The Forrest River massacre, or Oombulgurri massacre of June 1926, was a massacre of Indigenous Australian people by a group of law enforcement personnel and civilians in the wake of the killing of a pastoralist in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
An initial police enquiry concluded that sixteen Aboriginal people were killed and their remains burnt. Subsequently, a Royal Commission was organised in 1927 to further investigate the matter. This Commission found that twenty Aboriginal people were murdered and burnt at several different locations. Two Western Australian police constables who participated in the punitive expedition that led to the massacre, James St Jack and Denis Regan, were charged with murder and arrested. Despite the findings of the commission and police investigation, the case never went to trial, with a preliminary hearing concluding that a jury would not be able to make a conviction. Lumbia, the Aboriginal man who killed the pastoralist Frederick Hay, was, however, convicted in a separate proceeding. The total number of victims of the punitive expedition led by St Jack and Regan is unclear with the lowest conclusion being that of sixteen given by the 1926 police investigation and the highest being in the hundreds given by the brother of one of the participants in the massacre.
Regardless of official police and governmental investigations concluding that a large number of people were killed during the police operation, denials of this massacre continued until at least the early 2000s.
Background
In 1926, Leopold Rupert Overheu and Frederick Hay jointly held the Nulla Nulla property near Wyndham in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Their property bordered the Forrest River Aboriginal Mission (later renamed Oombulgurri) run by Reverend Ernest Gribble. Over previous years, Frederick Hay had repeatedly taken and molested Aboriginal women with Gribble making complaints to authorities about his behaviour. In 1924, Hay had also seriously injured an Aboriginal man after hitting him over the head with his rifle butt. Hay and Overheu complained about the spearing of their cattle by local Aboriginal people, Overheu claiming the value of the speared cattle to be £10,000. In response, their property was declared a prohibited area under the 1905 Aborigines Act preventing indigenous people from entering or crossing it to reach other areas.
Initial massacre at Durragee
On 18 May 1926, Overheu made a formal complaint that a large group of Aboriginal people were spearing cattle at Nulla Nulla. Constable James St Jack of the Western Australia Police based at Wyndham was directed to investigate this killing of cattle. St Jack with his two Aboriginal assistants, Windie Joe and Jacob, set out from Wyndham and met up with Overheu and his Aboriginal servants Tommy Doort and Lyddie on the lower Pentecost River.
The group then travelled toward the Nulla Nulla property and camped for the night near Durragee Hill, close to where around 300 Aboriginal people were holding a ceremony on an island in the river. At dawn on 24 May, St Jack armed Windie Joe, Jacob, and Tommy with shotguns and the patrol rushed the camp to disperse the indigenous people. Those who survived reported that many were injured and that two older men, Blui-Nua and Umbillie were killed by being beaten over the head with a stirrup iron or a rifle butt. An eyewitness to the Durragee Hill attack, Gladys Birch, many years later stated that several women and children were herded to the top of a cliff and pushed off while nine men were shot and thrown in a bonfire at Durragee. St Jack and Overheu testified later that they had shot no humans but had shot 31 dogs. However, witnesses described people being wounded by both bullets and shotgun pellets.
After the dispersal at Durragee, the patrol continued to the Nulla Nulla Homestead arriving after dark to find Frederick Hay missing. The next morning Windie and Tommy were sent to try and find Hay. Hay's body was found later that same day north-east of the homestead.