Pinjarra Massacre

Pinjarra Massacre, attack on the Bindjareb Noongar, an Australian Aboriginal peoples, on October 28, 1834, near the modern town of Pinjarra, approximately 52 miles (83 kilometers) south of Perth in Western Australia. Tensions between the Bindjareb, who had lived in the area for some 40,000 years, and newly arrived European settlers were high as the Europeans began claiming and fencing off land. A Bindjareb raid on a flour mill led to a series of small exchanges that culminated in the colony’s governor, Capt. James Stirling, setting out on the punitive expedition with about 25 police, soldiers, and other settlers. Stirling’s troops came upon and then attacked a Bindjareb camp of men, women, and children, killing anywhere between 11 and 80 people. Stirling lost only one member of his force.

European settlement in Western Australia

The region that would become Western Australia did not attract European attention during the first decades of colonization. In 1826, perturbed by reports of French interest and American whaling, Gov. Ralph Darling of New South Wales dispatched Maj. Edmund Lockyer with a small party of soldiers and convicts to stake a claim on behalf of Britain by garrisoning King George Sound (at what is now Albany) on the south coast. This prompted Capt. James Stirling and the botanist Charles Frazer to examine the reaches of the Swan River. A mild summer and tall jarrah timber led them to overestimate the fertility of the coastal sand plain, and Stirling went to England to lobby for the establishment of Swan River Colony, Australia’s first nonconvict colony, with himself as governor. The resulting “Swan River mania” brought nearly 4,000 settlers to Western Australia in 1829–30. As elsewhere in Australia, disregard of Indigenous landrights triggered unrest within the Aboriginal communities, namely the Bindjareb people of the Noongar Nation, who had lived in the region for more than 40,000 years. Tensions heightened as British settlers began fencing off land and hunting native wildlife, creating food shortages for the Bindjareb.

In 1829 the financier Thomas Peel was granted a 250,000-acre (101,172-hectare) area of land stretching from Cockburn Sound to the Murray River in what is now the Peel Region. As settlers moved into the area and took tribal lands near the river for farming, the Bindjareb resorted to taking the settlers’ crops and spearing their cattle for food. The Bindjareb’s practice of firestick farming, in which parts of the bush were burned to draw out animals for hunting and to encourage plant regrowth, led the settlers to believe that the Bindjareb were attacking their farming areas, further straining relations.

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Escalation and attack

In April 1834 about 20–30 Bindjareb individuals raided a flour mill in South Perth. In retaliation a group of soldiers captured and flogged three Aboriginal men: Calyute, Yedong, and Monang, who were accused of leading the raid. Calyute, believed to be the ringleader, was also imprisoned for several weeks. Upon his release he began planning to kill Peel.

In July, Calyute and a number of supporters stole a horse that Peel intended to sell to settler Edward Barron; they hoped Peel would leave his settlement to search for it. Instead, Peel sent his servant Hugh Nesbitt and Barron to retrieve the animal. Calyute’s group attacked the two men, wounding Barron and killing Nesbitt.

Fear and anger spread throughout the colony, prompting Stirling to take action. He formed a group of about 25 people—including police, soldiers, and settlers—at Mandurah on October 27, intending to punish Calyute’s clan as a deterrent against further attacks.

At about 8:00 am on October 28, 1834, Stirling and his party came upon a large group of Bindjareb men, women, and children camped near the Murray River, south of modern Pinjarra. Stirling’s forces surrounded the unprepared Aboriginal people, taking positions across the river and at the fords above and below the camp. Five of Stirling’s troops entered the camp, searching for Calyute and his coconspirators. Some of the Bindjareb attempted to escape, while others grabbed their spears, and at least five Bindjareb individuals were killed in the resulting skirmish. The other members of the camp fled to the river, where Stirling and his troops opened fire. The surveyor general J.S. Roe, who accompanied Stirling, described in his journal how the Bindjareb were picked off as they tried to hide from the colonial troops. The exact number of Bindjareb victims is unknown, with estimates varying from 11 to 80. Stirling lost only one of his group.

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