On the 10th of June 1838 a massacre of Aboriginal women, children and old men took place here. 28 Aboriginal people who
enjoyed good relations with and trust from the staff at Myall Creek Station were rounded up, taken to a stockyard and killed by
eleven men with swords and machettes. It was a significant murder, not, unfortunately, because of the scale or brutality (such
massacres were relatively common) but because seven of the eleven perpetrators were brought to justice and hanged for the
offence on the second trial. During the first trial they were aquitted. A jury member told the press "I knew they were guilty, but I
couldn't see a white man hanged for killing (an Aboriginal)" . The leader was not amongst those hanged. The trial polarised
Australia at the time. The effect of the hangings was not to stop massacres of Aboriginal people, which continued well into the
20th century, but to stop their reporting.

A neighbour of mine in Coolatai, who's grandfather was a head stockman for the Kidman empire, told me his grandfather had
told him he had "worn out four rifle barrels shooting blacks."