the same tribe which stuck Packard up and other parties since at the same camping place. They attacked Joe Pettit, W Banks and Tommy McBride at the camping place and waterhole. Joe Walker was one of the party...and gave them a lesson. He rode a one-eyed horse and galloped at them and then after them revolver in hand. Tommy McBride told me all about that trip over from Cloncurry in 1872"' (Ashwin cited in Merlan 1978, p 78).

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See also Crescent Lagoon, Harris Lagoon, Calder's Range and Mole Hill massacres. A range of sources (see below) detail this series of massacres. On 29 June 1875, Charles Henry Johnston, Abram Daer and Charles Rickards from the Daly River Telegraph station were attacked by Mangarrayi men at Roper Bar. Johnson died the next day. Too weak to bury Johnston, Daer and Rickards wrapped the body in canvas and oilskin and placed it together with a note under the foot of a tree and set off for Daly River Telegraph station, which they reached on 13 July. Daer died from his wounds on 7 August. While punitive expeditions were being organised to avenge the deaths, 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, September 18, 1875, p 2). The police parties arrived at Roper Bar on 2 August 1875, found the notes from Daer and the overlanding party and buried Johnson's remains on 3 August 1875 ('Roper River Expedition' NTTG, September 18, 1875, p 2). A later article reported the 'hunting of natives' in the area, 'Whilst great regret has been felt at the loss of valuable lives like that of Mr. Johnston and Daer, not a little indignation has been expressed at the aimless nature of the Roper expedition and the indiscriminate "hunting" of the natives in the region. It is, of course, very desirable to strike terror into the hearts of the natives, in order to show them that the lives of the white men cannot be taken with impunity, but there ought to be a show of reason in the measure of vengeance dealt out to them.' (NTTG, 04 December, 1875).

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

See also Mount McMinn, Harris Lagoon, Calder Range and Mole Hill massacres. A range of sources (see below) detail these massacres. Following the killing of Charles Henry Johnston at Roper Bar on 29 June 1875 by Mangarrayi warriors, two reprisal parties, one led by Corporal George Montagu comprising 10 men and the other, also of 10 men led by senior telegraph officer, Jonathan Little, and brother-in-law of Johnston, arrived at Roper Bar on 2 August and buried Johnston's remains. On 5 August, the two parties started up the Roper River to Crescent Lagoon and returned on 15 August. It is estimated that 40 Mangarrayi people were slaughtered. This is the second massacre in the Mole Hill series.

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

See also Mt McMinn, Crescent Lagoon, Calder Range and Mole Hill massacres. A range of sources (see below) provide details of this massacre. Following the killing of Charles Johnston by Mangarrayi warriors at Roper Bar on 29 June 1875, two reprisal parties were formed and commenced a six-week campaign of dispersing Aboriginal groups in the region. On 18 August a party departed Roper Bar on foot and attacked an Aboriginal camp at Harris Lagoon, shot people at will and returned to Roper Bar on 20 August. As Roberts noted (fn 13, 2009, np), 'A member of the official party wrote later that the overlanders "dispersed them thoroughly���[and] fully avenged Johnston's death"'. And 'After this, the official party set to work on slaughtering Aboriginals on both sides of the river, upstream from Roper Bar. On 20 August, police reinforcements arrived on a government boat from Darwin and the slaughter continued downstream from the Bar, as far as the river mouth, notwithstanding that those tribes had nothing to do with Johnston's murder. The random kills extended along a 200 kilometer stretch that ran both north and south of the river���The total death toll is impossible to guess, but it was likely in excess of 150 or 200'. Later, in December, 1875 an Aboriginal man, Ural, was tried for the murder of C.H. Johnston and C. Daer, but was not recognised by C.T. Rickards who had escaped the attack at Roper Bar in which Johnston was killed. Ural was released (NTTG December 25, 1875, p 2).

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

See also Mt McMinn, Crescent Lagoon, Harris Lagoon and Mole Hill massacres. A range of sources (see below) provide details of this massacre. Following the killing of Charles Johnston at Roper Bar in the NT by Mangarrayi on 29 June 1875, two reprisal parties comprising 20 men assembled at Roper Bar on 2 August and, between 5 August and 4 September, conducted a series of massacres at Aboriginal camps in the region. On 29 August 1875, a party on foot attacked an Aboriginal camp on the north side of the Roper River under Calder Range. It is estimated that 40 people were shot. Roberts (2005, pp 115-124) takes up the story: "As a consequence, Aboriginals along the length of the river were slaughtered by a massive party of police and civilians for four weeks solid in August 1875. Although the orders came from Inspector Paul Foelsche, the government's attack dog in Darwin, an operation of such size and cost, with a blaze of publicity, would have required approval from the government of Premier Sir James Penn Boucaut. Foelsche issued these cryptic, but sinister, instructions: "I cannot give you orders to shoot all natives you come across, but circumstances may occur for which I cannot provide definite instructions". Roper River blacks had to be "punished". 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 his second-in-command, Corporal George Montagu down to the Roper to "have a picnic with the natives". Even the normally enthusiastic Northern Territory Times was sickened by "the indiscriminate 'hunting' of the natives there", adding "there ought to be a show of reason in the measure of vengeance dealt out to them". Seven days earlier, the paper's response to the death of a prospector in Arnhem Land had not been so mild: "Shoot those you cannot get at and hang those that you do catch on the nearest tree as an example to the rest" (2009, np). Wilson (2000, pp 221-222) noted that 'This was Foelsche being duplicitous. Unwilling to commit his real instructions to writing he was suggesting to Montagu that he kill any Aboriginal people he found'.

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Mole Hill is the final of five massacres that took place in reprisal for the killing of Overland Telegraph (OT) Station Master Charles Johnston and two OT workers, Abram Daer and Charles Rickards by Mangarrayi warriors at Roper Bar on 29 June 1875. According to historian Tony Roberts (2005, p 140; fn 13, ), 150-200 Mangarrayi people were killed in the six week reprisal operation from 12 July to 4 September 1875. On 4 September 1875, a posse of volunteers 'with a large amount of ammunition', (NTTG, July 17, 1875, p 1) led by Corporal George Montagu, attacked a campsite of Mangarrayi people at Mole Hill and 'dispersed' a large group of them. It is estimated that 40 people were shot. The chief of police in the NT, Inspector Paul Foelsche, who authorised one of the reprisal parties, called the operation, 'a picnic with the natives' (Wilson, 2001, pp 221-222; Reid, 1990, pp 66-67).

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Following the clubbing death of Travers in his camp, a reprisal was carried out by Nat Buchanan, Wattie Gordon, Sam Croker, Charles Bridson, Tom Hume and Brebner. Roberts (2005, pp 48-50) noted: 'Gordon Buchanan, Nat's son, admitted that the murderers of Travers "met with just retribution", but he was critical of what he called "the ruthless and often insensate methods of Croker to awe the blacks". In 1911 James Beckett, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in the NT, was shown a remote cave north-west of the Limmen Bight River which contained forty to fifty skeletons of people of all ages. Beckett's Aboriginal guide said they had been killed by lightning many years earlier. An aged Aboriginal man told Beckett he had been taken to the site by his parents the day after the tragedy. There was, apparently, no obvious evidence that those in the cave had been shot, but in the first years of contact in the Gulf country it was common for Aboriginals to attribute shooting deaths to lightning. Moreover, the cave was reported to be 100 metres long, 20 metres wide and only '2 feet' (61 centimetres) high, which makes lightning an unlikely factor. In any event, news of the cave was published in the Argus, prompting an old-timer to write: "Somewhere in the locality indicated, in a somewhat similar cave, over 25 years ago, I saw probably 20 bodies of natives who had recently been shot by a well-known Queensland overlander".'

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Duncan Campbell was murdered on Elsey Station on 15 July 1882. Reprisals followed, as Roberts (2005, p 144) described: "[Corporal George] Montague [sic] and Constable August Lucanus left Yam Creek on 16 July to investigate, collecting another constable at Pine Creek. They would be away for two months. Some forty years later, Lucanus wrote his memoirs for the Perth Daily News and his description of the search for Campbell's killers is the only record of what occurred. At Katherine the police recruited Jacob Peterson, who was with Jonathan Little's punitive party of 1875, and [Sam] Croker. Upon reaching Elsey [Station] they were joined by Palmer. Finding no trace of Campbell on the Strangways, they searched along the Roper. (p 145) At Red Lily Lagoon, where the party set up camp, a large number of Aboriginal people were fishing in bark canoes on the extensive network of lagoons and channels. Although they were frightened at first, one of the Aboriginal men approached the camp later in the day with some barramundi, which he exchanged for tobacco. Then Paddy and Peri [who had been with Campbell] arrived, desperately in need of tobacco. Tired of living with the tribe, they told about the murder, agreed to show where Campbell's body was buried near Mudla Waterhole, and where the saddles and other items were hidden. They said a Mungarrayi man named Charley, from Mole Hill, had smashed Campbell's skull with a nulla nulla while he slept and Paddy had finished him off. Peri would later give evidence that Campbell verbally abused and whipped Paddy, and they were afraid that one day he would murder them both. The police tried to induce Charley to come into the camp but he was too wily. "Remembering the murders of Johnston and Daer at the hands of Mungarrayi men seven years earlier, Montague [sic] is likely to have taken revenge on the tribe. His reactions to the Daly River copper mine murders in 1884 support this theory. Lucanus said nothing about casualties in his memoirs but Harold Thonemann, whose family owned Elsey and Hodgson Downs from 1914 to 1959, wrote that 'reprisals' followed Campbell's death. Thonemann took a keen interest in the local people during his time as manager and spoke with them at length about the old days. Whether the reprisals were carried out by Palmer's party or the police, or both, is unknown." Lucanus' memoirs, however, have him camped at Red Lily Lagoon, although he admits to nothing. Reid (1990, pp 90-91) noted that in October 1885, Charley was tracked to his camp near Chambers Creek by police and shot dead by trackers after firing a spear at Palmer, a boomerang at [MC Cornelius] Power and a woomera at one of the trackers.

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Mounted Constable August Lucanus later wrote of this massacre in the following terms (Lucanus cited in Clement & Bridge 1991, p 20): "I arrived there [at Elsey Telegraph Station] in good time and stayed for a few days with Tuckfield, the stationmaster. I let my nigger go with the Elsie [sic] niggers to find out their whereabouts. After a few days' spell we left in the evening for the niggers' camp. About three miles from it we hobbled our horses, and walked up to within 500 or 600 yards and waited for daylight. As soon as we could see, we rushed the camp. Spears and other weapons were all stuck in a big banyan tree. Tuckfield and I guarded the weapons. When the niggers woke up and saw us they tried to rush us and get their spears, but they got a good reception. Charley was one of the foremost and was one of the dead. He still had the mosquito net he had taken from poor Campbell [murdered on 15 July 1882, triggering the Red Lily Lagoon reprisal] and had been sleeping in it that night. We had intended to rush the mosquito net had not the niggers tried to get at the spears. It would have been all up with us if they had succeeded."

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Ucko and Layton (1999, p 235) say the massacre at Hodgson Downs occurred shortly before 1903 (or 1904, according to Read & Read [1991, pp 12-16]). Estimates of the number killed range between 30 and 40 Alawa people, including men, women and children. It is reported that white settlers circled and shot them. Citing Chicken Gonagun and Sandy Mambookyi, Read and Read (1991, pp 12-16) said Aboriginal men who had been cajoled into cutting timber for them were shot dead. Children were flung against trees or had their skulls smashed with stones. Women were shot. Gonagun said (p 16) "Oh, they bin like to killem, finishem up tribe. Take all of their country." Ucko and Layton (1999, p 235) wrote: 'According to August Sandy Lirriwirri, Stephen Roberts' grandfather, Old Charlie Waypuldanya, was among the few people who escaped.' This massacre was carried out in reprisal for the killing of cattle and horses by the Alawa people.

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See also the Hodgson Downs Station, Bailey Creek and, Minyerri massacres. Read and Read (1991, pp 12-16) relate the story of how Waypuldanya took revenge on the white men who he believed to be involved in the massacre of Alawa people at Hodgson Downs Station at Bailey Creek, Minyerri. He and his younger brothers killed eight in an ambush and took their guns, horses, ammunition, packs and saddles. Other white stockmen found the bodies at Winiki but did not pursue Old Charlie because they knew he was now well armed.

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