Coniston

by Michael Bradley

Coniston, Central Australia, 1928: the murder of an itinerant prospector at this isolated station by local Warlpiri triggered a series of police-led expeditions that ranged over vast areas for two months, with the 'hunting parties' shooting down victims by the dozen. The official death toll, declared by the whitewash federal inquiry as being all in self-defence, was thirty-one. The real number was certainly many times that. As the last mass killing in our country's genocidal past but an event largely unremembered, Coniston has never before been fully researched and recorded. This book fills that absence in Australia's history and reminds us that without truth, there can be no reconciliation.

266 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2019

Reviews

[gordon macindoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

i dont normally read that much non-fiction and the heinous reality of this story and its extreme recency made me wish it was fiction
a little part of australia's very recent histor — i couldnt put it down once i'd started

[Garry Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very thorough general and legal examination of the Coniston murders of 1928 in Central Australia, the involvement of the Australian Governments representative in Alice Springs and the subsequent coverup by the official Inquiry and Minister. This series of killings had a profound effect on many families and the Walpiri as a whole. The terrible irony is Constable Murray was never held accountable for leading this and subsequently lived into his 90s and those who killed Brookes the white dogger escaped retribution by Murray and the settlers involved. The settlers in this area NW of Alice had marginal stations at best and were genuinely fearful of people who were starving and with limited water moving in to their stations - this in no way excuses their murderous activities but raises the issue that Government did nothing to alleviate the suffering of Aboriginal people by setting up ration depots or providing them to stations to distribute. An incredible failure by the Australian Government that lead to these killings. The NT was handed over by South Australia to the Commonwealth in about 1910 and thereafter the latter were missing in action in many regards not just around the 1920s drought and Coniston.