Myall and Waterloo Creek Massacres
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The Waterloo Creek Massacre is quite probably the largest mass murder in Australian history, some 100-300 Australian Aborigine women and children being slaughtered.
In contrast, the Myall Creek Massacre is the only one of its type in Australia (there were many) for which anyone was ever punished.
In 1838, Major James Winniet Nunn, commandant of the Sydney Mounted Police was dispatched north with a detachment his officers. After riding for eight weeks they attacked the camp of the Kamilaroi tribe near the ironically named Waterloo Creek. In another stroke of irony, happened to fall on the 50th anniversary of European settlement: Australia Day, January 26.
On returning to Sydney an inquiry was ordered by the new Governor of New South Wales, Sir George Gipps, a Christian Evangelical belonging to the primarily upper-class movement both in Australia and throughout the British Empire who protested the treatment of native populations by the Empire. Before the inquiry began another massacre of 23 Aboriginals, primarily the eldery, women and children, perpetrated by vigilanties took place at a northern sheep and cattle station by the name of Myall Creek.
To the great displeasure of squatters, seven men were put to trial. They were rapidly acquitted by a sympathetic jury and put to trial again, for the death of a young boy. They were this time convicted and hanged. It was the only hanging for the mass murder of Aboriginals in Australian history, and a backlash followed. Gipps was forced to back down from his crusade, and Major Nunn was never punished for his actions. During both trials they were defended, with the funds of the ironically named 'Black Society', by William a'Beckett, later Sir William a'Beckett the first Chief Justice of Victoria.
The movement to stop the murder of the native population of Australia quickly fell apart. The only thing achieved in the long term by the trial was that the weapons used in the murders (that spread with the colonists to Victoria) changed from rifles and swords to arsenic (kept by most stockman to protect their sheep from infestations) and bonfires.