In 2023, Gippsland Blak lives still matter

The removal of monuments to a colonial mass murderer is more urgent in 2023 than ever, says a Gippsland councillor who instigated a failed motion on the issue three years ago.

In June 2020, Cr Carolyn Crossley led a campaign to remove two stone monuments, known as cairns, celebrating Angus McMillan in Wellington Shire. 

McMillan was a Scotsman remembered by some as the “discoverer of Gippsland” and by others as an architect of genocide, responsible for the deaths of more than 150 Gunaikurnai men, women and children.

Across Gippsland there are total of 18 monuments honouring McMillan’s heritage and legacy. 

Pressure to reassess this legacy is mounting, led by First Nations representatives such as the  Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation  (GLaWAC), as well Cr Crossley.

In 2018, the  federal electorate of McMillan was renamed  due to its association with the massacres.

The issue has divided Wellington Shire, however, and in 2020 Cr Crossley’s council motion  was voted dow n by a majority of five to four. 

Cr Crossley is adamant that the issue will not be forgotten and believes 2023 may be the year the tide will turn. 

“I am totally committed to having them removed”, she said this week.

Today, cairns commemorating McMillan as “explorer of Gippsland” can be found throughout the region, including in Heyfield, Stratford, Rosedale and Yarram.

They represent acclaim that McMillan did not enjoy before his death in 1865. 

“McMillan did not receive the credit that was due to him” during his lifetime, according to the  State Library of Victoria’s biographical entry , which refers to McMillan as an “explorer” and credits his “discovery” of gold mining areas and creation of tracks through rough terrain.

It wasn’t until the 1920s, six decades after his expeditions into what is now known as Gippsland, that the series of cairns were established in his honour. 

According to Cr Crossley’s 2020 speech to council, they were intended as “propaganda devices” designed to “put the colonial stamp of ‘WE WON’ this country. Gippsland is ours and it is white”. 

For members of the Gunaikurnai community they are a painful symbol of the attempts to exterminate them.

"The Gunaikurnai people were disposed from their country, forcibly removed and often killed", GLaWAC General Manager of Culture Grattan Mullett told council in 2020.

"The McMillan cairns represent a celebration of history where a man arrived on Gunaikurnai land and committed forms of genocide." 

Information carefully compiled by  The Killing Times Project —a collaboration between The Guardian and The University of Newcastle—shows that McMillan was responsible for the deaths of a large number of Gunaikurnai people, although estimates vary.

One of the worst massacres was in 1843 at Warrigal Creek.

There, McMillan led a band of Scotsmen, known as “The Highland Brigade”, on a killing rampage in revenge for the murder of a white man. 

They shot between 60 and 150 Gunaikurnai—including elderly people, women, and children.  

McMillan went on to execute at least five other massacres at Maffra, Nuntin, Skull Creek, Butchers Creek and Boney Point. 

The State Library of Victoria’s biography includes the vague note that McMillan was “involved” in massacres of First Nations people. 

A contemporary eyewitness was more explicit about the brutality and its impact. 

“The blacks are very quiet here now, poor wretches”, a squatter in Warrigal Creek, Henry Meyrick,  wrote in a letter to England in 1846 .

“No wild beast of the forest was ever hunted down with such unsparing perseverance as they are.” 

According to Peter Gardner, the historian credited with first revealing the extent of the massacres in the 1980s, the Gunaikurnai were “defeated” after 1848. 

However, Mr Gardner and fellow historian Dr Cheryl Glowrey agree that the relationship between McMillan and the Gunaikurnai was complex and hard to summarise. 

Dr Glowrey says that it changed enormously between 1840 and 1860.

Mr Gardner says that by his death, McMillan was a Gunaikurnai "supporter with constant Aboriginal companions and spoke their language".

For Cr Crossley, however, the question of the cairns is not “a debate about history”.

“The facts have been established”, she said in her 2020 council address. “McMillan was both an explorer and a murderer.”

“This motion is about reconciliation.”

Mr Mullett agrees, and views removing the cairns as a chance for “healing and greater unification”.

“We believe it is time to take another step forward in a cohesive, deadly Gippsland community.”

“The Gunaikurnai have no ill will toward current community members, the majority of whom also feel human atrocities should be called out and addressed.”

“The pandemic disrupted the moment”, Cr Crossley says of the 2020 campaign. But she believes that in 2023, change is in the air.

“Hopefully the successful referendum on the Voice [later this year] may give the council confidence to do the right thing.”