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Poignant (1996, p 27) wrote that these events are commemorated in a corrobboree by Melville Islanders. This was the first attempt at European settlement in Northern Australia. There is no record of how many Tiwi Islanders were killed, although reports of deaths put the figure as 'minimal' notwithstanding heavy fortification and the posting of sentries. It is reported that the Tiwi consider the abandonment of Fort Dundas as a victory in repelling the English from their soil, which was threatened by grass and tree cutting and voracious use of precious water supplies.
Reid (1990, p 17) wrote that Captain Gordon Bremer arrived on 23 September with fifty marines and soldiers, and several wives and children, but without official instructions as to how he should handle the local people. He had merely been told they were 'understood to be of a ferocious disposition'. Within a month the Tiwi had attacked, and one was shot in reprisal. Thereafter the Aborigines were seldom seen but they tore down huts, speared the livestock, stole the tools of working parties. Warruminguand, in October 1826, killed a white man.
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In November 1827 the surgeon, Dr John Gold, and storekeeper, John Henry Green, walking near Fort Dundas, were attacked and killed. By this time it was apparent that Apsley Strait was unsuitable as a trading settlement.
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In 1828 Fort Dundas was abandoned in favour of Fort Wellington, which had been set up at Raffles Bay in July 1828, but where relations with the Aborigines were no better. The commandant, Captain Henry Smyth, possibly mindful of the experience on Melville Island, sent out armed patrols with his working parties.
