(3) Preparing for War
Gudyarra (war) and the Bicentennial of Martial Law, 2024 (3) - Preparing for War[1]
January 2024. Windradyne is captured, beaten into submission breaking his ribs, and imprisoned for a month. The raids on stock and crops, which the Wiradjuri consider their right as ‘the white men have driven away all the kangaroos and opossums and that black men must now have beef’, temporarily subside.
Meanwhile pastoralists are moving further afield. William Lawson has been moving his sheep and cattle to his Mudgee holdings for greener pastures. After retiring from his position of Commandant of Bathurst in 1823 Lawson returns to his role as magistrate at Bathurst.[2]
January and February 2024. Judge Advocate Wylde, whose holdings at Macquarie-Wambuul river has been previously attacked numerous times, is attacked again. He calls for urgent military action.
February. Governor Brisbane is preparing his troops, calling for campaign equipment as well as ‘gawdy articles’ and hunting rifles to bribe the ‘Chiefs’ to change sides.
March. By now Windradyne is a free man. Raids on stock, huts and workers resume by large bands of Wiradjuri. There is a robbery at Swallow Creek Station within days of stock and a few convicts returning. The Wiradjuri are reported as being ‘marked all over with pipe clay’ (ochred) and on a war footing. The military nearby (2 soldiers) is called in. The soldiers, assisted by convicts and others, return to the hut at 2 am, surprise the remaining Wiradjuri, and take the offensive. During the fighting two Wiradjuri are killed and three captured (one of whom later escapes).
April is unusually quiet. From later events and reports it is now believed that the Wiradjuri clans are holding war councils with neighbouring nations – ‘Mountains Tribes’ (probably the Burra Burra/Gundangarra) and southern tribes (possibly the Dharawal and Yuin). Although traditional ‘enemies’ these nations gather peacefully for ‘corroboree’, including in the Capertee Valley. On this occasion they are combining forces and planning strategies to repel the invading British.[3]
May. A gift of potatoes to some Wiradjuri people goes haywire when the same group returns the next day and begins to dig up more. The colony ethos is that it is acceptable to kill Wiradjuri seen stealing so reprisals are swift and a number of the group are killed and injured. (The Bathurst Massacre or The Potato Field Incident)
Wiradjuri people are poisoned at a place called the ‘Murdering Hut’.
Members of Windradyne’s family are killed; remembered from the oral history handed down by descendants as being ‘shot down in front of him’.
[1] Primary source is the research and
writing of Stephen Gapps, Gudyarra: The
First Wiradyuri War of Resistance.
For a more detailed investigation of events and people involved read this publication.
[2] Both commissioned in 1819;
[3] In May John Macarthur who holds land in
Camden, a traditional meeting place of the Dharawal, Darug and Gundangarra
peoples, reports on a large gathering of warriors from all around the coast for
corroborree and afterwards heading to Bathurst.
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