Chapter 38

The mention of Warmun made Sam think. That was the site of the Mistake Creek massacre.

In March 1915, Michael Rhatigan, a telegraph linesman based at Turkey Creek, together with his two Aboriginal employees, Joe Wynne and Nipper, shot dead twelve Gija people at Mistake Creek. They initially rushed an Aboriginal camp killing six men, burning their remains. Six women were later rounded up and shot dead. A police squad was sent to track down and capture Rhatigan and his accomplices. Rhatigan and Nipper were arrested while Wynne was shot dead by police. A coroner’s inquest held at Turkey Creek acquitted Rhatigan of any wrongdoing, while Nipper was ordered to face trial for the murder of eight people. Nipper was found not guilty and was released. He later worked at the police stables in Perth. According to local oral history, the massacre was in reprisal for the killing of Rhatigan’s cow; the cow was later claimed to have been found alive. Betty Carrington’s mother told a different tale: “Joe, an Aborigine from another country, had his eye on a married Gija woman. And he told the Rhatigans that their cow was stolen, so he could kill the husband and steal the woman.” [rewritten from Wikipedia]

Another craziness.

But it had to do with sex, livestock, whites and aborigines – the components of Australian violence since 1788. Not merely crazy. Tragic. But The Iliad was about stealing a wife from another tribe. And over half the Hollywood movies involved cattle-rustling.

What would be Gabbaitch’s fate? Could even a small group actually live in peace? There had been several ‘utopian’ communities in the 19th century. None lasted, so far as Sam knew. Brook Farm, that Hawthorne visited (1841-1846); Fruitlands, where Bronson Alcott was ridiculed as “a man bent on saving the world by a return to acorns” (1843-1844); Oneida, where they experimented with group marriage, communal child rearing, group discipline, and attempts to improve the genetic composition of their offspring (1848−1881).

There were others. Had they all disintegrated? Would this one, too?

Sam fell into a troubled sleep. “You think too much,” he was told. “Time passes. Things change. Other things remain. But nothing lasts forever. Baiami did as well as possible. You and Josiah and your fellows will survive for a time. The further future is not for you to know. The eagle soars high yet cannot see beyond the horizon. The Bible says ‘And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’ [Genesis 1:28]. And so I say unto you.”