Demons at Dusk
May 7th 2008 07:37
Now, after reading Peter Stewart’s Demons At Dusk I’m not so sure our society has really changed all that much. The Myall Creek massacre has had plenty of attention in the last few years with the establishment of the Myall Creek Memorial and the wonderful reconciliation that took place between locals and the descendants of the Weraerais who were butchered there in 1838.
But if, like me, you know little of the details that surround this black spot in Australian history, I strongly suggest you read this book! Stewart has done the research and put together a read that will not only move and enlighten you, it will educate you in the ways of colonization that may not be pretty but certainly happened, and to ignore it makes us, at the very least, guilty of indifference to human suffering that could well have been avoided.
Thankfully we are not all bad, and the motives of a few make this story bearable. You will learn of George Anderson, an uneducated, broken convict who found the courage to speak out (albeit belatedly) and bring the murderers to justice. Also, William Hobbs the Myall Creek Station superintendent who could not stand by and ignore such a betrayal to peaceful blacks (I can’t help but feel encouraged that someone cared because it becomes doubly horrifying when we learn that the majority of those butchered were women and young children). Unfortunately there are more than enough devils in this story, and the flaws in the British justice system stand out as blatantly then and they do at times today.
So, are we a more violent, angry, savage society than we were 200 years ago? Be it in the past or tomorrow I believe we will always retain the ability to harm … but we should never be allowed the comfort of burying our wrongs. They will never rest as the innocent do.
And nor should they.
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