COLUMNIST Stuart Pearson says it's time for Bathurst to acknowledge a grim chapter in its history.
In 1815, the British colonial government established the first white inland settlement in Australia at Bathurst. They didn't know (or, more accurately, didn't care) that they had entered the homeland of the Wiradyuri people, whose number around Bathurst has been estimated by the Wiradyuri at several thousand.
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For the first six years, European numbers around Bathurst remained low (even by 1821, it was still fewer than 300 people) and the two groups co-existed without much conflict.
The impact on Aboriginal traditional life by the European settlement appears to have been slight. In fact, in some instances there was even co-operation and friendships.
But after 1822, there was a surge in land grants under incoming Governor Brisbane, who favoured a faster pace of occupation. As hundreds more settlers arrived, relationships with the Wiradyuri quickly strained to breaking point.
European farming practices were incompatible with traditional land management. Kangaroos and emus were replaced by sheep and cattle. The Macquarie River was overfished.
Fences began to restrict the movement of people and animals and, finally, a localised drought between 1822 and 1824 stressed race relations to breaking point.
In December 1823, two convict stockmen were killed at Kings Plains, followed by three more in the Wiagdon ranges to the north of Bathurst. Wiradyuri women and children were then murdered near O'Connell. With the situation deteriorating rapidly, it only took a spark to ignite isolated incidents into full-scale hostilities.
That spark was started with a seemingly friendly gesture in a potato field in Kelso, opposite Bathurst.
In March 1824, a farmer shared some potatoes he was cultivating with a number of passing Wiradyuri. The next day these families returned. What followed remains uncertain but ended with the white settlers grabbing their muskets and shooting at the Wiradyuri. Several Wiradyuri were killed, including the wife and one child of a young, strong warrior named Windradyne.
After this, the Wiradyuri, led by Windradyne, launched "payback" reprisal raids across the countryside, killing dozens of settlers who they believed had committed lethal violence against them.
The pastoralists and their convict stockmen fought back with hunting parties on horseback armed with sabres, pistols and carbines. They were not above the indiscriminate use of arsenic poisoning either.
As one young settler would later write: "Poisoned dampers had been left purposely exposed in shepherd's huts in order to tempt the blacks to steal and to eat. They did eat and died in horrible agony."(Australian Stories Re-told, William Suttor (MLC), Glyndwr Whalan Press, Bathurst, 1887, p.65.)
As the scale of violence escalated, settlers called upon the government in Sydney to intervene.
Governor Brisbane proclaimed martial law on August 14, 1824 and dispatched 75 soldiers to Bathurst with magistrates permitted to administer summary justice, which effectively meant legal impunity for killing local native people.
This was only the second time that martial law had been declared in Australia.
The Wiradyuri did not know what martial law was. As far as they were concerned, they had never ceded sovereignty over the land. They viewed the conflict as a fight against invaders trying to take their tribal homeland.
What followed was wholesale slaughter. At Billywillinga, about 20 kilometres north-west of Bathurst, a group of Wiradyuri people approached a party of soldiers who were offering food. In minutes, about 30 men, women and children were shot dead.
Another massacre of Wiradyuri is believed to have occurred at Bells Falls near Sofala. Here, settlers and soldiers were said to have herded Wiradyuri men, women and children onto a cliff face, forcing them to jump to their death. It is estimated 20 to 30 people perished.
Some white historians point to the lack of any official (European) records to question whether this last incident occurred. To the Wiradyuri, however, this event was real and has become part of their oral history for the past 200 years.
Feelings were now running very high in Bathurst and the attitude towards the Wiradyuri had hardened. At a public meeting, William Cox (road builder and pastoralist) advocated "that the best thing that could be done, would be to shoot all the Blacks and manure the ground with their carcasses" (Gunson, N [ed.] Australian Reminiscences and papers of L.E.Threkeld, Canberra 1974. Vol. 1 p. 49).
The depredations inflicted on the Wiradyuri during the period of martial law were ruthlessly effective. Even though isolated attacks and some deaths of settlers by the Wiradyuri continued, it was clear the "shock and awe" tactics used by mounted infantry were having a disastrous effect on the remaining Wiradyuri.
By late 1824, numbers of Wiradyuri were surrendering themselves voluntarily to the government. On one occasion, over 60 Wiradyuri men, women and children came in peacefully. Martial law was repealed on November 11, 1824 and a fortnight later, Windradyne himself, leading 140 of his clan, made a remarkable trek across the mountains to Parramatta, where he formally sued for peace.
No accurate figures exist for how many people died on each side of the conflict - known today as the "Bathurst War" - but it is estimated by historians that up to 50 Europeans died out of a white population of approximately 1250 (four per cent). Over half of the Wiradyuri died from a combination of wounds, poisoning and disease.
During this period, Major James Morisset was appointed as the new military Commander at Bathurst with orders to restore order. Apart from organising military expeditions into the bush to hunt down the Wiradyuri, he indulged in a practice that today we would consider gruesome and revolting.
Morisset, an officer who was otherwise regarded as a firm but fair military man, ordered the removal of heads from many dozens of Wiradyuri killed by settlers and soldiers and brought into the settlement of Bathurst. He then placed some of the heads on poles outside the police barracks (today a bowling club known as "Greens on William") as a warning to those still loyal to Windradyne.
When the heads were finally removed from public display, the entire number were boiled down. Morisset then had them packed into crates and shipped back to England as trophies and scientific exhibits (Richard Gott, Britain's Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt, Verso Press, London, 2011, p.239).
By any estimates, Wiradyuri resistance around Bathurst had been eliminated, together with almost the Wiradyuri people themselves. As William Suttor later wrote, "When Martial Law had run its course, extermination is the word that most aptly describes its result" (ibid, p.46).
So what does this mean for all of us in 2024?
Sometimes history forces us to acknowledge uncomfortable truths and this dark episode in our past is one of them. When white people came to settle the Bathurst plains, it was not uninhabited. The Wiradyuri people lived here, numbering in their thousands.
Over millennia they had transformed the land into a virtual parkland for ease of hunting and constructed permanent fishing traps in the rivers and marshes for a plentiful supply of protein.
When white people came to Bathurst, they didn't ask permission to settle. They didn't sign any treaties or pay any consideration for the land. They simply took it.
For a while the two sides co-existed uneasily, but when the white population exploded after 1822, it threatened the very foundations of Wiradyuri way-of-life. The Wiradyuri then fought a homeland war using guerrilla tactics against the invader - and lost.
Stone clubs and wooden spears were no match against steel swords, firearms and horses.
It is a hard thing to accept that our white ancestors invaded and stole land inhabited for thousands of years by another race. It is even harder to admit that when the Wiradyuri started to fight back, our white ancestors carried out such a brutal campaign against the Wiradyuri it almost eliminated them.
Today we would call that genocide - a word that sits most uncomfortably with many of us.
American motivational speaker Zig Ziglar once said "the first step in solving a problem is recognising that there is one".
In 2024, it will be the 200th anniversary of the declaration of martial law in Bathurst. It would be a great first step if we collectively recognised this dark chapter in our history and resolved to move forward with the Wiradyuri in friendship and forgiveness. This would be true reconciliation.
The Wiradyuri have a word called Yindyamarra. It means five things: be respectful, do slowly, be polite, be honourable and be humble about your achievements. In 2024, we should all embrace this way-of-life as a way to move forward, together.
