In mid-October 1861, a party of
squatters from the
colony of Victoria, under
Horatio Wills, set up a temporary tent camp to start the process of establishing a
cattle station at Cullin-la-ringo, a property formed by amalgamating four blocks of land with a total area of . Wills's party, an enormous settlement train, including
bullock wagons and more than 10,000 sheep, had set out from
Brisbane eight months earlier. The size of the group had attracted much attention from other settlers, as well as the Indigenous people. It was later reported that the attack on the party was as revenge for the murder of
Gayiri men by Wills' neighbour, Jesse Gregson, a squatter from the nearby
Rainworth Station, who had erroneously accused the Gayiri of stealing cattle. According to the account of one of the survivors, John Moore, Aboriginal people had been passing through the camp all day on 17 October 1861, building up numbers until there were at least 50. Then, without warning, they attacked the men, women, and children with
nulla nullas. The settlers defended themselves with pistols and tent poles, but nineteen of the twenty-five defenders were killed. Some of the graves have headstones. The six surviving members were
Tom Wills, Horatio's son and an outstanding
cricketer and co-founder of
Australian rules football, James Baker (David Baker's son), John Moore, William Albrey, Edward Kenny, and Patrick Mahony. Those men were either absent from the camp or, in Moore's case, managed to avoid being seen. It was Edward Kenny who subsequently rode away to report the massacre, arriving at Rainworth Station the following day. Moore was the only European eyewitness to the event. ==Response==