Frederick Foot is not well known but he is acknowledged for his key role in one of the earliest infamous events in Australia’s colonial history, the Myall Creek Massacre in 1838. It is Frederick Foot who is credited with informing Governor Gipps of the unprovoked murders of at least 28 aborigines at Myall Creek. But little else seems to be known or written about Frederick. I decided to research Frederick and his short bio follows in Part 2.
This first part briefly outlines the tragedy of Myall Creek with its’ key moments. Sources for the quotes used are referenced and can be followed up for further information, the wider historical context, implications & outcomes of Myall Creek.
Myall Creek Massacre (1838)
Early newspaper report
Colonist (Sydney, NSW : 1835 – 1840), Wednesday 18 July 1838, page 2
By 1838 after 50 years of colonial settlement in New South Wales, squatters and settlers were already displacing indigenous people from their home, sacred sites and food sources.
Ceremonial and religious life was disrupted by the settler incursion. Important sacred sites were desecrated, albeit unwittingly in many cases, access to them denied and large ceremonial gatherings often dispersed by anxious frontiersmen or officious police detachments.[i]
But Aborigines reacted less to the original trespass than to the ruthless assertion by Europeans of exclusive proprietorial rights often from the very first day of occupation. It was behaviour probably unheard of in traditional society. Increasingly the newcomers impinged on accustomed patterns of life, occupying the flat, open land and monopolizing surface water. Indigenous animals were driven away, plant life eaten or trampled and Aborigines pushed into the marginal country – mountains, swamps, waterless neighbourhoods. Patterns of seasonal migration broke down, areas remaining free of Europeans were over utilized and eventually depleted of both flora and fauna. Food became scarcer and available in less and less variety and even access to water was often difficult. Attacks on sheep and cattle, made frequently in desperation, provoked violent retaliation: reprisal and revenge spiralled viciously.[ii]
In May 1838, a group of Wirrayaraay people were welcomed to camp at Henry Dangar’s station at Myall Creek (near present-day Bingara, New South Wales). The station was managed by William Hobbs. Over the following weeks, the young men in the group assisted the station’s stockmen in various tasks and there was a mutual friendly relationship between the groups.
On Sunday morning, 10 June 1838, ten of the Aborigines, representing most of the able-bodied males, accompanied Thomas Foster, the superintendent of Newtons, a neighbouring station, to assist him cut bark on his employer’s station. Whilst there they learned that a party of armed stockmen had visited the previous day and had plans to go onto Dangar’s. Foster prevailed upon the Aborigines to return immediately to Myall Creek. By half past four they were on their way. They were already too late.
Between three thirty and a quarter to four, a group of 11 stockmen came galloping up to the huts of Myall Creek Station, brandishing their guns and swords. Unfortunately for the Aborigines, who were preparing their evening meal, William Hobbs, the station superintendent, and Andrew Burrowes, one of the assigned convicts, were absent from the station. It is likely that the marauding gang knew this, having been tipped off by Burrowes.
The horsemen herded the Wirrayaraay into the workmen’s hut with only two boys aged about eight or nine able to escape. One of the stockmen, John Russell, undid a long tether rope from around a horse’s neck, entered the hut with one or two others and began tying the defenceless people’s hands together.
Despite his evening socialising with the Aborigines, Kilmeister, one of the station convicts, joined with their tormentors. George Anderson, another of the assigned convicts, refused to join and was later prevailed upon to give evidence against the others. The stockmen were deaf to the cries of their victims as they were lead over a rise to the West of the hut. There is no eyewitness account of the killings but about 800 metres from the huts, the defenceless people were hacked and slashed to death. Only one of the whole clan was spared. John Blake appears to have selected an Aboriginal woman for himself and so spared her. All of the other Aboriginal people were beheaded and their headless bodies were left where they fell.
…
On the same afternoon, Dangar’s superintendent, William Hobbs returned to Myall Creek, having already gained some information about what had occurred in his absence. He questioned Anderson and accepted Kilmeister’s denial of complicity. Hobbs was led to the murder site by Davey where the bodies remained and was grief-stricken and overcome with nausea. The next morning Hobbs and Thomas Foster (superintendent of the neighbouring Newton’s Station) inspected the site again. The men agreed that the atrocity should be reported and Hobbs undertook to inform his employer Dangar. [iii]
Though Frederick Foot had a seemingly small part overall, it is recognised as significant. His name is mentioned in most accounts as having, on learning of the massacre, set out immediately to inform the authorities.
William Hobbs delayed informing his employer and the authorities of the atrocity. However, Hobbs told Frederick Foote, a free settler on a nearby pastoral lease, what had occurred. Foote was appalled at the treatment of the Aborigines in his district, and determined to report the murders. Foote’s first attempt – to inform the Police Magistrate closest to the atrocity, Captain Edward Denny Day, who was based in Invermein (Scone) and Muswellbrook, more than 160 miles south of Myall Creek – was unsuccessful, because Day was away on patrol. So, Frederick Foote travelled to Sydney, where he delivered a note to the new Governor, Major Sir George Gipps, who had landed in the Colony only four month earlier with strict instructions from the British government to protect the Aboriginal inhabitants of the colony and to prevent unlawful incursions against them. On receiving Foote’s note, Gipps wrote a letter of instruction to Captain Edward Denny Day at Invermein instructing him to proceed post-haste to the Myall Creek district with a party of mounted police and, once there, to investigate, gather evidence, arrest those responsible and bring them to Sydney for trial.
In the meantime, William Hobbs sent a letter to his employer, Henry Dangar, and another identical one to Police Magistrate Edward Denny Day reporting the murders.[iv]
The original note by William Hobbs informing authorities of his account can be found at https://gallery.records.nsw.gov.au/index.php/galleries/50-years-at-state-records-nsw/2-10/
The trial was widely reported in newspapers at the time and usually referred to as the Liverpool Plains massacre. An address by Judge Burton to the convicted prisoners can be found in this newspaper article in The Colonist 12 December 1838. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/31722191
Conspiracies of silence usually shrouded massacres of Aboriginal people and perpetrators were rarely punished.
The Supreme Court trials that followed the Myall Creek massacre were therefore exceptional, firstly because of the final outcome (the execution of British subjects), and secondly because of the wealth of information that the court transcripts preserved detailing the events leading up to the massacre and the legal proceedings.
The process of justice was initiated by three individuals who reported the event: station manager William Hobbs, local police superintendent Thomas Foster, and settler Frederick Foot. It was carried out by the new governor Sir George Gipps and the Attorney-General John Plunkett.[v]
A recent acceptance speech (of an award from the Myall Creek Memorial Committee) by Ted Stubbins in 2018 included an acknowledgement of Frederick Foot.
But the national significance of Myall Creek is that it is one such event that was thoroughly investigated. Details became known and a measure of justice ensued. “And why was it investigated? Because one man, Frederick Foote, (and let it be understood that he was a landholder and grazier) travelled to Sydney and informed Governor Gipps, who instructed Magistrate Edward Denny Day to investigate.
“Frederick Foote’s key role is often overlooked. None of the otherwise excellent speeches today have mentioned him. “I doubt that we would be gathered here today, if Frederick Foote hadn’t intervened.
“If there had been more people like him and Gipps and Denny Day and those who stood up in court, we would have had a different history.[vi]
[i] Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia (Sydney: University of NSW Press, 2006), 73.
[ii] Reynolds, 72.
[iii] Friends of Myall Creek – The Massacre Story. https://myallcreek.org/the-massacre-story/
[iv] Mark Tedeschi, Murder at Myall Creek. (Australia: Simon & Schuster Australia), 2016, p112.
[v] National Museum Australia – Myall Creek Massacre https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/myall-creek-massacre
[vi] Myall Creek Memorial Committee awards Life Membership to Ted Stubbins. http://www.bingara.com.au/myall-creek-memorial-committee-awards-life-membership-to-ted-stubbins/