With special guest:

Mark Tedeschi KC AM
… in conversation with Bill Kable

Our guest today is the well-known former Crown Prosecutor for New South Wales and author of Murder at Myall Creek, Mark Tedeschi.

Mark has written a deeply moving account of the massacre of 28 Aboriginal men, women and children in 1838 which led to a trial that defined the nation of Australia. If the law of the land in Australia was to have any credibility, if the principle is that we are all equal before the law, then this is a watershed case.

At the time of the massacre it was only 50 years since Captain Arthur Phillip and his first fleet arrived in Australia yet the inhabitants of the country for the previous 60,000 years were under threat of genocide from the new arrivals.

There were many in the community who were sympathetic to all Aboriginal killers and this was expressed in the editorials of the major newspapers such as The Sydney Herald (before it added “Morning” to its masthead). Against this background there were some heroes that stood up against the general view of the free settlers, the squatters, the military, the emancipists, the newspapers and even the convict population which still amounted to 36% of the population. Principal among these was John H Plunkett who as Attorney-General at the time had the duty to prosecute the eleven convicts and former convicts who were put on trial for murder.

Podcast (mp3)