‘To infuse an universal terror’: a reappraisal of the Coniston killings

Abstract

Australian history has of late entered a new phase of self-reflection, fuelled in part by Keith Windschuttle's questioning the number of Aboriginal deaths as the result of frontier conflict. 2 This revisionist view of frontier conflict has led to a re-examination of many events previously accepted as 'truths'. One of these events, the Coniston killings of 1928 near Alice Springs, has almost universally been accepted as a massacre. Even Keith Windschuttle acknowledges that 'Coniston deserves the label "massacre"'. 3 This year marks the 75th since the tragic events at and around Coniston Station. In September 2003 a plaque was unveiled near Coniston, in honour of those who lost their lives during what is locally referred to as the 'killing times'. As this paper demonstrates, the complete story of Coniston remains, however, arcane and the death toll is probably far greater than that given in the commonly accepted account. We present new information derived from actual perpetrators that the total Aboriginal death toll was at least twice the official figure. Coniston was the subject of official reports, three court hearings, a Board of Enquiry, domestic and international press reports, a book, a thesis and journal articles. Despite this prominence and wealth of documentation, much remains imprecise and ambiguous in our historical understanding of the events leading to, during, and after the killings. To date the story has been oversimplified and many inconsistencies have remained unexplored. It is over 40 years since the last detailed academic examination was made of Coniston, when Hartwig 4 prepared an Honours thesis on the subject. Peter and Jay Read's Long time, olden time 5 remains the pre-eminent published Aboriginal account of the Coniston Massacre , using as it does material from eye-witnesses to the events. However, much of the historical investigation over the past 20 years has been centred upon Cribbin's book, The killing times. 6 While the relative prominence of Coniston is owed to this work, the 1. 'To infuse an universal terror' [sic]-according to Tench, Governor Arthur Phillip thus described to him the purpose of Australia's first official punitive expedition in December 1790 (Tench 1789: 168). 2.