The Hornet Bank massacre of eleven Europeans, including eight members of the Fraser family, took place about dawn on 27 October 1857 at a station on the upper Dawson River in central Queensland

Queensland

Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. Squatters had begun to occupy this country from 1847 following Ludwig Leichhardt

Ludwig Leichhardt

Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt, known as Ludwig Leichhardt, was a Prussian explorer and naturalist, most famous for his exploration of northern and central Australia.-Early life:...

's 1844-45 journey through the area on his expedition to find an overland route to Port Essington

Port Essington

Port Essington is an inlet and historic site located on the Cobourg Peninsula in the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park in Australia's Northern Territory...

 on the north coast of Australia.

History

The first European occupant of Hornet Bank station, Andrew Scott, 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 isolated area near the edge of European settlement. Two years later John Fraser died of dysentery while on a droving trip to Ipswich

Ipswich, Queensland

Ipswich is a city in South-East Queensland, Australia. Situated along the Bremer River Valley approximately 40 kilometres away from the state's capital Brisbane. The suburb by the same name forms the city's Central Business District and administrative centre...

 and his eldest son, William, then aged 23, took over management of the station in collaboration with the lessee, Andrew Scott. (1)

The stations on the Dawson River were on the land of the Yeeman people who bitterly resented the invasion of the European settlers with their flocks of sheep and herds of cattle while, to the Europeans, the Yeeman were an impediment to the expansion of their pastoral empires. Stories circulated of Aboriginal

Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....

 people murdered by poisoning--on one station they were given a Christmas pudding laced with strychnine--and of the abduction and rape of Aboriginal women. Cruelty towards the Yeeman people inflamed their already overwhelming sense of injustice at being forced off the land that had been theirs back to the broken, scrubby gorge country and they made the country dangerous for the European invaders. Shepherds in boundary huts were attacked and killed and settlers feared leaving their wives and children unprotected.

Yeeman attack

The Yeeman attacked the Fraser homestead at dawn on 27 October 1857. Those in the house were Martha Fraser, eight of her nine children (some adult), James Neagle (their tutor), four white station hands and Bahlee, an Aboriginal servant. The evening before the attack, Bahlee, persuaded to collaborate, had killed all the station dogs. The attackers clubbed the men, castrated Neagle, raped the three oldest women, clubbed them and the remaining children and killed two station hands on the way out.

The massacre

The only survivor was fourteen-year-old Sylvester Fraser who, left for dead, raised the alarm. Posses quickly combed the district and began the first of many massacres to occur over succeeding weeks.

William Fraser

The most ruthless avenger was William Fraser (away in Ipswich at the time of the massacre). Allowed to ride with the Native Police, he had 'every opportunity to assuage his grief through murder'. He continued killing randomly wherever he found Aborigines. He shot an Aboriginal woman in the main street of Rockhampton

Rockhampton, Queensland

Rockhampton is a city and local government area in Queensland, Australia. The city lies on the Fitzroy River, approximately from the river mouth, and some north of the state capital, Brisbane....

 because she was wearing his mother's dress. Billy Fraser almost certainly killed over 100 members of the tribe making him the greatest mass murderer in Australian history. He shot an Aboriginal jockey at the racetrack in Taroom.

Result

How many people died as a result of the attack at Hornet Bank is unknown, but few Yeeman survived. Some managed to flee to Maryborough

Maryborough, Queensland

Maryborough is a city located on the Mary River in South East Queensland, Australia, approximately north of the state capital, Brisbane. The city is serviced by the Bruce Highway, and has a population of approximately 22,000 . It is closely tied to its neighbour city Hervey Bay which is...

(300 km east of Taroom), but even there they were unsafe. The police continued harassing them for a number of years after.