Notes
1. Jim Crow's shooting has been discussed in J O'Sullivan, Mounted police of Victoria and Tasmania, Adelaide, Rigby, 1980, pp. 32-3; ID Clark, Aboriginal languages and clans: an historical atlas of Western and Central Victoria, 1800-1900, Department of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, 1990, pp. 241, 244; ID Clark, Scars in the landscape: a register of massacre sites in Western Victoria, 1803-1859, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1995), p. 163; and, with a brief summary of the trial, in M Cannon, Who killed the Koories?, William Heinemann Australia, Port Melbourne, 1990, pp. 148-50.
2. Description of event taken from James Daplin, statement No. 3, 24 October 1844, PROV, VPRS 30/P, Unit 188, NCR 174; Port Phillip Patriot, 21 August 1845; and Port Phillip Herald, 21 August 1845. The shooting occurred in the region of present-day Warracknabeal, Western Victoria, although the precise location is unknown. I use the more common spellings of Jim Crow, Daplin and Bushe rather than the variants Jem Crow, Duplin and Bush.
3. Jim Crow was most probably from one of the eastern Jardwadjali clans, judging from the location of the alleged offences. However, he was also accused of depredations in the Pyrenees region in Djadja wurrung country, and his shooting may have been in neighbouring Wergaia country. As there may therefore be some small doubt as to which country and which group he belonged to, I have referred to him nonspecifically as Aboriginal. Clark, however, identifies Jim Crow as coming from a Jardwadjali clan and dying in Jardwadjali country: see ID Clark, Aboriginal languages and clans, pp. 241, 244 and Scars in the landscape, p. 163.
4. George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of Aborigines, 1845 Annual Report, PROV, VPRS 4399, Unit 1 (microfilm copy VPRS 4467, reel 3).
5. Daniel Cameron, statements No. 1 and 2, PROV, VPRS 30/P, Unit 188, NCR 174.
6. Peter Roberts Bennett, statement, PROV, VPRS 30/P, Unit 188, NCR 174.
7. ibid.
8. D Cameron, statement No. 1; ID Clark (ed), The journals of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate, vol. 4, 1 January 1844 - 24 October 1845, 2nd edn, Heritage Matters, Melbourne, 2000, p. 245 (4 April 1845).
9. J Allan Cameron to CJ La Trobe, 24 October 1844, PROV, VPRS 30/P, Unit 188, NCR 174; Bennett, statement, op. cit.
10. J Horatio Ellerman, sworn statement, 16 October 1844, PROV, VPRS 30/P, Unit 188, NCR 174.
11. D Palmer, 'Magistrates, police and power in Port Phillip', in A nation of rogues? Crime, law and punishment in colonial Australia, ed. D Philips & S Davies, Melbourne University Press, 1994, p. 94.
12. ibid., pp. 78, 94.
13. Robinson, Journals, vol. 4, p. 243 (31 March 1845); JJ Mouritz, The Port Phillip almanac and directory for 1847, Melbourne, W Clarke, 1847, pp. 33, 68, 125; Separation Association, The Port Phillip Separation merchants' and settlers' almanac, diary and directory for Melbourne and the District of Port Phillip [for] 1846, W Clarke, Melbourne, 1845, pp. 113, 126; Edward Parker, Assistant Protector of Aborigines, letter, 1 December 1843, PROV, VPRS 11, Unit 5, File 210 (microfilm copy VPRS 4467, reel 1); J Allan Cameron, letter, 24 October 1844.
14. M Finnane, Police and government: histories of policing in Australia, Melbourne University Press, 1994, pp. 25-6; D Hay, 'Property, authority and the criminal law', in Albion's fatal tree: crime and society in eighteenth-century England, ed. D Hay et al., Allen Lane, London, 1975, pp. 34-5, 38-9.
15. B Kercher, An unruly child: a history of law in Australia, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, New South Wales, 1995, pp. 15-17.
16. Port Phillip Patriot, 21 August 1845.
17. ibid.
18. ibid.
19. GA Robinson, Chief Protector of Aborigines, 1844 Annual Report, PROV, VPRS 19/P, Unit 68, File 45/249.
20. O'Sullivan, Mounted police of Victoria and Tasmania, pp. 22-6, 36-7; R Haldane, The people's force: a history of the Victoria Police, Melbourne University Press, 1986, pp. 5, 12, 16-17; Palmer, 'Magistrates, police and power in Port Phillip', pp. 88-90; M H Fels, Good men and true: the Aboriginal Police of the Port Phillip District 1837-1853, Melbourne University Press, 1988, pp. 3, 111-14, 155; M Sturma, 'Policing the criminal frontier in mid-nineteenth century Australia, Britain and America', in Policing in Australia: historical perspectives, ed. M Finnane, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1987, pp. 23-6.
21. Bennett, statement, op. cit.
22. ibid.
23. D Cameron, statement No. 1, op. cit.
24. Fels, Good men and true, p. 156.
25. CJ La Trobe to FA Powlett, 26 March 1845, PROV, VPRS 6909, Unit 1, File 45/355.
26. Daplin, statement No. 3, op. cit.
27. Finnane, Police and government, p. 26.
28. Port Phillip Patriot, 21 August 1845.
29. Daplin, statement No. 3, op. cit.
30. William Thomas, Assistant Protector of Aborigines, 1 December 1843, journal of proceedings, PROV, VPRS 4410, Unit 3, File 78 (microfilm copy VPRS 4467, reel 2).
31. Finnane, Police and government, pp. 11-13; J McQuilton, 'Police in rural Victoria: a regional example', in Policing in Australia, pp. 36-7; Palmer, 'Magistrates, police and power in Port Phillip', p. 75.
32. New South Wales Government Gazette, 22 May 1839, p. 606; Colonial Secretary, circular, 7 November 1846, PROV, VPRS 6909/P/1, Unit 1, unnumbered item.
33. J Allan Cameron, letter, 24 October 1844; Robinson, Journals, vol. 4, pp. 222-3 (4 and 5 November 1844).
34. Colonial Secretary, circular, 7 November 1846.
35. 'Alleged murder of Aborigines', Port Phillip Herald, 5 June 1845.
36. ibid.
37. After many court appearances over almost fifteen months, Koort Kirrup was discharged without trial in March 1846 on the grounds that he was unable to comprehend the court process. See Port Phillip Herald, 17 March 1846.
38. Cameron, undated statement, PROV, VPRS 30/P, Unit 188, NCR 174; Port Phillip Herald, 21 August 1845; Port Phillip Patriot, 21 August 1845.
39. Port Phillip Patriot, 21 August 1845. Further quotations from the court proceedings are also taken from this source. For a discussion of the violence surrounding ‘dispersing a camp’ see PROV, online exhibition Tracking the Native Police, Image 19 http://www.prov.vic.gov.au/nativepolice/westerndist_methods.html, accessed 24 September 2006.
40. Mouritz, Port Phillip almanac and directory for 1847, pp. 132-8; Separation Association, The Port Phillip Separation merchants' and settlers' almanac, diary and Melbourne directory for 1845, W Clarke, Melbourne, 1844, pp. 75-6.
41. 'Alleged murder of Aborigines', Port Phillip Herald, 5 June 1845.
42. Port Phillip Patriot, 21 August 1845; Port Phillip Herald, 21 August 1845.
43. CJ LaTrobe to Colonial Secretary, 3 September 1842, PROV, VPRS 32, Unit 1, File 42/1189. The Muston's Creek massacre and subsequent trial have been dealt with in some detail in I MacFarlane, 1842: the public executions at Melbourne, Victorian Government Printing Office, Melbourne, 1984, pp. 43-6 and in S Davies, 'Aborigines, murder and the criminal law in early Port Phillip, 1841-1851', Historical studies, vol. 22, April 1987, pp. 313-35, esp. 320-5. The Muston's Creek trial brief can be found at PROV, VPRS 30/P, Unit 186, NCR 81.
44. William Lonsdale to Attorney-General, 25 November 1836 and 29 January 1837, PROV, VPRS 1, Unit 1 (microfilm copy VPRS 2140, reel 1). Witness depositions from Frederick Taylor, James Flitt and Edward Freeston appear in the Melbourne Court criminal record book on 25 October, 3 November and 19 December 1836: PROV, VPRS 2136, reel 1.
45. Lonsdale to Attorney-General, 2 July 1839, PROV, VPRS 1, Unit 1 (microfilm copy VPRS 2140, reel 1).
46. Port Phillip Gazette, 4 December 1841.
47. Robinson, 1847 Annual Report, in The Papers of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate, vol. 4, ed. ID Clark, Heritage Matters, Ballarat, 2001, p. 128. Robinson gave the gallows tally as 'three aboriginal natives of "Victoria"', which did not include the hangings of Tasmanians Bob and Jack in 1842. Cf. Supreme Court Criminal Record Book, 20 December 1841, 19 July 1842 and 25 February 1845, PROV, VPRS 78, Unit 1 (microfilm copy VPRS 5136).
48. Robinson, Journals, vol. 4, p. 297 (20 August 1845).
49. 1845 Annual Report, op. cit.
50. Robinson, Journals, vol. 4, p. 248 (5 April 1845).
51. 1845 Annual Report.
52. In November 1838, eleven men were tried for murder over the killing of twenty-eight Aboriginal people at Myall Creek, New South Wales. All were acquitted, but seven were then controversially tried again and convicted on indictments not brought in the first trial. Their hanging caused an uproar among the settlers. For an interesting contemporary account, see George Gipps, December 1838, British Parliamentary Papers 1839, cited in H Reynolds, Dispossession: black Australians and white invaders, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1989, pp. 190–1.
53. Kercher, An unruly child, pp. 16-17; AC Castles, An Australian legal history, The Law Book Company, Sydney, 1982, p. 534.

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