In the mid-1800s, my great-great grandparents William Augustus Hungerford and Caroline Langstaff lived at Nundle, near where they held the lease for Barry Station, which William gained it as a squatter. I decided to see what Trove had to say about Nundle.
Today Nundle is a quiet town of about 500 people, with a median age of 55 and an aboriginal population of nearly 10%. But in the 1850s it was booming with gold diggers seeking their fortune, and the streets were lined with pubs. Tensions were flaring between the squatters, selectors, and aborigines as these short articles from Trove show.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/225855857
https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/234024321
The Aboriginals were criminals as far as most people were concerned. Starving them out was a good way to keep them away and pursuing them was probably going to end in bloodshed, although it is left unsaid.
Sydney, Saturday.
The Breelong blacks committed further robberies at Nundle on Thursday night, but they have not been able to secure any provisions since Wednesday. Sydney, Sunday. Some rain has fallen in the districts
where the search is being prosecuted, and fogs on the hills to some extent favour the fugitives. The residents on the Upper MacLeay, where there used to be large camps of aboriginals, are be-ginning to feel alarmed, and in the Walcha country the outlying selectors are leaving their homes unprotected and seeking protection in the houses of neighbours. As no more cases of houses being robbed are reported it is supposed that the fugitives have been without food since Thursday. It is stated that at the house of a selector named Swain, which was recently robbed; not only did the Governors stay there long enough to shave, but that one of them changed his clothes for a new suit, placing the cast-off clothes in a flour-bag, and that they mixed up flour, currants, mustard, salt, pepper, and other ingredients into a paste, which they scattered about the floor to inspire those taking part in the pursuit with energy and daring. The Government is letting it be known that it will make liberal provision for any person injured while endeavouring to capture the blacks, or for the dependents of anyone who may lose. his life, while so engaged.
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