Bells Falls Massacre - Truth or Fiction?
This post is about an example of ‘fake history’ being taught to some of our school children.
The post is intended to assist those parents who want to teach their children how to identify and push back against the ideology that is being used to delegitimize our Australian history and which, as a consequence, will only lead to the demoralising of our young.
Most teachers are professional and endeavour to do their best to impart our Australian culture and its successes onto their students.
However, some teachers are un-Australian and want to indoctrinate your child to believe that Australia should be ashamed of its history, particularly the history of the interactions between Aboriginal Australians and other Australians.
These teachers want to over-emphasis the bad historical events, such as the killings or massacres of Aboriginal people that inevitably did sometimes occur in colonial times. However, these tragic events occurred at nowhere near the extent that these teachers would have your child to believe. And most importantly, your child should not be made to feel guilty about these historical events, over which they have no control or responsibility. The times for the concept of ‘original sin’ are over.
This post is about one particular so-called massacre, the Bells Falls ‘massacre.’
One of our readers recently informed us that her child was due to study this ‘massacre’:
To the editor of Dark Emu Exposed,
Re: Bathurst Massacre
I am trying to find information regarding the Bells Falls Gorge massacre near Bathurst. Could you direct me to some information as my son is going to the Blue Mountains and his teachers are insisting on talking about the massacre of Aborignals at the hands of the early settlers? I am not denying that there were confrontations and people were killed during this stage of our history.
I want to understand why the education department in NSW needs to continually drive this perspective forward. I have read Geoffrey Blainey's book and reading Keithwindshuttle's "The BreakUp of Australia", which I have found fascinating. (LL)
The Bells Falls Massacre - The “Massacre” that Most Probably Never Happened
There is an old tradition that the Bells Falls ‘massacre’ is said to have occurred near the old mining village of Sofala, on the Turon River in the Bathurst district of NSW. One historian who has written a history thesis on the incident, and is probably the most qualified to comment on whether it happened or not, is David Roberts.
He had an essay published 2003, The Bells Falls massacre and oral tradition, in which he concluded that the ‘credibility of oral tradition’ is ‘hard to accept as sound historical evidence’ that the Bells Falls massacre even occurred.
Given that it is very hard to trust what many people write today, when they claim they are citing an historian’s work, we have provided, for the avoidance of doubt, the actual images of the excerpts of David Roberts’s essay that we use as citations in this post:
Figure 1A - David Roberts, The Bells Falls massacre and oral tradition, in Frontier Conflict the Australian Experience, Attwood, B., & S G Foster (eds.), National Museum of Australia 2003, p150-7.
Notes: See Historical Records of Australia (HRA) Series I, Vol XI, p409 for details on the killing of 7 European settlers and Governor Brisbane’s claim that the death toll of the Natives can ‘only be gathered from conjecture, but in all probability they do not much exceed double the number of Europeans.’ [ie perhaps 14 Aboriginal dead?]
Governor Brisbane was awaiting for a Report from Major Morisset as to the details of the ‘whole affair at Bathurst.’ According to historian John Connor, ‘[d]espite the importance of this operation, no official report of its conduct exists, probably because Morisset travelled to Sydney soon afterwards and gave Governor Brisbane a verbal report.’ (Source Connor, J., The Australian Frontier Wars 1788-1838, p59-60]
Figure 1B - (ibid., p153)
Figure 1C - (ibid., p154)
Thus, Roberts concludes that there are no official records of any massacre at Bells Falls on the Turon River near the old town of Sofala. The idea that any confrontation, whether a massacre or not, may have occurred between Aborigines and settlers or soldiers, is based solely on a settler (not an original Aboriginal) oral tradition.
This ‘story’, for which no real records exist, was first mentioned in print in 1962, in a newspaper report, some 140 years after when it was supposed to happen. This hardly inspires confidence in the story’s credibility.
What Does the University of Newcastles Colonial Massacre Map Say?
The ‘authoritative’ Colonial Massacre Map published by the University of Newcastle does not list a specific incident by the name of the “Bells Falls Massacre”. Rather, there is a massacre site that they have named as “Turon River.” Given that the Bells Falls are on the Turon River, we wrote to Dr Bill Pascoe, an administrator of the Colonial Massacre Map at the University of Newcastle, seeking further clarification and his response was as follows:
Question to Dr Bill Pascoe [Admin. of University of Newcastle’s Colonial Massacre Map project]
Dear Bill,
Another "incident" we are doing some research into is the so-called Bells Falls Massacre on the Turon River, near the village of Sofala, north of Bathurst.
I can't seem to see that you have it listed as such on the Colonial Massacre Map?
You do have a massacre site entitled "Turon River" . Is this the same incident as the Bells Falls Massacre?
Editor, DEE
Reply:
I haven't looked at that area closely myself, but from a quick look at the description of the Bells Falls and Turon River incidents the accounts are somewhat different, one being at the top of a gorge while the other is in a swamp.
As we will be concluding work on it any day now, please let me know as soon as you can if you know of any pertinent details.
Thanks, Bill Pascoe
The Colonial Massacre Map currently has listed a ‘massacre’ of some 45 Aboriginal '‘victims” for an incident said to have occurred on 1 September 1824 on the Turon River (Figure 2).
Figure 2 - Extract of the Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788-1930, Turon River Site. Source: Turon River site [there is some doubt as to whether this includes the so-called Bells Falls massacre. See comments above from Dr Bill Pascoe, Uni. of Newcastle ]
Notes: See Historical Records of Australia (HRA) Series I, Vol XI, p409 for details on the killing of 7 European settlers and Governor Brisbane’s claim that the death toll of the Natives can ‘only be gathered from conjecture, but in all probability they do not much exceed double the number of Europeans.’ [ie perhaps 14 Aboriginal dead?]
Governor Brisbane was awaiting for a Report from Major Morisset as to the details of the ‘whole affair at Bathurst.’ According to historian John Connor, ‘[d]espite the importance of this operation, no official report of its conduct exists, probably because Morisset travelled to Sydney soon afterwards and gave Governor Brisbane a verbal report.’ (Source Connor, J., The Australian Frontier Wars 1788-1838, p59-60]
Nevertheless, the entry for “Turon River” appears to be confused at best, misleading at worst.
We say this because, in the commentary on the incident(s) at Turon River, the University cites the work of historian John Connor to describe the activity prior to the actual military campaign as it, ‘set off for the region north of Bathurst’ , but then fails to provide any of Connor’s further commentary on what happened after that.
Instead, the University switches to another source, that of the unreliable [Note 2] missionary LE Threlkeld, to provide a narrative of what is claimed to have happened in regard to the ‘massacre’ and its aftermath by the military campaign. For some reason, Connor’s full narrative of the campaign, from beginning to end, is not used by the University.
As we will show below, this ‘citation selectivity’ leads to a complete distortion of what probably happened during this martial law campaign in the Turon River [Bells Falls] region.
The University cites pages 59 to 61 of John Connor’s work, but they only publish his comments from page 59, viz:
According to military historian John Connor (Connor 2002, p59-61), following the declaration of martial law in the Bathurst District in August 1824, about forty soldiers from the 40th Regiment led by the Commandant at Bathurst, Major Morisset, three magistrates and three mounted settlers and some Aboriginal guides set off for the region north of Bathurst. [see Figure 3]
The University fails to mention what else Connor writes, namely that in the first, 10-day sweep of the region by the commander Major Morisset’s, four separate parties,
‘…the expedition had not killed any Wiradjuri. In fact, the parties between them had only seen two people’ and ‘the parties again separated for a sweep towards Wallerwang, after which the expedition ended. Governor Brisbane stated that no Wiradjuri were killed on this part of the expedition either [See HRA, S.I, col XI, p431] (Connor p59.)
Figure 3 - Extract from John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788-1838, p59
The University fails to cite Connor’s summary on his page 61, after he had weighed up the conflicting stories, where he had concluded that the ‘evidence for a massacre at Bells Falls is weak.’
Figure 4 - Extract from John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788-1838, p61
How to ‘Just Make Up’ a Massacre
To illustrate just how bad the situation is today, where some fiction writers are now ‘just making up our history’, consider the following version of the Bells Falls massacre published by journalist Bruce Elder as cited by Connor above (Figures 5).
Bruce Elder
In 1988 Bruce Elder won acclaim for his book Blood on the Wattle which was praised as ‘arguably the best book ever written about Aborigines by a white writer’. It was recently listed as one of the ten most influential Australian works of non-fiction in the twentieth century in an extensive poll conducted by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Source Griffith Review
Source: Booktopia
Figures 5A,B & C - Extracts from Bruce Elder’s, Blood on the Wattle, 1992 Reprint, p51-2
Bruce Elder is a writer, commentator and journalist specialising in travel and popular culture. His other areas of expertise include film, television and popular music. Although he claims he ‘has a passion for Australian history’, what he has written here of the the so-called Bells Falls Massacre is complete fiction. He himself even admits that ‘no records were kept.’
So, if no records were kept how can he write with such detail - “they grabbed their children and leapt” or “the creeks ran with blood.” Where did Elder get this information from?
The reality is that Bruce Elder is just embellishing the old oral tradition story so he can sell more books to a gullible readership. Everything he has written here is a total fabrication.
He does a great disservice to Australia and especially to Wiradjuri Aboriginal people who now believe a ‘massacre’ occurred for which Bruce Elder has no real evidence. Why would anyone continue to promote a false story that is clearly going to be upsetting, or even distressing, to many members of our community?
Further Reading
Most teachers are good-hearted people and want to give our young the best education they can. However, there are some teachers with crazy, un-Australian ideas - they will try to teach our young stories about our great country that are just pure politics and not really true.
For example, in history and social studies classes, some teachers will try to make our students believe that our colonial history was incredibly violent against Aboriginal people, during something they call the ‘frontier wars.’
This is not true. Yes, there were some killings and even massacres of people during the settlement of Australia, but over the 150 years from 1788 to about 1930, the death toll from these clashes amounted to only a few thousand, unfortunate Australians, both aborigines and settlers, who were killed.
Even specialist so-called ‘frontier war’ historians such as Professor Henry Reynolds can only provide ‘guestimates’ of the death toll. Reynolds used a very rough ‘formula’ for his estimate of the number of the aborigines killed during the settlement of northern Australia. The ‘Reynolds Massacre Formula’ gives a death toll of some 10,000 aborigines for Queensland and some 20,000 across the whole of northern Australia over an 80 year period. [See Note 1 below and see debate here from 13:23].
Similarly, the University of Newcastle’s Colonial Massacre Map has listed some 424 ‘incidents’ in which they claim only about 11,000 people were ‘massacred’ over a 150 year period in Australia during colonisation [73 deaths per year].
In terms of world history - the conquest of North America by the British, Latin America by the Spanish and Portuguese, South Africa by the Bantu, Dutch and British, China by the Japanese, Eurasia by the Mongol hordes, etc, etc, - this figure of 11,000 deaths, as unreliable as it is, is paltry relative to the millions of deaths that occurred during these other colonisations.
In fact, we should be thankful and appreciative of the British institutional structure that created the legal, moral and ethical conditions that such a massive continent could be settled so peacably, with so little loss of life.
To put these Aboriginal death-toll figures of 10,000 - 20,000 into context, the death toll from road accidents in Australia over an 80 year period (1925 to 2004) was a much higher figure of 171,353.
Looking at the figures in another way, historian Stephen Gapps, in his book The Sydney Wars [Newsouth, 2018, p273-278] tabulated the total death toll from Aboriginal/settler clashes for the 28 years from 1788 to 1816 in the Sydney area as being 166 deaths of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. This amounts to an average of 6 deaths per year of both Aboriginal people ands settlers from clashes in early Sydney.
This very low rate of 6 deaths per year in Sydney’s early colonial times should be compared to the murder rate in Greater Sydney today which is 33 murders per year [See 2023 statistics - original source here ].
So in modern Sydney there are five times more people murdered per year than occurred in the Aboriginal/settler conflicts of early colonial Sydney.
Our teachers would not be teaching our children that Sydney is a particularly “murderous” place today. Similarly, our teachers should not be creating anxiety and guilt in our children that early colonial times were particularly murderous either.
Summary
In the long-run, a child’s education and future is better served if that child is taught that ‘honesty is the best policy’.
When faced with this crazy revisionist rubbish about our history, a student should feel it completely acceptable to ask the teacher, respectfully, “where is the original source and evidence for the teacher’s claims, so we can look them up?”
Invariably the teacher will only be able to cite dodgy secondary sources like Bruce Elder above. Students need to learn how to find the real, primary sources, or alternatively trusted sources who cite the records accurately.
Students should learn to write what they believe is the truth, based on the evidence, even if that might incur the displeasure of an ideologically-driven teacher.
It is better to be marked down today with an honourable C, rather than knowingly ‘selling one’s soul’ for the sake of short-term A that, in the long journey of life, will only turn out to be worthless.
Note 1
Historian Keith Windschuttle claims that historian Henry Reynolds’s figure of 10,000 Aboriginal deaths in Queensland is nothing more than a guess based on a formula - taking an estimate of the number of settlers killed by aborigines [800], multiplying it by an apparently arbitrarily chosen factor of 10, and then adding an extra 20% to get the figure of 10,000. [see previous post]
Note 2
Readers will need to wait for our sources on this claim, that Threlkeld’s testimony is ‘unreliable’. We have the evidence but not yet the time to write it up.
Further Resources
Student Resource for Students on the Balls Falls incident is available below:
The Student Resource is available at: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://hyperhistory.org/images/assets/pdf/museum.pdf
The site is: https://hyperhistory.org/
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