Waterloo Bay Massacre

The Waterloo Bay massacre or Elliston massacre refers to a fatal clash between settlers and Aboriginal Australians in late May 1849 on the cliffs of Waterloo Bay near Elliston, South Australia which led to the deaths of a number of Aboriginal people. The events leading up to the fatal clash included killings of three white settlers by Aboriginal people, and the killing of one Aboriginal person and the death by poisoning of five others by white settlers. The limited archival records indicate that three Aboriginal people were killed or died of wounds from the clash, and five were captured, however, accounts of the killing of up to 260 Aboriginal people at the cliffs have persistently circulated since at least 1880.

In the 1920s and 1930s, several historians examined the archival record and concluded that there is no formal or direct evidence of a massacre on a large scale, and opined that the recorded events were exaggerated by storytellers over time. More recently, another historian concluded that the rumours relating to a massacre are founded in fact, and that some form of punitive action did take place on the cliffs of Waterloo Bay, but that it had been exaggerated into a myth. Aboriginal people from the west coast of South Australia have oral history traditions that a large-scale massacre occurred. An attempt in the 1970s to build a memorial for the Aboriginal people killed in the massacre was unsuccessful, as the District Council of Elliston demanded proof that the massacre occurred before permitting a cairn to be placed on the cliffs. The deaths of the white settlers killed in the lead-up to the clash have been memorialised to some extent. In recent years authors have concluded that, whether or not a massacre occurred on the large scale suggested by some accounts, the clash has become something of a "narrative battleground" between the documented and imagined history of white settlement and the Aboriginal oral history of the frontier.

In March 1839, white settlers arrived from Adelaide, the capital of the colony of South Australia, to establish Port Lincoln on the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula. There were significant clashes between settlers and Aboriginal people in the years that followed, as settlers spread out to establish pastoral runs around the township. In 1842, soldiers were sent to Port Lincoln from Adelaide to help protect the settlers, but the remoteness from Adelaide, and the vaguely defined powers and limited policing resources of the Government Resident, the local representative of the colonial government, meant that there were serious limitations on the rule of law in the region. This was especially true with respect to Aboriginal people, who were supposed to be treated as British subjects in the same way as the settlers. Between June 1848 and May 1849, there were a series of incidents between settlers and Aboriginal people in the Elliston district, located 169 kilometres (105 mi) northwest of Port Lincoln. This region was inhabited by Aboriginal people of the Nauo, Kokotha and Wirangu peoples. In the first of these incidents, John Hamp, a hutkeeper on the Stony Point sheep station, was speared and clubbed to death by Aboriginal people on 23 June 1848. The second incident occurred in August when at least one Aboriginal person was shot by the overseer of the same station for stealing a shirt. In May 1849, five Aboriginal people – two adults, two boys and an infant – died after eating poisoned flour stolen by an Aboriginal man from William Ranson Mortlock's station near Yeelanna. The man from whom the flour was stolen was arrested and charged with murder, but sailed for the United States soon after being released by the authorities. According to the Commissioner of Police, this poisoning may have led to two Aboriginal revenge killings of settlers later that month. On 3 May, James Rigby Beevor was speared to death at his hut, and four days later Annie Easton was speared to death on an adjoining lease. Her infant was unharmed and was found beside her body.

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