Wrong on Mistake Creek
Keith Windschuttle
Australian Financial Review
June 18, 2001

In one of his last public gestures as Governor-General, Sir William Deane last week sat in the red dirt with members of the Kija people in the East Kimberley and apologized for the brutality they had suffered. He sat on the very site where an infamous massacre of Aboriginal women and children had once occurred. Sir William was accompanied by a television crew from ABC-TV's The 7.30 Report, including presenter Kerry O'Brien, who opened his program's segment with these words:

KERRY O'BRIEN: In the shade of this massive boab tree on Mistake Creek, a massacre took place. Accounts vary, but at least eight Aboriginal people, some say as many as 32, were shot and their bodies burnt. It was, indeed, a mistake.
SIR WILLIAM DEANE: Mistake Creek is, in many senses, typical. It's 70 years ago. The facts -- nobody could claim the facts were crystal clear. What is clear is there was a considerable killing of Aboriginal women and children. It seems it was over a mistaken belief that they were eating a stolen cow. In fact, the cow turned up afterwards. The thing that always comes home is, underlying the whole story, as underlying the discredited notion of terra nullius, was the approach that our Aboriginal fellow Australians were somehow subhuman, less than human.
PEGGY PATRICK: My mum, mother, father, and two brother, two sister got killed here too. But it doesn't matter. I'm still strong and stay and talk.
SIR WILLIAM DEANE: It's essential that we hear, listen to and acknowledge the facts of what happened in the past, the facts of the dispossession and the facts of terrible events such as what happened here at Mistake Creek in the 1930s, which is in my lifetime. I'd like to say to the Kija people how profoundly sorry I personally am that such events defaced our land, this beautiful land. I hold out my hand in friendship and reconciliation.

Few who heard this would have been left in any doubt that Mistake Creek was a terrible event, one of the most shameful blots on the history of relations between Europeans and indigenous people in this country. Nor would they have doubted that saying sorry was anything but well warranted and long overdue.

However, despite his homily about acknowledging the facts of the past, Sir William should have taken more care to get these particular facts right. For most of what he said about the massacre at Mistake Creek is false.

Given the importance of the Governor-General's gesture, which was designed to draw a symbolic underline beneath everything he stood for in office, he should have done a little more research. This would not have been difficult because the events at Mistake Creek have long been well documented. The author, Ion L. Idriess, gave a detailed account in his 1961 book Tracks of Destiny. In 1988, the Western Australian historian, Dr Cathie Clement, reviewed the records of the case and concluded that Idriess's story was largely true to the information in the police files.

The facts are these: The massacre took place in 1915, not in the 1930s. It arose out of a dispute over a woman between two Aborigines who worked on the Mistake Creek station, about halfway between Wyndham and Halls Creek. The woman, Nellie, had previously lived with an Aboriginal station hand, Joe Winn. She left him and moved in with another Aborigine named Hopples.

At daybreak on March 30, Joe Winn and another Aboriginal hand named Nipper rode into Hopples' camp and shot dead Nellie, Hopples, four of Hopples' female relatives and two men. Three of the females were little more than children. Three other men from the camp escaped and raised the alarm.

The police from nearby Turkey Creek station set off after the killers. There was a confrontation between Joe Winn and his pursuers and a black tracker shot him dead. Nipper was captured. He was tried for murder but the witnesses refused to appear and the Crown eventually abandoned the case.

Because Joe Winn was at the time riding a horse belonging to Mick Rhatigan, the white overseer of the station, Rhatigan was initially arrested on suspicion of murder. But once they investigated, the police found there were no grounds for assuming he was involved, and the charge was dropped.

In other words, the massacre at Mistake Creek was an internal feud between Aboriginal station hands. No Europeans were responsible. There was no dispute over a stolen cow, and it had nothing to do with theories about terra nullius or of Aborigines being subhuman.

This is not the kind of event for which the Governor-General of Australia should be apologizing to Aboriginal people, nor making theatrical gestures of reconciliation. Indeed, it reflects poorly on Sir William's decision to stake his reputation on relations with the Aborigines when he displays such a cavalier attitude to their history and fails to do the most elementary research.

Nor does the way this story was told on television reflect much credit on the ABC's Kerry O'Brien. It would have taken any competent researcher less than two hours to verify the information. O'Brien was prepared to spend the time to fly to the Kimberley with the Governor-General but not to instruct a researcher to check the facts. Had he done so, he might have had a few searching questions to ask Sir William about the symbolism of his performance at Mistake Creek.