Myall Creek has sent out this tile announcing a “survival day’ commemoration gathering on 26 January at Moree, on the NSW tablelands. A quick Google search tells me they have done this before, although it’s not widely known in the cities. The Waterloo Creek massacre is remembered in Roger Milliss' boo, where he also talks about Myall Creek.
Hopefully Waterloo Creek will be better known if more people go along to events like this. It would be good to see media representatives also getting out, however they can, to remember all the slaughter than happened in the time of our ancestors. I come from a family with roots in Victoria and South Australia but it wouldn’t be hard to find occasions when they – at least knew about, and said nothing – massacres of First Nations people.
My great-grandfather lived in Leongatha before moving to Melbourne so his family wouldn’t have been completely unaware that this sort of thing was taking place. No stories about massacres have come down to my generation, THAT much is sure. This is why we need these memorial events: to let us remember so that we can be fully aware of what it means to be Australian.
Just whose Australia are we advancing.
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