The Hornet Bank massacre of eleven British colonists (including seven members of the Fraser family) and one Aboriginal station-hand in direct retaliation to the deaths of twelve Iman people by member(s) of the Fraser clan, occurred at about one or two o’clock on the morning of 27 October 1857. It took place at Hornet Bank station on the upper Dawson River near Eurombah in central Queensland, Australia.^[1] In subsequent punitive missions conducted by Native Police, private settler militias and by William Fraser, as many as 300 Aborigines may have been murdered in counter-retaliation. Indiscriminate shootings of Aboriginal men, women and children found within a wide radius of the station were conducted. The result was the believed extermination of the entire Iman tribe and language group by 1858, but this is however not true and descendants of this group have recently been recognised by The High Court of Australia

Squatters had begun to occupy Iman land from 1847 following Ludwig Leichhardt’s 1844-45 journey through the area on his expedition to find an overland route to Port Essington on the north coast of Australia.

The westernmost European appropriation of the area was named Hornet Bank station, seized by Andrew Scott, who arrived in the early 1850s. In 1854 he leased the station to Scottish-born John Fraser who took his wife, Martha, and a large family ranging in age from young children to the early twenties, to live in this area, isolated from other European settlement. Two years later John Fraser died of dysentery while on a droving trip to Ipswitch and his eldest son, William, then aged 23, took over management of the station in collaboration with the lessee, Andrew Scott.

The stations on the Dawson River were on the land of the Iman people who bitterly resented the invasion of these European squatters, who were attempting permanent residency without permission or negotiation. With their flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, to the Europeans the Iman were an impediment to the expansion of their pastoral empires. Disrespect and then regular cruelty towards the Iman people inflamed their already overwhelming sense of injustice, being barred access to their area. They made the surrounding country dangerous for the European migrants. Shepherds in boundary huts were attacked and killed and settlers feared leaving their wives and children unprotected. Although contemporary reports of the events stressed the bloodthirsty nature of the Yeeman, contrasted with only kindness shown to them by the Fraser family, it has been claimed that the killing of the Frasers was in retaliation for the recent deaths of 12 Iman shot for spearing some cattle and for the deaths nine months earlier of an unknown number of Iman who had been given a strychnine laced Christmas pudding, allegedly by the Fraser family.

The Iman attacked the Fraser homestead between one or two o’clock in the morning of 27 October 1857. Those in the house were Martha Fraser, eight of her nine children, Henry Neagle (their tutor), two white station hands, who lived in a hut 1 km from the station and Jimmy, an Aboriginal servant. The evening before the attack, Jimmy, persuaded to collaborate, had killed all the station dogs. By all accounts, the Iman initially intended to kidnap one of the Fraser women but things got out of hand after the first Fraser to confront them was killed. The attackers killed the men, castrated Neagle, raped Martha Fraser and her two eldest daughters, clubbed them and the remaining children to death and speared to death the two station hands as they arrived to wash up before retiring for the night.

The only survivor was fourteen-year-old Sylvester “West” Fraser who, after being hit on the head with a waddy had fallen between the wall and bed. The Aboriginals were distracted by the arrival of the two station hands, allowing Sylvester to crawl under his mattress and he was forgotten. Sylvester later ran “without hat or boots and in a terribly bruised state” 12 miles (19 km) to nearby Cardin Station and raised the alarm. Station hands immediately formed a posse and located a large mob of Aboriginals sleeping some 10 miles (16 km) from the Fraser property.

Punitive missions and further conflict

Native Police

In this period of British colonisation of Australia, the main force eliminating Indigenous resistance to the settler acquisition of land was the Native Police. This colonial government funded force consisted of white officers in charge of Aboriginal troopers from areas distant to their region of deployment. The method employed by the Native Police to crush resistance to British occupation was known as “dispersal”, which involved indiscriminate shooting and killing of Indigenous men, women and children that were found in the associated frontier area.

After the Hornet Bank massacre, the first Native Police division to arrive on the scene was that of Lieutenant Walter Powell. He took his troopers in a westerly direction and found a group of Aboriginals of which he shot dead five. Powell enrolled the surviving Fraser brothers, William and Sylvester, as special constables for his second punitive mission and they shot dead a further nine people. 2nd-Lieutenants Moorhead and Carr of the Native Police arrived soon after with their troopers, killing around another thirteen Aboriginals. By December 1857 Powell had increased the number of troopers in his division to seventeen, which he put to use by conducting raids on peaceful “station blacks” at Taroom, killing five including three native women as they tried to flee. Powell with William Fraser and 2nd-Lieutenant R.G.Walker led another raid at Juandah shooting dead another eleven Aboriginals. By April 1858, other divisions of Native Police led by Edric Norfolk Vaux Morisset, John Murray, John O’Connell Bligh, George Murray and Charles Phibbs had become active in the area, conducting raids of indiscriminate summary justice. Henry Gregory and his brother, the explorer A.C. Gregory were also involved in the punitive expeditions as they were squatters in the area. In his memoirs, local pastoralist George Serocold wrote that a dozen local black men who were considered leaders in the region at that time were rounded up and then ordered to run through an open field. As they fled they were shot dead by those who had ordered them to run.^[9]

“The Browns”

George Serocold was also involved in the formation of a mounted vigilante death squad in response to the Hornet Bank massacre. The squad was called “The Browns” and consisted of Serocold, his property manager at Cockatoo station, Murray-Prior, Horton, Alfred Thomas, McArthur, Piggott, Ernest Davies and three Aboriginal servants including Billy Hayes and Freddy. This group formed at Hawkwood station on the nearby Auburn River. They conducted shooting raids upon mostly innocent “station blacks” in this area during their six-week mission, including the perpetration of a massacre at Redbank station. Native Police also went through Redbank station three weeks afterwards, conducting another massacre on this property.

Frederick Walker’s private militia

Despite, or perhaps, because of the sustained and severe punishment meted out by the government’s Native Police,^[11] Aboriginal resistance in the immediate region continued with the killing of six station-hands in April 1858. Local settlers decided to augment the official Native Police divisions with a privately funded squad of armed black troopers under the leadership of ex-Native Police Commandant Frederick Walker. Walker was previously sacked from the force in 1854 for inebriation and embezzlement. He recruited Aboriginal troopers who had either deserted or quit the Native Police and conducted punitive patrols for the local landholders as far away as Roma.

William Fraser

The most ruthless avenger was William Fraser who was away in Ipswich at the time of the massacre. His brother Sylvester rode to Ipswich to inform him of the massacre and the pair returned to Hornet Bank, covering the 320 miles (510 km) in three days with three changes of horses.^[14] Allowed to ride with the Native police, William Fraser had ‘every opportunity to assuage his grief through murder.’ He continued killing randomly wherever he found Aborigines. He shot an Aboriginal jockey at the racetrack in Taroom and after two Aboriginals accused of being involved in the massacre were found not guilty he shot both dead as they left the Rockhampton courthouse. It was reported that after Fraser shot an Aboriginal woman in the main street of Toowoomba because he claimed she was wearing his mother’s dress, two policemen spoke with him briefly before saluting and walking away. This incident reinforced a local belief that the Government had given him twelve months’ immunity from prosecution, during which he was free to avenge the massacre of his family. In 1905, Fraser was asked if he had an authority, he replied “I never asked and never received such an authority but felt I was justified in doing so (the killings).”

On the banks of the Juandah lagoon, near Wandoan, there is a place called Fraser’s Revenge where according to the local settlers, a group of Aboriginals massacred by a posse led by Fraser are buried.Also at Wandoan, there was another incident reported by Frederick Walker to Attorney-General in Brisbane that involved the massacring of Aboriginals at the magistrate’s residence in that town. These Aboriginals had been found not guilty of involvement at Hornet Bank but were shot dead by local whites and buried nearby.

On 6 March 1867, Fraser became an officer in the Native Police and was posted to the barracks at Nebo where he continued his campaign against Indigenous people. It was reported that in 1867, ten years after the massacre, sub-Inspector William Fraser and his troopers were tracking a small group of Iman women and children who had taken refuge on Mackenzie Station on the Fitzroy River. Informed that Fraser was approaching, Mrs Mackenzie hid the Aboriginals in her bedroom. Fraser demanded to search the house and did so but Mackenzie stood in front of the bedroom door and refused to allow him to search that room. Fraser left empty handed after Mackenzie gave him “all the contents of her tongue.

William Fraser almost certainly killed over 100 members of the tribe making him one of the greatest mass murderers in Australian history. Many more were killed by sympathetic squatters and the officers and troopers of the Native Police. In an article recounting the massacre, it was reported that the mere mention of Fraser’s name by settlers was enough to avoid trouble when they faced “truculent natives”.

Aftermath

How many people died as a result of the Iman avenging their own is unknown, but few Iman survived. Some managed to flee to Maryborough (300 km east of Taroom), but even there they were unsafe. The police continued harassing them for a number of years after. Fraser’s revenge campaign eventually resulted in the believed extermination of the Iman tribe and language. This is most certainly not true due to the Iman men,women & children escaping and hiding further than any police officer could imagine. By March 1858 up to 300 Iman had been killed. Although the Iman people survived not many actually live in the tribes borders, you will most commonly find Iman men, women & children throughout the surrounding areas such as Rockhampton, Mount Morgan, Gladstone, Blackwater and many more towns near and far. Public and police sympathy for Fraser was so high that he was never arrested for any of the killings and gained a reputation as a folk hero throughout Queensland.