Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), Saturday 6 July 1907, page 44


THE FAITHFUL MASSACRE.

On Saturday Mr. Uren, of Benalla, who has taken considerable interest in fixing the site of the Faithful mas-sacre in 1836, made, with Messrs. Peters and A. Dosser a search for remains. He succeeded in finding a skull, leg and arm bones, shoulder-blades, and portions of vertebrae, these being apparently the re-mains of one of the murdered men.

At a recent meeting the Benalla Council decided to take steps to erect a memorial on the spot if the place

were sufficiently identified by the find-ing of such evidence as a skull. Mr.

Uren, who had found in a grave on the

Goomalibee-road bones very much decayed at a depth of 5ft, accordingly undertook to look for further evidence. The site is in

the Cockatoo Paddock, which last week was

purchased by the Government from Mr T.,

Nixon. The first grave is on the road, with

its head under the rail of a fence. This one was opened up again, but only some small pieces of bone were found. In an-

other grave, about two yards to the south,

and nearer to the "Faithful tree", just in-

side the paddock Mr Donner at a depth of about 2ft. came, first of all, on some small bones. The shin and thigh bones were then discovered, and then some of the ribs. Eventually the skull was unearthed in a re-markable state of preservation. Three front teeth in the upper jaw and two front ones in the lower jaw were knocked out, evi-dently with the pick used for digging. Dr. Nicholson examined the remains , and found a mark where the man had been struck with a spear in the shoulder-blade from behind. On the back of the skull was evidence of a tremendous blow, which had cracked the skull right round. Dr. Nicholson said that the the skeleton was evidently that of a Euro-pean. The remains will be taken charge of by Sergeant Keegan.