Keith Windschuttle: Defends claim of Victoria's first Aboriginal massacre near Portland

Having argued historical accounts of massacres of Tasmanian Aboriginals were wrong or exaggerated, historian Keith Windschuttle is now taking aim at the historical account of Victoria's first ever recorded massacre of Aboriginal people. In questioning the historical veracity of the Convincing Ground, Windschuttle and O'Connor query the work of fellow historian Dr Ian Clark, Associate Professor at the University of Ballarat.

The Convincing Ground, near Portland, has long been regarded as the site of a massacre of Aboriginal people at the hands of white whalers, in the late 1830s - the very first in the history of European settlement of Victoria. The site is now at the centre of a Federal Court native title case and a Victorian Civil Administration Tribunal hearing.

Australian historian Keith Windschuttle has described the heritage claim by local Aboriginies as doubtful and a myth. He has based his claims on research by Tasmanian historian, Michael O'Connor in his yet to be published book, The Invention of Terra Nullius.

Dr Clark's book, Scars In the Landscape (of which the relevant extract is linked to at the end of this article) details the earliest written recorded reference to the site. Dr Clark says he rejects Windschuttle and O'Connors' comments regarding his research, saying, "[My] knowledge is derived from the primary sources. They are not something that [I've] made up. It's grounded in the earliest records of the 1840s."