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Repeater Station (Chat Room and Forum)

A summary of the Barrow Creek conflict
as told in An End to Silence
by Peter Taylor

"One summer night in 1874, five station hands were sitting on the south-west side of the courtyard. Suddenly a volley of spears hailed down on them. As they ran round the building, they found their way was blocked by a group of natives. One man called Franks was speared. He was just able to reach the kitchen before he died. The temporary station master, James Stapleton, was trying to close the gate when he was hit by four spears. The other men dragged him inside but Stapleton was dying. So they went to the key and tapped out details of the attack down the line. At the GPO, Todd was alerted and immediately sent a carriage to bring in Stapleton's wife and a doctor. Stapleton, a pioneer of Canadian and American telegraph systems , asked the men to lift him to the keys. Todd wrote down each letter as it arrived and handed the slip of paper over to his wife. It read, 'God bless you and the children.' Stapleton died the next day."

The Colonial response

"A punitive expedition was organised at once against the Aborigines, who has attacked the station because it had been built too close to an important waterhole. Although official reports claim that no arrests were made they fail to say why. The party of police troopers and telegraph men scoured the area for months and killed every Aborigine they could find, man, woman and child. North of Tea Tree is a small watercourse, usually dry, called skull creek. It is a grim reminder of what the official reports did not describe."

Peter Taylor, An End to Silence, Methuen 1980