Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

A few years ago a very good friend of mine, Peter Stewart, gave me a manuscript to read. Peter is an old school friend and, I should note for the record, the nephew of two great former Labor ministers: Frank Stewart in the Whitlam government and Kevin Stewart in the Wran government. But that is not particularly germane to what I wanted to talk about tonight. Peter gave me this manuscript. It was one of many drafts of a book that he was endeavouring to write and to have published on the history of the Myall Creek massacre. Peter also told me at the time of his involvement as a member of the Sydney Friends of Myall Creek and of their efforts to have a memorial erected at the site of that massacre.

I read the manuscript and for the first time, I have to confess, I began to understand some of the tragic events that had occurred in that massacre of around 28 Aboriginal women, children and elderly men on the remote Myall Creek cattle station. Peter had been working on this book since the 1990s, when he was a history teacher in Cronulla, so it was a privilege for me and many others to attend the launch of Peter Stewart’s book Demons at Dusk: Massacre at Myall Creek on 26 August. I normally do not quote at length from articles but I wish to quote from a couple tonight because they have described in much better words than I could the achievement of Peter Stewart in writing this book. Firstly, I will read an article from a Sydney journalist John Mulcair:

Almost 30 years ago, Peter Stewart was researching an assignment for his students at Our Lady of Mercy College at Cronulla when he encountered a truly horrifying story—the Myall Creek massacre.

At dusk on June 10, 1838, a group of stockmen armed with rifles and cutlasses rode on to the remote Myall Creek cattle station in Bingara in the state’s north-west and rounded up 28 unarmed Weraerai Aboriginal children, women and elderly men. After tethering the adults, and with the children clasping their mothers, victims were led away over a ridge and slaughtered.

Their bodies were dismembered and an attempt made to burn the remains.

What followed was unique. For the first time in the colony of NSW, where killing Aboriginals to make way for pastoral expansion was perfectly acceptable, the perpetrators of the horror were pursued and tried. Seven of them hanged.

Peter Stewart, who lives at Heathcote, has written a truly terrible book, in the sense it showed how genocide was acceptable and encouraged.

But it also shows how courageous men, some with no power, and everything to lose, found it within themselves to speak out.

Mr Stewart originally envisaged a film about the atrocity, but his scripts and eventually a slightly fictionalised form of events, bumped around in many incarnations, drawing continuous rejections.

“I’d written about 14 versions and I thought I would self-publish it and send it to Peter FitzSimons to see whether he might write a few paragraphs for the back cover,” Mr Stewart said.

It bowled FitzSimons over. He wrote: “Every Australian should read this book ... reading it helped me understand my own country.”

At the book’s launch last weekend, two blokes having a drink together personified the power of reconciliation.

Their names were Lyall Monro, a member of the Kamilaroi tribe, one of whose ancestors escaped the Myall Creek massacre. The other was Des Blake, whose ancestor was a stockman against whom charges were eventually dropped.

There is a footnote to the article:

Two young Aboriginal boys hid in a nearby creek when the stockmen rode into Myall Creek station. A descendant of one of the boys became one of rugby league’s most exciting footballers—Nathan Blacklock.

The book was launched by well-known author and biographer Peter FitzSimons. He writes in his foreword:

Like many Australians, I had vaguely heard of the “Myall Creek Massacre” but knew nothing of the detail.

That changed, however, in February 2005 when Peter Stewart, a regular reader of my weekend newspaper columns, sent me a manuscript he had written. Peter asked if I could have a “quick look” at it, with a view to writing a sentence or two which he could use for promotional purposes on the back cover.

A quick look, huh? Once, when I asked Gough Whitlam if he had read a particular book on Paul Keating he replied, “Comrade, I have glanced at it extensively ...” and that is exactly what I intended to do on this book.

I wanted to be polite-ish, but had neither the time nor the interest to read the damn thing. That, however, is not how it worked out. In fact, my “quick look” turned into me being drawn in from the first page, and devouring the manuscript over the next two days and nights. I finished reading it at midnight on the second night, deeply moved, and awoke with a start four hours later. Myriad sentiments were swirling within, but the most powerful was: every Australian should read this book.

I know that sounds like the mealy-mouthed thing one often reads on the back of books, but that was genuinely what I felt in those wee hours and I have firmed in my view since.

For if we are to celebrate Australia’s history in the courage and heroism Australians displayed at Gallipoli, Kokoda, Tobruk and Long Tan; if we are to glory in our achievements in so many fields from sport to agriculture to literature and the arts ... then we must also remember and acknowledge Myall Creek and other stains on our national soul as a crucial part of our past.

This, too, is a part of the Australian mosaic; this, too, was a part of our journey as a people through the good, the bad and the beyond ugly to bring us to where we are today, and we cannot pretend otherwise—as much as we might like to, and mostly have to this point.

Surely, as a nation, there can be no “reconciliation” if we do not all acknowledge just what horrors we are reconciling from? “Demons at Dusk” is an extremely powerful account of one of the most tragic and remarkable chapters of Australia’s history and makes truly gripping and valuable reading.

For me, reading it helped me to understand my own country ...

As I said, I was privileged to attend the launch of this book—a Herculean effort by Peter Stewart over 30 years through many drafts and many attempts to get it published, but he succeeded. It is truly a remarkable book, one that I have read and one that I would urge everybody to read. What comes through powerfully is not only the terrible details of the massacre, the hunt for the perpetrators, the details of their trial and their eventual conviction but also the courage of men like the convict hutkeeper George Anderson and the station superintendent William Hobbs, who stood up to death threats and intimidation to give evidence and to see that justice was done.

It also highlights, based upon the actual transcripts of the trials, the determination of the Governor of New South Wales, Sir George Gipps, who stood up to the leading members of the Sydney community, including the owners of the Sydney Herald, which was later to become the Sydney Morning Herald. The Herald, owned by some of the leading squatters and other people of Sydney, claimed in one comment that the evidence in the case was ‘entirely circumstantial’ and maintained its previous position wondering again how long the white settlers were to be ‘left to the mercy of lawless savages’.

At the hearing, Lyall Munro, one of the descendants of the Indigenous people at the scene of the massacre, made a statement in his speech when he said, ‘Truth is fact; it must be told.’ I am pleased tonight to put on the public record that this is a book that should be read by all Australians. I agree with Peter FitzSimons, and I congratulate Peter Stewart on his efforts to ensure that the story of the Myall Creek massacre is published and hopefully read by all Australians.