9. Appin Massacre - Truth Be Told, 3 Brothers Production

In the early hours of 17 April 1816, British soldiers acting on written orders from Governor Lachlan Macquarie himself drove a camp of Dharawal people toward the edge of the Cataract Gorge, south west of Sydney. At least fourteen people were killed, their bodies decapitated and displayed in trees as a deliberate warning, with their heads carried back to Sydney for a colonial bounty of thirty shillings and a gallon of rum.

This episode covers the Appin Massacre, one of the earliest documented massacres in Australian colonial history, ordered by a governor still remembered today on banknotes and street names for his roads and reforms. We trace how the massacre fit into years of escalating conflict over land, what happened to the remains taken that morning, including a journey to a Scottish university collection and back, and why it took until 2022, two hundred and six years later, for the site to finally receive official heritage recognition, decades after Dharawal and Gandangara people had already been gathering there every year on their own.

Content warning: this episode includes detailed historical descriptions of a massacre, including the deaths of children, decapitation, and the display and eventual repatriation of human remains. If anything raises something for you, 13YARN (13 92 76) is a 24/7 crisis line staffed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.