Windradyne - Warrior

Europeans called him Saturday.

Windradyne was 13 years old when settlers established a settlement named Bathurst in 1813.

It was Australia’s first inland settlement - a tiny township with only a few hundred settlers, mostly convicts, tending government cattle.

Welcomed

Initially, Europeans were welcomed as they moved onto the fine grasslands. Wiradjuri Elder Aunty Mary Coe (1986) wrote in her book Windradyne : A Wiradjuri Koorie 

‘the Wiradjuri were willing to share part of their land as they had always shared and exchanged with people who were guests on their lands — provided the settlers did not interfere in their lives.’

Tension

When Governor Brisbane began granting leases of thousands of acres of Wiradjuri land in the early 1920s, there was a flood of people, sheep and cattle.

The Wiradjuri did not recognise private land ownership. The European settlers did.

There was another challenge. A colonial official, wrote:

There are no kangaroos to be seen anywhere near Bathurst....all that was left for the Wiradjuri were possums and fish [The Sydney Wars].

Bathurst massacre

Older settlers did not confront the Wiradjuri, but new arrivals used violence to protect their property.

After ten years of reasonably peaceful co-existence, conflict increased to the point where Wiradjuri people were gunned down while digging for potatoes on a settler's land.

Some of the people who died were members of Windradyne’s family. He retaliated with raids on settler stations. Eventually, Windradyne was captured.

It took six men to secure him and they had actually to break a musket over his body before he yielded, which he did at length with broken ribs... Saturday for his exploits was sentenced to a month's imprisonment [Sydney Gazette 1st August 1824 quoted in Wikipedia].

Bathurst war

Things got worse. Resistance spread. In response, Governor Brisbane declared martial law on 14 August 1824. According to W. H. Suttor, whose family had a long friendship with Windradyne 'The proclamation of martial law was as undecipherable to the natives as an Egyptian hieroglyph.'

The colonial campaign that followed was violent. Soldiers, mounted police, and armed settlers killed Wiradjuri people across the region with no official tally of casualties.

Windradyne led a coordinated guerrilla resistance, striking stations and livestock, and retreating into the country.

Governor Brisbane also placed a bounty of 500 acres of land for the capture or killing of Windradyne. He was never betrayed.

Remembering Windradyne's War (28 mins)
This podcast by the ABC comes 200 years after the Bathurst War.
No need to sign up. Just follow the links.