Forum

Market


On this day

17 October 1861

The Cullin-la-ringo massacre or Wills Tragedy occurred north of modern-day Springsure in Central Queensland on 17 October 1861. It remains the largest massacre of white settlers by Aborigines in Australian history, and a pivotal moment in the... Read more ...

17 October 1861

The Cullin-la-ringo massacre
The Cullin-la-ringo massacre or Wills Tragedy occurred north of modern-day Springsure in Central Queensland on 17 October 1861. It remains the largest massacre of white settlers by Aborigines in Australian history, and a pivotal moment in the frontier wars in Queensland

In mid October 1861, a squatter party from the colony of Victoria under Horatio Wills began a temporary tent camp to start the process of setting up the grazing property of Cullin-la-ringo. Wills's party, an enormous settlement train including bullock wagons and more than 10,000 sheep, had set out from Brisbane eight months earlier to set up a farm at Cullin-la-ringo, a property formed by amalgamating four blocks of land with a total area of 260 square kilometres (64,000 acres). The size of the group had attracted much attention from other settlers, as well as the indigenous people.

According to the account of one of the survivors, John Moore, Aborigines had been passing through the camp all day on 17 October 1861, building up numbers until there were at least 50. Then, without warning, they attacked, murdering all the men, women and children with nulla nullas. The settlers defended themselves with pistols and tent poles, but nineteen of the twenty-five defenders were killed.


Featured article

    The Jarmann rifle - part 3 - The Swedish Jarmann

  • The Jarmann rifle - part 3 - The Swedish Jarmann

    Part three in the series about the Jarmann rifle focuses on the Swedish three-band naval Jarmann. This rifle is one of 1000 that were manufactured for the Swedish navy in 1883 and is quite similar to the one issued to the Norwegian army.

About svartkrutt.net

Views: 24720

Øyvind Flatnes Svartkrutt.net is owned and maintained me whose name is Øyvind Flatnes. I'm a Norwegian black powder shooter and I started this web site in February 2000. The ambition was to provide Norwegians with a black powder site in our native language, but since then most of the content is also translated to English. I'm also the author of a black powder book, which was published in March 2005. This book is currently available in Norwegian only.

On svartkrutt.net you can read my articles about various black powder related activities, participate on the international discussion board, chat or find interesting black powder or antique firearms on the market pages. The discussion forum has become a valuable archive of interesting articles. Sign up and participate!

About Øyvind Flatnes

Born: 1978 in Norway.
Location: Bergen.
Education:
  • 1994-1997: Skeisvang upper secondary school.
  • 1997-1998: Infantry squad leader in the Royal Navy's coast artillery.
  • 2000-2003: BA from the University of Bergen (UiB) with history and media science as subjects.
  • 2003-2005: MA in history from UiB. Specialised in medieval military history.
Work: Employed as a writer in It's Learning.

Publications by Øyvind Flatnes

Vakre våpen svart krutt Leidang Våpenjournalen

From left to right: The book "Vakre våpen - svart krutt", the MA thesis about the peasant levies in operational service and various articles for magazines such as Våpenjournalen, Muskedunderen, Krudtslam and Krutkorn.

Muskedunderen

From July 2003 to July 2007 I was the editor of Muskedunderen ("The Blunderbuss"), the publication of the Norwegian Black Powder Union. Below you see some of the covers I was responsible for.

MD nr. 4 2006 MD nr. 3 2005 MD nr. 2 2005 MD nr. 1 2005 MD nr. 4 2005 MD nr. 3 2005