Black Diggers

Black Diggers

by

Tom Wright

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Coniston Massacre Term Analysis

The 1928 mass murder of as many as 170 Aboriginal Walpiri, Anmatyerre, and Kaytetye people in a sparsely-populated region of central Australia by white settlers and government forces, all of whom were acquitted for the killings. Nigel writes a public letter condemning the massacre, but is ignored when newspaper editors are more interested in his florid handwriting than his message.

Coniston Massacre Quotes in Black Diggers

The Black Diggers quotes below are all either spoken by Coniston Massacre or refer to Coniston Massacre. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Australian Nationhood and Indigenous Dispossession Theme Icon
).
Act Two Quotes

REPORTER: Surely the letter’s point is about the massacre up in the Territory?

EDITOR: No-one’s interested in payback in the back of Bourke. An Aborigine who can write like this is a much better story. He must be doing all right for himself, mustn’t he?

Related Characters: Nigel
Related Symbols: Letters
Page Number: 89
Explanation and Analysis:
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Coniston Massacre Term Timeline in Black Diggers

The timeline below shows where the term Coniston Massacre appears in Black Diggers. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Act Two
Australian Nationhood and Indigenous Dispossession Theme Icon
Racism Theme Icon
History, Memory, and the Archive Theme Icon
In Forest Lodge, Sydney, in 1929, Nigel writes a letter condemning the previous year’s Coniston massacre and insisting that Australia’s “brutality and savage butchery” continues. He charges the public with “a... (full context)