MARIA 1840

The following interview between Phil Hollow (District Ranger for Coorong and Lakes district for the SA Department for Environment and Heritage)
and Tom Trevorrow (Ngarrindjeri elder) adds much to the saga:

ABC - SHIPWRECKS AUDIO TRANSCRIPT » MARIA CREEK
Phil Hollow: We're here looking over Maria Creek, named after the boat, the 'MARIA' that was wrecked here June 7th, 1840.
Tom Trevorrow: We refer to ourselves as the Ngarrindjeri Nation and when I've grown up I heard that a shipwreck came in down towards Kingston and it was called the 'MARIA'.

Narrator: The Chronicle, 5th August, 1840 stated: Since our last publication, no certain information has reached us regarding the reported wreck on the South Coast.
    It is now, however, suspected that the vessel wrecked is the brigantine, 'MARIA'. Among the passengers by here were several females and children.
Phil Hollow: She was wrecked on the coast of Lasapy Bay. Now that coastline is very rocky, no decent lighthouses, and it's not unusual, as we know that many people have come aground in that particular area.
Tom Trevorrow: There's several smaller groups like family groups which we call lakanyeris. We have over 18 lakanyeris along the Coorong and round the lakes, that were broken up into bigger groups like the Meuntunk,Tagani, Taganekald, Yaraldi, Paramunk.
Phil Hollow: When they left their wreck, the 'MARIA', they met up with Ngarrindjeri people.
Tom Trevorrow: They were met by the Tagani and given fire, water and food, and they wanted to go back towards Adelaide from where they left. So my people started escorting them along the sand dunes.
Phil Hollow: This is very harsh terrain and we're talking about 160 to 180 kilometres these people would have had to have some great support from the Ngarrindjeri people on their way.
Tom Trevorrow: That's our Nagarrindjeri way of helping each other. The strict part of our law is sharing with one another. It was the duty of male people to help these people. But every time they'd come to a boundary line, they had to hand them over to the next lakayinyeri.
Phil Hollow: The group that encountered Dodds Landing were the Milmendura people.
Tom Trevorrow: They come just down here at a place called Yarangulin which people call today Dodds Landing point.
Phil Hollow: There was for some reason a violent altercation.
Tom Trevorrow: There were sailors in that group who kept looking at the young girls, and kept trying to, well, sexually interfer with them. Even back then if a Ngarrindjeri man interfered with a young Ngarrindjeri girl before marriage, if that person was given a warning, told 'Don't do that', that person kept doing it, they'd be severely punished, meaning death. And they said, 'You camp over here near these bushes', we're going to camp over there, and in the morning we'll meet and we'll take you on.' But when they got down towards Yirangulin it got out of control and the sailors were not doing as they were told. So a big fight erupted, and unfortunately the survivors from the wreck of the 'MARIA' at that time were killed by the group called the Milmendura.
Phil Hollow: About a month after the report of this boat had sunk, a Mr Pullen and a boat crew left Adelaide bound for the Murray mouth. They had five crew members and they had three Aboriginal men as well. And they landed just up on the side of the Coorong and started searching, and by mid-morning on the next day they arrived at the place on the land side of the Coorong. They came across a couple of very frightened Aboriginal women, they were pacified enough to answer some questions and indicated that the party of Europeans had crossed over to the beach and had been killed at the spot where Mr Pullen and his crew had unsuccessfully searched on the previous day.
Researcher:: "I divided the party, having one on the sandhills and the doctor and myself on the beach so that nothing might escape. We had not proceeded far when the middle party hailed us, and on reaching where they were, the sight I witnessed was truly horrible. There were legs, arms, and portions of bodies partially covered with sand."
Tom Trevorrow: Ngarrindjeri people carried out Ngarrindjeri law. They would have had no idea of repercussions that were coming.

Researcher: "I was confident we were amongst the guilty parties, and if looks were a sufficient condemnation there were two who were certainly possessed of such, for without exception, they were the most villainous looking characters I ever saw."
Phil Hollow: The search party spent several more days looking for the site of the 'Maria' wreck. After those two days they then turned around and headed back, because Pullen was required to report back to Governor Gawler, who was determined to bring the guilty parties to justice.
Researcher:: "When, to your own thorough conviction, you shall have identified any number not exceeding three of the actual murderers, you will distinctly point out such men and require the deliberate opinions of Mr Pullen, Captain Nixon and the Encounter Bay blacks concerning their guilt."
Phil Hollow: The Governor sent Major O'Halloran, Captain Nixon, a Mr Hart, 12 policemen, and also Mr Pullen went back again and three or four Encounter Bay Aborigines. You can see now there was quite a large posse that had been sent back to bring these people to justice.

Researcher: "You will, if possible, move the whole tribe in your power to the spot at which the murder was committed. You will there explain to the blacks the nature of your conduct and the orders you have from the Governor, and you will deliberately and formally cause sentence of death to be executed by shooting or hanging."
Tom Trevorrow: The policeman, kangarpris came down on horses to where the bodies were buried. They rounded up the group and picked out a couple of our people (two Aboriginal men - Mongarawata and Pilgarie) and they built a gallows opposite Dodds Landing area and they hung them by the neck there.
Phil Hollow: That information and of course would have spread throughout the colony, causing considerable debate.

Researcher:: "You have done an act of injustice to the tribes of natives who have been the objects of retributive justice which is fatal in its premises to these miserable creatures and most gross and erroneous in its conclusion. You maintain the tribe to be wholesale butcherers, ruthless murderers of defenceless beings. But your opinion would be qualified were it to be supposed that the passengers of the 'MARIA' were the aggressors."
Phil Hollow: A couple of years before the 'MARIA' was wrecked, the ship, the 'FANNY' was also wrecked. The reports from that were that the Ngarrindjeri people and the survivors of the 'FANNY' had a terrific relationship. The Captain of the 'FANNY' had nothing but praise for the Ngarrindjeri people.
Captain of the "FANNY": In the forenoon of the day after our wreck, we were visited by nine natives, and during our stay among them, which was about 7 weeks, they at all times evinced the greatest friendship. They are decidedly the most inoffensive rate I ever met.
Tom Trevorrow: In that group there was a minister, a reverend, William Longbot
Tom, who I guess as a minister, understood and respected Ngarrindjeri people's ways and said 'Listen to the people, respect the people, the people respect us', and that's what happened. And they done it successfully with the wreck of the 'FANNY'.

Phil Hollow: We stand here at Maria Creek in the south-east of South Australia, and we can only picture what might have happened some 160 years ago (in 1840).
Tom Trevorrow: Even in my teens, the old people showed me where the hanging took place, and the old gallows stood there for a long time. That area with the gallows wasn't the only people over the wreck of the 'MARIA'. Today it's still spoken about like it was not long ago.

Speakers:
Phil Hollow: District Ranger for Coorong and Lakes district for the SA Department for Environment and Heritage
Tom Trevorrow: Ngarrindjeri elder

Special thanks to the ABC for this Shipwrecks Audio Transcript » Maria Creek