Waterloo Bay massacre

The Waterloo Bay massacre or Elliston massacre refers to a possibly fictitious fatal clash between settlers and Aboriginal Australians in about 1848 on the cliffs of Waterloo Bay near Elliston, South Australia.

According to a 2012 summary of the event (presumed to be real), an unknown number of Aborigines were forced over steep cliffs by vigilante white settlers after a pastoralist was beheaded.^[1] The exact date and location of the event is unknown. By some accounts, about 260 Aboriginal people were 'mustered' to the cliffs where they were either forced or chose to jump from the cliffs to their deaths.

In 1881, a short fictional story was published in an Adelaide newspaper about early colonial days on the Eyre Peninsula. It included reference to a massacre of Aboriginal people near Elliston. The story was mistaken for a factual account by many readers as indicated by correspondece with the newspaper following its publication. It was only after this date that other written references to such an event at Waterloo Bay began to emerge.

In 1937, it was suggested by an Adelaide newspaper that the gazetted name for the bay around which Elliston is built, Waterloo Bay,^[2] is a reference to the Aborigines who "met their Waterloo" there in the 1840s.^[3] The presence of adjacent landmarks with gazetted names associated with Lord Wellington's defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, such as Wellesley Point and Wellington Point, contradict this interpretation.^[3]

Authenticity

A number of historians believe the story of the Waterloo Bay massacre is fictional,^[4] or has become extremely exaggerated through word-of-mouth over the years.

It is considered most likely that the incident occurred in 1848 and unfolded as follows: Two settlers chased a group of Aboriginal people, either seeking reprisal after the murder of another settler, or perhaps simply avenging a raid, to the cliffs of Waterloo Bay. Two of the Aboriginal people were then shot and murdered on the cliffs by the settlers.

Aboriginal woman Iris Burgoyne has written that there is a story, in the oral history of South Australian Aboriginal people, about such a massacre at Elliston in the mid-19th century. The story Burgoyne described features details very similar to the story as recounted in written sources. Burgoyne stated she heard the story from survivors of the massacre, a claim that may suggest the massacre recounted was not the alleged massacre of 1848, as Burgoyne was only born in 1936.

Notes

Further reading

• Foster, Robert; Hosking, Rick; Nettelbeck, Amanda (2001). Fatal Collisions: The South Australian Frontier and the Violence of Memory. Wakefield Press. pp. 44–73. ISBN 1862545332.