Today, few Victorians know about this slaughter of as many as 150 people â a crime for which no one was arrested. There are no plaques at the now peaceful spot on a farm 40 kilometres south of Sale and 200 kilometres east of Melbourne.
But there are more than a dozen monuments in Gippsland to pastoralist Angus McMillan, who is widely believed to have led this and other massacres. Until 2018, a federal electorate was named after him.
Also in the early 1840s, at Tambo Crossing, north-east of Bairnsdale, Mr Thorpeâs great-great-great grandfather, William Thorpe, and another boy survived a massacre of about 70 Gunnai people (committed by perpetrators that Aboriginesâ âchief protectorâ George Augustus Robinson termed âChristiansâ) by hiding in a log.