Coniston
Director: Batty, DavidYear: 2013
Type: Film
Synopsis
The TV documentary was co-directed by David Batty and Francis Jupurrula Kelly, who also features in the film and who lost family members to the massacre. It documents and dramatises the massacre of Aboriginal people at Brooks Soak, Coniston Station in 1928. Bullfrog Japanangka was an Aboriginal man who murdered the white dingo trapper Fred Brooks and in retaliation over 30 Aborigines were killed. Bullfrog was alegedly angry that Brooks took advantage of his wife when she went to his camp and offered to do domestic chores.
The documentary is told from the perspective of the Warlpiri people and it features a reenactment of the discovery of the body of Brooks and the subsequent massacre. The reenactment is intercut with interview footage of descendants collected since 1983 with Bullfrog's son George Michael and three Aboriginal tribes in the area.
The documentary is shot on location, following the trail of Murray tracking Bullfrog and killing Aborigines as he went. The only location the filmmakers did not get permission to shoot at was where Brooks was killed, at Brooks Soak. Anecdotal evidence and oral history and the vast area over which the story took place suggest more than 31 people were killed.
