MURDER OF BLACKS

Evening Star, Issue 20048, 13 December 1928, Page 13

MURDER OF BLACKS

FEELING IN AUSTRALIA POLICE ACTION DENOUNCED. Press, pulpit, and tlio general public unanimously agree with the jury's verdict in tho aboriginal murder trial, and are shocked by the candid admissions of the police that they shot to kill on sight all the male aboriginals they came across, admittedly seventeen, but lorally believed to greatly exceed that number (says a report from iDarwin). Some of them were eighty miles from the scene of the murder, and all of them miserable, half-starved wretches, physically incapable of dangerously attacking a police party. Driven out by drought, and bunted away from the watcrholes by pastoralisle, the natives" are wandering the wilderness in starvation and despair. Miss Annie Lock, of the Pioneer Missionary Society, who is now in Darwin, having been driven out of lier mission camp near the scene of the murder for want of walcr, tells a woeful story. She had lived there for the past twenty months without arms or protection of any kind. The only thing she feared was the number of white men tramping north in search of railway work. She says Hint, as all the small watcrholes or soaks have dried up, the blacks were forced to come into the big walerholes, where they captured kangaroos coming in at night for water. But the cattlemen had driven them off, and the cattle had destroyed all native plant food. Water was scarce, and so precious that when they found any the natives gorged themselves with it, small, naked children having their stomachs distended lo fearful dimensions. The story given at the trial by a small blackboy was (hat eight natives planned to kill a grey-bearded old dog (rapper named Brooks "in" order io get his tucker. Early in the morning they sent a decoy lubra into bis camp, and at a given signal they rushed in and belaboured the old man to doaifa with boomerangs and sticks, the lubra preventing the deceased from procuring weapons. Then, some time later, the police came on the scene with expert tracker? who followed the tracks for many days. The constable said: “Wo came up with a parly of six natives and several women and children. All Die men were shot.” In four instances they overtook parties of natives, and in each instance all the male adults, wore shot, except the two accused, who were captured. There were only two witnesses at ttie (rial, and (he above embraces practically all the evidence.