Macassan Cultural Influence on Aborigines

The Battle of Broken Hill otherwise known as the Broken Hill Massacre, was a fatal incident which took place near Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia on 1 January 1915. Two Muslim men shot dead four people and wounded seven more, before being killed by police and military officers. While the attack was politically and religiously inspired, as declared by the perpetrators in notes, the men were not members of any sanctioned armed force. The two men were later identified as being Muslims from the British colony of India, modern day Pakistan.[1][2]

The attackers were both former camel-drivers working at Broken Hill. They were Badsha Mahommed Gool (born approx 1874[3]), an ice-cream vendor, and Mullah Abdullah (born approx 1854[4]), a local imam and halal butcher.

Gool's ice-cream cart was well known in town and was used to transport the men to the attack site.[1][5] They also fashioned a home-made Ottoman flag which they flew. There appears to have been little effort made at hiding their identities.

Abdullah had arrived in Broken Hill around 1898 and worked as a camel driver, before becoming a mullah and slaughtering animals according to halal Islamic rites. Several days before the killings Adbullah was convicted by Chief Sanitary Inspector Brosnan for slaughtering sheep on premises not licensed for slaughtering. It was not his first charge.[6] Considering the slaughter-house regulators believed that the halal method of slaughter was inhumane, there was little scope for Abdullah to legally prepare such meat for the Muslim community. In addition, he had ceased wearing his turban years before, "since the day some larrikin threw stones at me, and I did not like it".[5]

Gool lived next door to Mullah Adbullah. Gool was a member of the Afridi, a Pashtun clan, from Afghanistan. He claimed he had been in the Turkish Army several times and was believed to regularly smoke strong marijuana.[7] Police Constable Mills later conjectured that Gool had used Abdullah's concerns over the fine as leverage to convince him to take part in the killings.

[edit] Picnic train targetedEach New Year's Day the local lodge of the Manchester Unity Order of Oddfellows held a picnic at Silverton. The train from Broken Hill to Silverton was crowded with 1200 picnickers on 40 open ore trucks. Three kilometres out of town, Gool and Abdullah positioned themselves on an embankment located about 30 metres from the tracks. As the train passed they opened fire with two rifles, discharging 20 to 30 shots.

The picnickers initially thought that the shots were being discharged in honour of the train's passing, but once their companions started falling, the reality sank in.

Alma Cowie, aged 17 died instantly. William John Shaw, a foreman in the Sanitary Department, was killed on the train and his daughter Lucy Shaw was injured. Six other people on the train were injured: Mary Kavanagh, George Stokes, Thomas Campbell, Alma Crocker, Rose Crabb and Constable Robert Mills.[8]

The railway guard on the train was "Tiger" Dick (Eric Edward) Nyholm, soon to be a father of six children, including the late Prof Sir Ronald Nyholm,[9] also of Broken Hill. Nyholm was a renowned marksman and proved instrumental in protecting the train's passengers from further injury.

Police response
Part of the rocky outcrop where the final battle took place.Gool and Mulla made their way from the train towards the West Camel camp where they lived. On the way they killed Alfred E. Millard who had taken shelter in his hut. By this time the train had pulled over at a siding and the police were telephoned. The police contacted Lieutenant Resch at the local army base who despatched his men. When police encountered Gool and Abdullah near the Cable Hotel, the pair shot and wounded Constable Mills. Gool and Abdullah then took shelter within a white quartz outcrop, which provided good cover. A 90-minute gun battle followed, during which armed members of the public arrived to join the police and military. By the end of the battle very little shooting came from the pair and most of it was off target, leading Constable Ward to conclude that Mullah Abdullah was already dead and Gool was wounded.

James Craig, a 69-year-old occupant of a house behind the Cable Hotel, resisted his daughter's warning about chopping wood during a gun battle and was hit by a stray bullet and killed. He was the fourth to die.

At "one o'clock a rush took place to the Turks' stronghold".[8] An eyewitness later stated that Gool had stood with a white rag tied to his rifle but was cut down by gunfire. He was found with 16 wounds. The mob would not allow Abdullah's body to be taken away in the ambulance. Later that day both bodies were disposed of in secret by the police.

AftermathThe attackers left notes connecting their actions to the hostilities between the Ottoman and British Empires, which had been officially declared in October 1914. Believing he would be killed, Gool Mahomed left a letter in his waist-belt which stated that he was a subject of the Ottoman Sultan and that, "I must kill you and give my life for my faith, Allāhu Akbar."Mullah Abdullah said in his last letter that he was dying for his faith and in obedience to the order of the Sultan, "but owing to my grudge against Chief Sanitary Inspector Brosnan it was my intention to kill him first."[10]

Apart from the fact that the police were forced to stop a mob from marching on an Afghan camp the following night, there was no violence against the Muslim community afterwards. Instead, the actions were seen as representative of 'enemy aliens' and the Germans in the area were the focus of violence. Believing the Germans had agitated the assailants to attack, the local German Club was burnt to ground, the angry mob cutting the hoses of the firemen who came to fight the flames.[11][10]

The next day the mines of Broken Hill fired all employees deemed 'enemy aliens' under the 1914 Commonwealth War Precautions Act. Six Austrians, four Germans and one Turk were ordered out of town by the public. Shortly after all 'enemy aliens' in Australia were interned for the duration of the war.[11]

The Silverton Tramway Company refunded in full the fares for the picnic train and the money was used to launch a public relief fund.

Macassan Cultural Influence on Aborigines

Prior to being banned from Australia in 1908, thousands of Macassans visited Australia annually on monsoon winds in order to trade and gather pearls and trepang. Over the centuries they affected the culture of Aborigines that they traded with. They showed Aborigines along Australia’s northern coast a wider world, and demonstrated to them that there were foreign people of different colour who could be dealt with, and such relationships could be managed to the benefit of Aborigines. The sophistication, confidence, and knowledge attained though this relationship was observed and commented upon by European explorers and settlers. The contact between Macassan traders and Aborigines took place over a long time and was geographically widespread, although more concentrated in areas like East Arnhem Land and Napier Broome Bay. The influence of the contact on Aboriginal culture and technology was profound. The Macassan traders affected Aboriginal culture, religion, language, economy, and technology, as well as affecting Aboriginal expectations of foreign visitors...

...[Historian] Derek Mulvaney is critical of ‘Europocentric’ historians who ignore the effect of Asians on Australian history, singling out Andrew Sharp’s statement in The Discovery of Australia, that Asian ‘knowledge made no impact on the world at large or on the history of Australia.’5  Mulvaney considered the influence of Macassans on Aboriginal culture to be strong, arguing that:

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"Anthropologists have demonstrated convincingly that during the Macassan era, there were complex influences on aboriginal society which made a fundamental contribution to…ceremonial, material culture and language of Arnhem Land." 6

[Anthropologist] Mulvaney also described the effect of the relationship between the Macassans and Aborigines in these terms:


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Peter Worsley, who conducted field research in Groote Eylandt in1952-3 for the Australian National University, considered the Macassan relationship influential on the religious and social organisation of Aborigines on Groote Eylandt, as well as affecting the way they evaluated their past 8:


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Anthropologist Donald Thomson, who conducted research in Arnhem Land in the 1930’s, considered that the Macassans set a benchmark for conduct of foreign visitors in Arnhem Land:


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Historian Alan Powell argues that the impact of large numbers of Macassan traders visiting Australia may be the reason why the Northern Territory’s coastal Aborigines were better able to cope with European attempts of colonisation:

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Anthropologist Ian Crawford has written that Islamic beliefs such as the existence of Allah, the unity of mankind, and the existence of a universal law for mankind ‘provided Yolngu with a means of both comprehending and coping with developments’ that came with dealing with outsiders. Crawford argues that these beliefs have been used by Yolngu as “a conceptual weapon…in the struggle against domination against the ‘Other’.’12  Berndt and Berndt argue that contact with Macassans prepared Arnhem Landers, in some measure, for the cultural clash with Europeans.13

Crawford writes that ‘fleets of perahus sailing to the northern coasts of Australia in search of bêche-de mer opened to Aborigines a vision of a wider world.’ 14  The visitors from the East Indies opened up a wider world to Aborigines they visited, not just through their own presence, but by employing Aborigines to work on their perahus which took them around the northern Australian coast and sometimes even to the East Indies Islands to the north. Charley Djaladari, told Berndt and Berndt of what he had seen at Makassar:


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In 1841, Port Essington settler, George Earl, remarked upon the Aborigines who were seen travelling with the Macassans in their praus:


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Berndt and Berndt noted that those Aborigines that had returned from such a journey ‘liked to talk of their journey through the islands to Macassar, and around the camp fires stories were told and songs were composed about what they had seen.’ 17


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Groote Eylandt elder Galiawa Nalanbayayaya Wurramarrba narrates how his father travelled to Makassar:

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falah wrote on May 28^th, 2012 at 12:44pm:



And did they pass your thesis?

Soren wrote on May 28^th, 2012 at 1:11pm:



Awarded "High Distinction" - the highest award possible.