I wish to acknowledge that this website is about the history of my white European family and this in no way is meant to ignore the history of First Nations people on the lands I now call my people's lands too. I wish to pay my respects to the traditional owners and custodians of the lands on which my people settled, the Wiradyuri of the three rivers the Wambool (Macquarie), the Calare (Lachlan) and the Murrumbidgee and the Gundungurra . I acknowledge that these lands were never ceded and thank the Wiradyuri and Gundungurra peoples for the care of the land for over 40,000 years- the land I now call the Smith's historical home.

I pay my respects to elders past and present and wish to acknowledge the horrendous history and the consequences of that history on the Wiradyuri and Gundungurra societies. Truth telling is important and I am truly sorry if any of my relatives were involved in the wars and conflicts which took place on Wiradyuri and Gundungurra lands and against their peoples. 2024 marks the 200th year since the massacres in the Bathurst Wars. The impacts however are still felt by the Wiradyuri. Many other massacres go untold.

In 1824 William Richard Smith would have been 6 years old and living in Sydney far from the Bathurst Wars. However our Blackman ancestors were there as first settlers in Kelso in 1818 and therefore very likely to have participated in the Bathurst Wars.

In 1818, Governor Lachlan Macquarie stated in his diary:

"This morning I inspected 10 new settlers for Bathurst. I have agreed to grant each 50 acres of land, a servant, a cow, four bushels (141 litres) of wheat, an allotment in the new town, and to provide for them for 12 months from the King's stores."

These men were William Lee, Richard Mills, Thomas Kite, Thomas Swanbrooke, George Cheshire, John Abbott, John Blackman, James Blackman, John Neville and John Godden. 

In 1823 our ancestor Josephus Henry Barsden was appointed by Governor Brisbane as a Constable on the Richmond Rd Emu Plains. Could he also have been involved? Maybe not at this stage in the wars in Bathurst but as a Constable he may well have participated in acts which today we find abhorrent. 

Phillipa Gemmel-Smith in her Thematic History of Oberon [http://oakycamp.com/_pdfs/History_of_Oberon_Shire_2004.pdf] cites the Aboriginal history of the area. Some excerpts tell us that far from being isolated from these massacres and conflicts the Europeans of Rockley and Oberon were participants:

" Charles Macalister, in his memoir of the early settlement in the Goulburn region Pioneering Days in the Sunny South, published in 1907 quotes the explanation, “Sit down, blackfellow, jump up white fellow”10 which may explain initial terror at meeting white beings. While there were relatively few white settlers relations seem to have been relatively amicable, and the two races coexisted. Macquarie had protected the country west of the mountains from close settlement: by 1820 there were only 114 white people in the Bathurst area. But in 1821 Macquarie’s term as governor was ended, and settlers began to pour over the mountains. By 1824 the white population had increased there to 1267.11 Once the stock and stockmen moved in large numbers up from the coast relationships quickly deteriorated. Aboriginal food sources were seriously affected and they started to attack and disperse mobs of sheep and cattle, and to attack and kill stockmen. Military forces were brought in to deal with the increasing violence and there were random killings of Aboriginals, often women. Under the leadership of the warrior Windradyne, Aboriginals responded with violence. The killings escalated.

On the O’Connell Plains a party of 50 or 60 warriors killed stock, then burnt stockmen’s huts on a westward path and scattered 500 sheep at Rockley in 1824. They returned to O’Connell and attacked a stockman. A posse of six stockhands formed and came across a group of about 30 Aboriginal people near Raineville and three women were killed.12 Five of the six men were tried for manslaughter but acquitted.......

Jim Smith in his Aborigines of the Goulburn District examines the history of the Burra Burra band. This was probably a Gundungurra group. Sources conflict about some details: Watson Steele of Rockley recorded that William Lawson’s properties at O’Connell Plains were “attacked by natives of the Mountains Tribes” and seven of his workers and 500 sheep were killed in these attacks.13 At some point the Gundungurra people became involved in the conflict. One of their renowned warriors ‘Old Bull’ came from the south to support Windradyne.14 Jim Smith suggests that the Gundungurra may have been on the receiving end of reprisals for Windradyne. .........

In August 1824 Governor Brisbane declared martial law west of Mt York, which sanctioned widespread massacres of Aboriginal people. After at least 100 warriors had been killed, Windradyne led his family to Parramatta to appeal to the governor for a truce in December 1824. With the destruction of their lifestyle the Wiradjuri dwindled in numbers. In 1836 Charles Darwin commented that the Aborigines around Bathurst were dying out and by 1850 the Wiradjuri around Bathurst were much less apparent........

Although most of the recorded attacks were around Bathurst, this situation may well have had its echoes on the Oberon plateau where a number of absentee landlords already had stock. It is likely that killings like those referred to by Dumaresq (above) sparked off reprisals against local Aboriginals which have gone unrecorded. M___’s men may well have been killed in revenge for abuse of Aboriginal Law, especially involving women or land.