John Murray (native police officer)

John Murray was born on 23 February 1827 at his family's Georgefield estate near Langholm in southern Scotland. His grandfather was Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Murray of the East India Company who married a Malayali woman named Contity from Kerala while in India. The offspring of this marriage, including John's father James Murray, were collectively dubbed the "Black Murrays" on account of their darker skin colour.[1]

In 1843, at the age of sixteen, John Murray arrived in New South Wales with his parents and siblings. After initially living in Sydney, John's father chose to become a pastoralist, moving his family to the Warrawang property at Mt Lambie near Bathurst.[2]

Around 1848, John Murray decided to become a pastoral squatter in his own right and chose to go to the frontier region of Wide Bay-Burnett in the north of the colony to obtain land. It appears he had an association with another frontier "run-hunter" in Henry Cox Corfield as his land acquisitions bordered upon Corfield's and Murray's sister later married Corfield.[3] In 1849, Murray registered his Walooga pastoral run adjacent to Corfield's runs of Teebar and Gigoomgan.[4] One of Murray's shepherds named Francis Callaghan was speared to death at Walooga in May 1849.[5] In December 1850, the Native Police started to enter the Wide Bay area. Lieutenants Richard Marshall and George Fulford with the aid of armed settlers including John Murray and H.C. Corfield, conducted punitive expeditions against local Aboriginals. Murray, in fact, described one of these missions in a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald. He wrote that on 14 December, he participated in raids led by Marshall and his troopers upon Aboriginals living near Widgee and Kilkivan. At the conclusion of the skirmishes, Murray describes the natives as having been "taught a lesson which will show them their inferiority in war".[6] He also praised the operations of the Native Police and "the severe checks the blacks have received" by them. During a separate shooting raid on a nearby native camp by the Native Police and settlers on 28 December, Corfield was lucky to escape major injury while another settler obtained a severe spear wound.[7]

Even though it appears that Murray lived on the Walooga run up to 1852, he had also failed to meet the conditions to hold the rights to the property in late 1850.[8] In February 1852, in addition to being appointed as a government magistrate at Gayndah, Murray, on the recommendation of Frederick Walker, was also appointed as Lieutenant of the 4th Division of the Native Police which covered the Wide Bay-Burnett district.[9][10]

Murray was initially posted to the Dawson River region where he and his troopers were affected heavily by illness. Due to this, Murray was unable to conduct punitive missions against Aboriginals over the killing of squatter Adolphus Trevethan at Rawbelle in March 1852. Lieutenant Marshall eventually carried out this operation a month later.[11] In August 1852, Murray and his division shot dead at least three Aboriginals in the Upper Burnett River who had murdered a shepherd under the employ of James Mackay.[12] In September, a number of Native Police under Murray, killed a number of Aboriginals at Hawkwood after they rushed them and tried to pull his troopers off their horses. He was, at this time, also involved in arresting recalcitrant and absconding imported Chinese coolie labourers for the British pastoralists in the area.[13] By May 1853, newspaper columnists were able to exalt the efforts of Lieutenants Murray and Marshall in subduing the Aboriginal attacks in the Burnett region by their method of "taking and shooting hosts of murderers".[14]

In November 1853, Murray with twelve troopers arrived at Port Curtis to protect the formation of the township of Gladstone. Prominent squatter James Leith Hay, accompanied by Native Police Commandant Frederick Walker, overlanded to the settlement not long after with what was supposed to be the first bales of wool to be shipped from the new port, but these had been destroyed by Aboriginals along the way.[15] Walker had advised Murray to establish a barracks for the Native Police at Auckland Creek near the projected town of Gladstone, as this area had a reliable source of water.[16] In February 1854, Murray reported that his sergeant and two troopers were attacked by Aboriginal people as they were marking a tree line between Port Curtis and Traylan. The group was sleeping and encamped when they were attacked. Injuries included severe cuts on their heads and a trooper being speared in the chest but he recovered from the wound.[17] In March, local Aboriginals attacked the government surveyor's camp at Stowe, inland from Gladstone. Murray, with his sergeant and troopers recovered most of the stolen equipment. The assistant surveyor's jacket, which was taken during the ransack of his camp, was returned to him covered in blood.[18] A gentleman who visited Port Curtis in 1854 noted that the indigenous population stayed away from the township due to a "terror of the Native Police".[19] Murray's troopers also acted as the early postal service from Port Curtis to the main barracks at Traylan near Eidsvold[20] In April 1854, the fledgling settlement was visited by Sir Charles Augustus Fitzroy, the Governor of New South Wales, who arrived on the 28-gun naval corvette HMS Calliope. Murray and his troopers paraded for the Queen's representative, who in return, inspected the newly constructed Native Police barracks. The Calliope River near Gladstone was also named at this time in honour of the Governor's ship.[21]

In 1853, squatter John Little arrived from New South Wales with his family and herds of sheep at his selection named Rosedale north of Bundaberg. According to the son of John Little, "Night after night we had to spend with the sheep to prevent them being stolen by the blacks, who had to be kept at a safe distance by gun fire" On one punitive mission, the Aboriginals managed to elude capture around the estuary north of Rosedale and "being baffled" by them, the creek was named Baffle Creek".[22] Jimmy Possum, a stockman on the Rosedale cattle station, was retrieved from a hollow log as a child, following a raid by the police and adopted by the Murray family. John Murray later married John Little's daughter, Rachel.[23]

By September 1854, Murray resigned from the force while his position as head of Native Police at Port Curtis was filled by Sergeant Humphries.[24] Two months later Murray had returned to the Native Police as a 3rd Lieutenant at the Gladstone division.[25]On 28 September Murray was authorised to proceed to Rannes after sub-Lieutenant Walker’s section of Native Police was attacked by a large number of Aboriginal men on the night of 23 September at Rannes, which resulted in the deaths of 3 troopers.[26]

On Boxing Day of 1855, five workers on William Young's newly formed property at Mount Larcombe 25 kilometres from Gladstone, were killed by Aboriginals. Young, who was in Gladstone for Christmas, heard about it not long after and the Native Police under Lieutenant Murray were called upon for assistance. During the first few weeks of 1856, Murray conducted three large and well organised punitive missions against Aboriginals to the north of Gladstone. Murray, his troopers, together with local constables and several volunteer squatters from the area formed a force of more than twenty well armed people which tracked down a large group of about 200 Aboriginals camped near what is now the township of Raglan. This community was quietly surrounded in the evening and at daybreak of the following morning the Aboriginals were shot down as they awoke. Only a minority managed to escape the slaughter, fleeing toward the coast at Keppel Bay. These survivors were followed up in a second raid by Murray and either shot down or driven into the waters. Hourigan's Creek (which now runs along the boundary of a shooting range at Raglan) is named after John Hourigan, a district constable at Gladstone, who fired the first shot in the initial massacre.[27] A visitor to the Raglan homestead, built not long after the killings, recalled how a large garden bed was constructed with an ornate border of Aboriginal skulls.[28]

The third reprisal involved Murray travelling further north to the Archer brothers' newly formed pastoral run at Gracemere on the Fitzroy River. Charles Archer augmented Murray's contingent of troopers with some armed Aboriginals that were on good terms with the squatters. This combined force then proceeded across the river and dealt out summary justice which resulted in the deaths of fourteen or more Aboriginals who resided in that vicinity.[29] Murray and his combined force had surrounded their camp at Nankin Creek in the evening and then attacked it at dawn.[30]

A few days following the return of Murray to Gladstone, William Elliott's newly established run just north of the Archers' Gracemere property was attacked by Aboriginals, possibly in revenge for Murray's recent expedition. One shepherd was killed and Elliott himself was speared multiple times while standing "amongst them firing his revolver with a coolness most remarkable". Elliott and the Archers appealed for assistance from the Native Police and in February, Murray again conducted bloody punitive missions north of the Fitzroy River. Both Governor William Denison and the Inspector General of Police in Sydney approved of Murray's "severe and trying" campaigns of early 1856 recommending additional wages. Constable Hourigan was to be rewarded £5 for his contribution.[31]

Problems with funding of the force, however, continued for the remainder of 1856 and into 1857. Desertions of troopers were common to the point where Murray was ordered to leave Gladstone and recruit more troopers from the Burnett region. When three whites were killed by Aboriginal warriors at Miriam Vale just south of Gladstone, Murray did not have the manpower to conduct extrajudicial punishment in the area. It was left to local squatters such as James Landsborough and a Native Police officer in Robert Walker to carry out punitive measures which were also limited by geography and numerical weakness.

Meanwhile, in the Dawson River region to the south-west of Gladstone, warfare between the invading British pastoralists and local Aboriginals was reaching a heightened level. Aggressive land taking activities had led to a number of shepherds being killed in several incidents. This in turn led to indiscriminate massacres of native people by armed groups of squatters acting in conjunction with the locally stationed Native Police. In October 1857, the violence escalated with the killing of twelve colonists and farmhands by Aboriginals at Hornet Bank. This became known as the Hornet Bank massacre and resulted in a long and bloody campaign of reprisals conducted by various groups of British squatters and Native Police.

The new Commandant of the Native Police, Edric Norfolk Vaux Morisset, deployed divisions from various areas to conduct patrols of summary punishments against Aboriginals in the Dawson River region. Murray and his troopers were sent from Gladstone to participate in these patrols. In January 1858, Murray wrote in a report that "a considerable number of Blacks..have been killed..and when entrapped within reach of gunshot, they were in cold blood destroyed."[32] Murray and his troopers were in the region for months after the events of Hornet Bank, his energy in carrying out extrajudicial killings as punishment for the continued acts of resistance by Aboriginals being noted by government officials, squatters[33] and the contemporary press.[34] In May 1858, Murray returned to Gladstone and found time to marry Rachel Little, daughter of the well known pastoralist John Little from the Rosedale station on the Burnett River.[35]

In the aftermath of Hornet Bank, New South Wales Government officials were keen to re-organise and strengthen the Native Police as an instrument of violent repression of Aboriginal people on the northern frontier of British colonisation in Australia. While denying that the actions of the Native Police were an "attempt to wage a war of extermination against the Aborigines", the 1858 government report into the force concluded that "there is no alternative but to carry matters through with a strong hand and punish with necessary severity all future outrages".[36]

As a result of this reorganisation, Lieutenant Murray became the Commanding officer of the Northern Districts, which included the areas around Gladstone, the Dawson River, and the newly colonised region around Rockhampton. Under his control were 5 sections of Native Police made up of 5 2nd-Lieutenants, 4 sergeants and around 43 troopers. One of these 2nd-Lieutenants was George Poultney Malcolm Murray, who was the Lieutenant's younger brother, having joined the force in late 1857. Another officer under his command was the notorious Frederick Wheeler, who in a report to John Murray in 1858 wrote that Aboriginals "must all suffer, for the innocent must be held responsible for the guilt of others." Murray did not rebuke Wheeler for his comments, on the contrary, Murray personally joined forces with Wheeler shortly after this report to conduct a punitive mission near Calliope which resulted in the deaths of at least 5 native people. Murray himself reported that "no doubt more of them would have fallen had not the information of our approach been given by their gins." Murray ordered Wheeler to conduct further missions in the area against the survivors of this raid and was full of praise for Wheeler and his troopers during their "very arduous piece of duty."[37]

In 1858 Murray was sent to establish a large barracks in Rockhampton with the view to this being the headquarters of the Native Police in the near future. He chose a well-watered, elevated place on the Athelstane Range just to west of Rockhampton. The barracks and police paddocks were situated on Murray's Lagoon (named after John Murray) and are now occupied mostly by the Rockhampton Botanic Gardens near Rockhampton Airport. Murray, being the commanding officer in the region, was often based at these barracks with his wife. In 1859, she gave birth to his first son, John James Athelstane Murray, who, in an apparent tradition with the offspring of Native Police officers, shared a middle name with the barracks in which he was born.[38]

In December 1859, Queensland officially separated from New South Wales to become a new British colony. The first Governor of Queensland, George Bowen, conducted a customary tour of the fledgling colony and visited Rockhampton with his entourage in late 1860. Lieutenant Murray, similar to his reception of NSW Governor Fitzroy some years prior at Gladstone, paraded his troops to the satisfaction of the Queen's representative. Unfortunately for Murray, this high-profile visit coincided with an equally high-profile rape and murder of a young woman in the region named Fanny Briggs.

On 6 November 1860, Mr. John Watts reported to Murray that Briggs had gone missing. Murray, with the help of Watts, Mr. Genatas and an Aboriginal trooper named Toby started the search for the woman. On the 8th and 9th of November, with the help of more troopers the search was resumed but without success. On the 10th, Murray came across some tracks and a saddle cloth. It wasn't until the 12th November that the body of the woman was discovered. On the 13th, the search party followed tracks of a large number of Aboriginal people suspected of the murder, coming across an Aboriginal man running away near Raglan Creek named Mico, who had murdered a German hutkeeper. One of the Aboriginal troopers shot him and another Aboriginal accidentally. Kennis, a former Native Mounted Police trooper, told the police that Gulliver, a Native Police trooper, confessed to him that he, and two other troopers Toby and Alma, had violated Briggs, and subsequently killed her to prevent her cries. Toby and Alma were promptly arrested. Gulliver was later shot dead by Lieutenant Walter Powell during an escape attempt. Toby "disappeared" after being escorted into the bush by some troopers, while Alma was shot dead at a riverbank by his captor while "trying to escape" despite being in leg-irons and handcuffs.[39]

Not long after the Fanny Briggs affair, Murray was transferred out of Rockhampton by Commandant Morisset, and Lieutenant John O'Connell Bligh was preferred to Murray to conduct operations out of the Northern Districts. Bligh had recently received a lot of attention after he shot a number of Aboriginals along the river within the town of Maryborough and the relocation was a convenient diversion to this scrutiny. Murray, in turn, was transferred to the Coopers Plains barracks near Maryborough to take over Bligh's previous duties. The relocation was not favourable to Murray as, in just a few months after moving to Maryborough, Murray became involved in another publicised scandal.

In response to reports that Aboriginals were killing cattle at Conondale and Widgee, Murray sent out a young officer with some troopers to conduct a punitive mission against these Aboriginals. This officer was Rudolph Morisset, the younger brother of the Commandant. Ruldolph together with Mr William Cashbrook Giles, the overseer at Widgee pastoral station, led the troopers to the area and conducted three raids which resulted in the deaths of at least 8 Aboriginals near Manumbar. Some of those killed were in the employ of a local squatter and letters were written to newspapers outlining displeasure at the nature of the killings.[40] Subsequent to these and other killings conducted by the Native Police around this time, a Queensland parliamentary inquiry was conducted into the activities of the force. The operation of the Native Police was largely vindicated by this inquiry, but John Murray was identified as being responsible for the killings at Manumbar. The logic was that Murray should not have sent a junior officer on this mission, but the fact that this officer was the brother of the Commandant is more than likely the reason that Murray was attributed the blame. Further reports made to the inquiry which were supported by evidence in newspaper articles[41] also accused Murray of conducting a large massacre of 30-40 Aboriginals at Imbil in March 1861. Murray was further discredited by complaints of chronic inebriation during his career with the force, and as a result of these disgraces one of the recommendations of the inquiry was that Murray should be removed from the force due to a "general unfitness for his duties".[42] Despite writing public protestations against these negative findings,[43] Murray resigned from the Native Police in 1862.

In 1864, Murray was re-employed by the Queensland Government to be a recruiting officer for the Native Police.[44] The force at this time was again re-organised with the position of Commandant being abolished and the operations now being under the direction of the Queensland Police Commissioner in David Thompson Seymour. Seymour wanted to strengthen the Native Police considerably in order to implement British colonial rule through the vast extent of Queensland.[45] Seymour sent Murray to the Riverina District of southern New South Wales to recruit troopers from the remaining Aboriginal population there. This area was the source of the original troopers of the Native Police recruited by Frederick Walker in 1848. Murray arrived at Echuca, bringing with him the four surviving members of Walker's original force, who up to that time had been in continuous service for 16 years. One of the troopers was able to be re-united with his father. From Echuca, Murray went to Deniliquin and then to Melbourne where he and his new recruits were shipped to Brisbane to be trained as paramilitary fighters.[46] Murray was able to recruit 20 new troopers on this trip.[47] The following year, Murray again returned to the Riverina to recruit, this time bringing back to Queensland 22 new Aboriginal recruits to be trained "to fire with precision on their fellow countrymen".[48]

In middle part of 1865, John Murray was appointed to be an Inspector of Native Police based at Cardwell in far north Queensland. As part of the restructure of the force, the rank of Lieutenant was replaced with the title of Inspector. Murray was based at Cardwell initially with sub-Inspector Reginald Uhr and then with other officers later on. Soon after his deployment, John Murray accompanied the government surveyor Walter Hill in exploring the capacity of the area for British agricultural development. They journeyed around the Mackay River (now named the Tully River) and the Macalister River (now named the Murray River (Queensland) after John Murray).[49] They found an area of open plains amongst the rainforest, later named the Bellenden Plains, which was cultivated for sugar cane growing by John Ewen Davidson and Charles Eden.[50] Davidsons plantation was attacked twice by Aboriginal people, but by the time Murray and his troopers arrived, they did not find any. Murray promised to return in a week or ten days to "clear out the neighbourhood."[51]

When reports of a white man living on Hinchinbrook Island were circulated, Murray was part of an expedition party searching every Aboriginal camp not only on Hinchinbrook, but on most other islands in the region.[52] A dray carrying a load of wool from the Valley of Lagoons pastoral property to be shipped from Cardwell was robbed by Aboriginal people, Murray was sent "to punish them according to their deserts".[53]

On 9 January 1867, Murrays wife gave birth to a daughter.[54] In 1870, Murray conducted a tour of inspection of various police camps, returning with a number of specimens of gold in quartz.[55]

By 1870, reports of John Murray being continually drunk on duty and quarrelling with fellow police magistrates were raised in the press.[56] An inquiry into Murray's behaviour was conducted in October and at the conclusion of it, Murray resigned from the police force.[57] Murray remained at Kirtleton becoming a cattle auctioneer and providing female Aboriginals for missionaries to act as interpreters.

John Murray died in 1876 from diphtheria, leaving a widow and several children. His obituary stated that he "rendered immense service to pioneer squatters in protecting them from the raids of niggers".[58] Two of John Murray's brothers, Frederick Murray and George Poultney Malcolm Murray also served in the Native Police, while another brother, James Murray was a pastoral squatter in the Baffle Creek area of Queensland.[59] His gravesite at Meunga Creek Caravan Park in Ellerbeck near Cardwell is heritage-listed. The heritage places report stating that it is "important for recognising and commemorating the contributions of Inspector John Murray in maintaining law and order".[60] The Murray River in Queensland is named after John Murray, as is Murray Lagoon near Rockhampton.