A national project to map the sites where Aboriginal people were massacred during colonisation has shed light on three mass murders in the Ballarat region during the 19th century.
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Two of the murders, which killed 10 and six men respectively, were at Henry Boucher Bowermans properties near Learmonth and Lexton.
The third is known as the Blood Hole massacre, which saw farmers hunt a group of indigenous men near north of Clunes in response to the death of a cook at their property.
University of Newcastle historian Professor Lyndall Ryan said it was time the massacres were recognised.
Certainly it is time the War Memorial acknowledges these massacres, she said.
When I visit Aboriginal communities today the first thing they do is take you to the massacre site.
More than 100 massacres have been recorded through the project, with six or more killed at each site.
It means more than 6000 Aboriginal deaths have so far been counted, with that number expected to rise further.
During the Blood Hole murder, a group of Aboriginal men were given plaster of Paris instead of flour in an effort to poison them by the cook in December 1839.
The men were killed while trying to escape into the waterhole, with each man shot as they were forced to surface for air.
At the Bowerman property, six Aboriginal men were killed by convicts Adam Braybrook and John Davis and the farms overseer William Allen.
All three were investigated for the murder and attempt to destroy evidence by burning bodies at the Learmonth property.
Assistant Protector Sievwright arrested the men and prosecuted them for burning the bodies due to a lack of evidence, but the trio was acquitted anyway.
The second murder near Lexton followed a flock of sheep being driven from the area by Aboriginal men.
Overseer John Allen led the recovery, which resulted 10 to 14 Aborigines being killed.
With The Age
