Franks is Dead

Everybody agrees that this is what happened.

Franks and Flinders were killed by blows from steel hatchets landing so heavily that Franks' skull was driven into the turf.

And that's the point at which agreement stops.

The Champion arrived at Point Gellibrand in Port Phillip Bay in 1836. On the ship Charles Franks brought 500 sheep and a partner, George Smith, and a shepherd called either Flinders or Hindes, but nobody seems certain.

The waters off Point Gellibrand are shallow, clear and calm, crowded with mussels, oysters, flounder, flathead and garfish. Only twelve months earlier, Bunurong, Wathaurong and Woiwurrung people feasted on this bay of plenty; their ovens and houses are evident but already the people are scarce, avoiding the frenetic activity of the white people.

It is winter but even so the days can be brilliant with mild sunshine, the wavelets scattering light as if from a shattered mirror. It is God's own country. A man might become anything here. In those days women could please themselves.

In this mood of limitless opportunity Franks removes his sheep from the Champion on 23 June and, on the advice of George MacKillop, decides to take up land around Mount Cotterell on the headwaters of the Barwon River. It took until 2 July to cover the 20 miles (32 kilometres) of flat volcanic grasslands. After depasturing the sheep George Smith returned to Point Gellibrand to bring up more stores.

On 8 July Smith arrives at Mount Cotterell, sees no sign of Franks or Flinders but the stores appear to have been ransacked. He takes fright and returns to Point Gellibrand where he conscripts the help of Mr Malcolm, Mr Clark, Mr George Sams, Mr Armytage, Dr Barry Cotter, Charles Wedge, and Mr Gellibrand. Gellibrand asked Henry Batman to accompany him with William Windberry, George Hollins, Michael Leonard, Benbow, Bullett, Stewart and Joe the Marine. On the way they fall in with Mr Wood and his large party, some of whom were David Pitcairn, Mr Guy, Derrymock, Baitlange, Ballyan and Mr Alexander Thomson.

So, a party of well over 23 people are curious enough to drop what they are doing to investigate the upsetting of a cask of flour at Mount Cotterell. Or have they already mounted similar expeditionary forces since the establishment of the first Yarra settlement less than a year before? Are they at war with the Kulin Nation and recognise this as a beachhead in the war for possession of the Port Phillip plains?

When Captain William Lonsdale is appointed Police Magistrate of Port Phillip in July 1836 the frontier community is under token jurisdiction, but it is an indelible indication of the true activities of the previous twelve months that when George Smith notices an upturned barrel of flour he has no trouble in mobilising a small army to investigate the cause.

These men do not believe a delinquent possum is rampant, they mount a volunteer force of heavily armed volunteers. They are not involved in casual reprisal but a calculated vigilante campaign.

The party followed a trail of flour and discarded stores and came across a band of about seventy to one hundred Wathaurong people.

In responding to Lonsdale's investigation of the incident Henry Batman says he yelled at them but they didn't move so he fired his gun once above their heads and they ran off; John Wood said several shots were fired but none could have taken effect because they were fired from too great a distance; Edward Wedge believed that by the nature of the cuts to the heads of Franks and Flinders, whose bodies were found near the stores, they had been 'inflicted with a particular type of long-handled hatchet' which he had given to the natives earlier in the year 'to conciliate them'; Michael Leonard says several shots were fired but to his knowledge no-one was injured; William Windberry says that the party went after the blacks to retrieve the stolen property but he did not think any were killed.

William Lonsdale receives the evidence and advises the Colonial Secretary that no harm had been inflicted on the Aboriginal people despite it being common knowledge in the colony that at least twelve were killed. The Wathaurong said over 35 but, of course, they were never invited to give evidence. No investigation is made of other attacks which follow the first punitive expedition.

The court hears that the murderers of Franks and Flinders were Goulburn Aboriginals Dumdom and Callen. The Daugwurrung are the people of the Goulburn River and this evidence places them in Wathaurong and Woiwurrung country, but given known clan movements of the time this is unlikely. But to the avengers one group of Aborigines is much the same as any other.

George Smith says it was impossible that Charles Franks could have provoked the murder because he 'had a great aversion to the native blacks, and would not give them food, thinking it the best way to prevent them from frequenting the station'. He'd arrived for the first time only days before at a 'station' at the headwaters of the Barwon River, heartland of the Wathaurong and Woiwurrung people, a land they would defend with their lives. Mr Franks was 'very mild and gentle in his general conduct, and I do not think he would molest anyone,' concluded his partner,

Mr Smith, but Robert William von Stieglitz, in a letter to his brother, casts a different light on Franks' gentle Christian demeanour. Stieglitz went to Franks in order to buy lead which all knew Franks had in great supply. Franks told Stieglitz that the lead was excellent for 'making blue pills for the natives'. Some historians take the word pill literally and assume it is a euphemism for the manufacture of strychnine to lace bullock carcasses in order to poison Aborigines, a common practice in the colony and further refined in Port Phillip. When challenged about this practice it was a common defence to say that the poison had been for the crows. This was a popular jest in Port Phillip because at the time many referred to the blacks by the American euphemism 'Jim Crow'. It's more likely, however, that Franks was making his own shotgun balls.

Either way, it seems this mild Christian had been murdering Aborigines to secure the 'selection' he and his partners, George Smith and George Armytage, had decided upon. It seems he came upon his 'great aversion to the blacks' in a very short space of time, perhaps even in advance of meeting them, so that he thought it necessary to bring the ingredients of...