Wellington Valley

30th March 1827

To His Excellency Lieutenant-General Ralph Darling, Governor and Commander in Chief in and over His Majesty’s Territory of New South Wales and its Dependencies, etc, etc, etc.

Sir,
I have the honour to acquaint you with the facts of a very curious incident that occurred here in Wellington Valley during my recent visit. The affair could have had very serious consequences, but fortunately I have been able to clear it up to the satisfaction of all concerned. It is more than a year since Your Excellency was pleased to appoint me to the position of Inspector of Roads and Bridges, and it is only now that I have reached the outer limits of settlement in my general tour of inspection of the colony’s roads. From Bathurst I have come 102 miles west to this remote convict settlement, reaching it on the morning of the 27th.

On arrival at Government House I found the Commandant, Lieutenant Percy Simpson, on the point of ordering the soldiers under his command to carry out a general attack on the local aborigines in order to drive them out of the district entirely. Conscious as I am that such action is totally against Your Excellency’s benign policy with regard to the native people, I enquired of him as to the cause of such a drastic intention. He related the following extraordinary circumstances to me.

Several days previously an aboriginal man named Wiradjura was arrested by the soldiers for attacking one Private John Lynch in the bush with murderous intent. He wounded Lynch with his spear, at which point Lynch called out to his fellow soldiers for help and they swiftly came to his assistance and saved him from any further harm. Lynch was furious and wanted to shoot the man there and then, but his fellow soldiers would not allow him to commit so wanton an act. They insisted the man be arrested and brought before the Commandant for punishment by due process of law. The wounded Lynch kept hold of Wiradjura’s spear as evidence, and the soldiers conveyed the aborigine to the jail, where he was locked in by the settlement constable, the convict Vincent Russell.

A report on the incident was then made to the Commandant, who questioned Private Lynch. Lynch said the attack was entirely unprovoked. In the eyes of the Commandant this was a very serious development, coming on top of a recent escalation of tensions between the natives and the settlers. The natives have been provoked to an increasing number of retaliatory attacks by outrages committed upon them by stock-keepers, who interfere with their women and subject them to other acts of aggression. Consequently the settlers, who are now fearful for their safety, have been calling on the Commandant to clear the aboriginal tribes right out of the district. An unprovoked attack on a soldier so close to the centre of the settlement made it more difficult for him to resist their demands.

It being already late in the afternoon, the Commandant decided to leave Wiradjura locked up overnight and question him in the morning. That evening the constable brought the prisoner a meal and found him to be in a sullen mood and making threats to kill Private Lynch. He left him locked in the jail and retired to his hut, which he shares with the principal overseer, the convict George Brown. The following morning, when the Commandant was ready to question the prisoner, the soldiers went to the jail with the constable to fetch him to Government House. To their utmost astonishment, when the constable unlocked the jail they found inside not the man Wiradjura, but the soldier Private Lynch, run through with Wiradjura’s spear and quite dead. Of Wiradjura there was no sign.

This unexpected development was reported immediately to the Commandant, who sent the soldiers out in search of Wiradjura and closely questioned the constable, who swore that he could not understand how the body of Private Lynch came to be in the jail in place of the aborigine. Vincent Russell was adamant that Wiradjura had been in the jail when he locked it up the previous night, that he had gone straight to his hut afterwards, from which he had not stirred all night, and that he had the only key to the jail with him the whole time. He could not account for the strange turn of events. The Commandant then sent for the principal overseer and questioned him, and George Brown confirmed that Russell had not left their hut from the time he returned from taking Wiradjura a meal until the following morning.

The Commandant surmised that the only possible explanation was that Private Lynch, who still had Wiradjura’s spear, must have somehow stolen the keys to the jail from Russell and opened it in the night with intent to kill Wiradjura in revenge for the attack upon himself. The aborigine must have fought Lynch off and got the better of him in the ensuing struggle, spearing him to death and fleeing into the bush.

Upon their return the soldiers reported that after an extensive search they had found no trace of Wiradjura, nor would any of the other aborigines say where he was. At this point the Commandant sent word to the aborigines that if they did not deliver Wiradjura up he would have no choice but to attack them and drive them away. He gave them twenty-four hours to meet his demand. The killing of one of his soldiers could not be allowed to go unaccounted for and unpunished. The twenty-four hours having expired with no word from the aborigines, the Commandant mobilised his soldiers in preparation for hostilities, and that is how I found matters on the morning of my arrival.

On Your Excellency’s authority I ordered the Commandant to suspend his action pending my own investigation of the case. I was not entirely convinced that his explanation of the facts was the true one. For one thing, it did not explain how the jail came to be locked again the morning that Private Lynch’s body was discovered inside, and the keys back in possession of the constable. I told Lieutenant Simpson that I wished to question both the constable and the principal overseer myself. He ordered them brought to Government House and I questioned them separately in the presence of the Commandant. They both told me exactly what they had told him.

I then told the Commandant that I wished to examine the body of Private Lynch, which had been removed from the jail to his hut, and had not yet been buried. He took me to Lynch’s hut, where I found the unfortunate man’s corpse laid out on his bed, which was soaked in his blood. The spear had been removed from his body, leaving a gaping hole in his chest. His face was contorted in pain. It was a gruesome sight. The Commandant informed me that he had the bloodied spear safely in his possession at Government House.

I next asked to see the jail, where Lynch had been killed. The constable was sent for again, and he unlocked it for me. I looked it over carefully, but there was nothing to be seen, nothing to give any clue as to what had taken place so recently within. I was perplexed, and decided at this point that I needed to hear Wiradjura’s side of the story. I declared my intention of visiting the aborigines on my own to attempt to speak with Wiradjura. The Commandant protested against this course most vehemently. He was of the opinion that I would be putting myself in danger, and he said he would not be able to guarantee my safety if I did so. I assured him that I would come to no harm.

The Commandant gave me directions and I rode into the bush in search of the natives. At first they kept their distance and fled at my approach. But I called out to them that I was a friend and meant them no harm, that I only wished to speak with them. They saw that I was alone and eventually they permitted me to approach them. I explained who I was and assured them that I would permit no attack upon them by the soldiers. I asked to speak with Wiradjura, but they said he was frightened and had gone into hiding and would not come. I could not persuade them to bring him out. As I turned to leave however, a comely young aboriginal woman came forward and identified herself as Wiradjura’s wife, Bangaree, and said she would speak with me.

Bangaree then told me that Wiradjura had attacked Private Lynch because the soldier had tried to take her by force when he happened across them in the bush. Wiradjura had only been defending her against an attempted outrage. She fled, and did not see Wiradjura again until the following day. Her husband told her how he had been taken by the soldiers and locked in the jail. She said that Wiradjura did not kill Lynch. She said he told her that after he had eaten the meal the constable had brought him he had fallen asleep in the jail and woken the next morning in the bush, with no idea of what had happened in the interval. This was a queer tale indeed, but I had no reason to think that she was not telling the truth. She insisted upon her husband’s innocence.

I was now getting suspicious about the peculiar circumstances surrounding Lynch’s killing, and as I rode back to the settlement something was nagging at me, something that didn’t seem right. On arrival I made some examinations of the ground which confirmed my suspicions. I also questioned some of the other convicts to see if they could tell me anything about this mysterious affair. They provided me with certain information which made the whole thing clear to me.

I asked to question Brown again and had him brought to Government House. In the presence of the Commandant I told him that I knew that he had been lying and that he and Russell had murdered Lynch. He denied it and said they had no reason to do so. I then revealed that the convicts had told me that Lynch had treated both Russell and himself with contempt and never lost an opportunity to heap insults upon them, despite their positions of responsibility, and that consequently there was bad blood between the two men and Lynch. The convicts had been willing to tell me this because they despised both the constable and the principal overseer due to their harshness.

Brown said the other convicts were slandering him out of jealousy and that I had no proof that Lynch wasn’t killed by Wiradjura. I told him that was impossible because Lynch’s bed was soaked in blood, but there was none in the jail. If he had been speared in the jail in a struggle with Wiradjura, then there would have been blood stains in the jail, but when I had examined it earlier in the day there were none. Conversely, if Lynch had been killed in the jail there should have been no blood in his hut, or at least not the quantity that I had observed there. There could only be one explanation. Lynch must have been killed in his hut and the body removed to the jail afterwards. I had confirmed this by carefully examining the ground between Lynch’s hut and the jail, and sure enough I had found evidence of dried blood, the larger quantity being near the hut and a lesser amount closer to the jail. Furthermore Russell was the only one who could have locked Lynch’s body in the jail, and that meant that he must have had a hand in the man’s death. Since Brown had given Russell an alibi, Brown must also be involved.

I told Brown this was sufficient evidence to hang them both for murder. At this he went ashen-faced and begged for mercy, insisting that he had taken no part in the killing of Lynch. I told Brown his only hope of avoiding the gallows was to tell me the whole truth immediately. He said I was right in all particulars except that he had only assisted Russell after the event, and colluded with him to cover it up. He said Russell had left their hut in the night and returned a little later and asked him to help with something. They had gone to Lynch’s hut where Brown saw that Russell had killed Lynch with Wiradjura’s spear. Brown and Russell then carried the body to the jail and locked it in. Brown said Wiradjura was quite unconscious at the time, and did not stir at all when they removed him to the bush—a circumstance he could not account for.

I now sent for Russell, and Brown repeated his account of events in front of him. With no way out, Russell made a full confession. He said he hated Lynch and was just waiting for a chance to be revenged on him. He seized the opportunity provided by Wiradjura’s arrest to kill Lynch and make it look as though he had been killed in an attempt to murder the prisoner. Knowing Lynch was wounded and vulnerable, Russell had stolen into his hut that night, seized the spear and run him through the chest while he slept. He then solicited Brown’s assistance to remove the body to the jail. Earlier in the evening he had laced Wiradjura’s meal with opium, so the prisoner was totally unconscious when they brought in Lynch’s body and took him out to the bush. Russell’s idea was to blame the killing on the aborigine, who would have no knowledge of events. The constable’s mistake was to lock up the prison afterwards, which he did out of habit and without thinking.

With the mystery resolved and Russell now locked in the jail awaiting trial, the Commandant is satisfied that the aborigines had no part in the murder of Private Lynch. He has cancelled the planned attack and re-established good relations with the natives, sending them word that they will not be harmed and that Wiradjura will not be arrested. I have forbidden Lieutenant Simpson to take any extreme action in the future, whatever pressure he may be under from the settlers, and reminded him of your policy in these matters. I have also warned him severely against allowing any of his soldiers to mistreat the aborigines or their women. Of course it is harder to police such behaviour amongst the settlers and stock-keepers on so remote a frontier. Perhaps it would be wiser after all to withdraw the settlement at Wellington Valley entirely. I will send a further report in my next letter.

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your most Humble Obedient Servant,

Captain William Dumaresq.