Four Corners: Uncovering the truth about Victoria’s violent past

[photo credits: Margaret Burin/ABC]

“Yoorrook means telling the truth; truth-telling. It’s the Wamba Wamba word,” said Aunty Eleanor Bourke, Chair of the Yoorrook Justice Commission, during the opening of the ABC Four Corners program, which aired on 24 March 2025.

“And we need to tell our story because they don’t really know the true story of what happened to us.” 

Led by Yorta Yorta and Dja Dja Wurrung journalist Bridget Brennan, the story went back to the beginning of British arrival in Australia, when tens of thousands of First Peoples were killed. 

“The violence and seizure of land was how our country was formed,” Bridget said.

“But we’ve only really heard one side of the story.” 

Moving first to Portland, the program told how the Henty brothers arrived on Gunditjmara Country in 1834. Squatters quickly seized land, water and resources, defying orders of the Crown and occupying land to make a profit. They established the beginnings of what would eventually become the State of Victoria. 

Visiting the Convincing Ground on the coast of western Victoria, the site of the first recorded massacre in Victoria, Bridget spoke with Gunditjmara woman Keicha Day.  

“We talk a lot about Portland being Victoria’s birthplace, but in order for there to be a birthplace, there has to be a deathplace, and there’s a lot of deathplaces that exist here,” Keicha said.

The story moved about 500km to the east on Gunaikurnai Country, where local Elder Russel Mullet and non-Indigenous property owner Elizabeth Balderstone have found common ground.  

There on Elizabeth’s working farm, a short walk from the house, is another massacre site. 

In 1843, following the murder of the nephew of a wealthy pastoralist, a group of settlers known as the Highland Brigade got together and came upon a large group of Brataualung people camped at a waterhole on Warrigal Creek.  

University of Newcastle researchers estimate that at least 125 Brataualung people were killed over a five-day period. 

The story described how in an unusual move, Elizabeth has fenced off the area and invited Traditional Owners to access the site as often as they like.  

Elizabeth was asked what might be stopping others from doing the same. 

“I think a lot of land holders probably fear that talking up will mean there could be claims on their country, restrictions on how they farm, that veil of secrecy that we don’t want these things to be talked about. But the flow on of not talking about them is awful,” she said. 

Uncle Russell said understanding the truth was important in order to move forward. 

“It may not be something you want to delve into but it’s about the truth. It’s about digging into the history that [has] in the past been covered and trying to find a common ground you can communicate on and talk respectfully to each other,” he said. 

Back on Gunditjmara Country, Bridget visited the former Lake Condah Mission with Yoorrook’s Deputy Chair, Commissioner Travis Lovett. 

Standing beside remnants of the old mission buildings, Travis revealed that some of his dad’s siblings had been taken from their families here. 

“This is the Stolen Generation,” he said.  

“[These buildings] are a continual reminder of the segregation around our people from non-Aboriginal people. We were never ever considered as equals and again treated horrifically for just being born as an Aboriginal person. They’d done nothing wrong and then they were treated horrifically. People don’t get over that,” Commissioner Lovett said. 

Peter Sharp, a fourth generation Victorian, long wondered why such a cruel policy existed. Seven years ago he made a “chilling” discovery. 

“Always in my mind was, where did this start?” he told Four Corners. “The last thing I ever expected was to find the missing pieces of this puzzle that was in my mind within my own family history.” 

Peter is a great grandson of former prime minister Alfred Deakin. Deakin was Chief Secretary of Victoria in 1886 when he passed an Amendment to the Aborigines Protection Act, commonly known by the offensive term, the Half Caste Act.  

The law redefined Aboriginality. It meant people of mixed decent could be forced off the missions to assimilate into society, where they often faced racism and discrimination.  

Peter told Four Corners he believed Deakin introduced the law because he wanted to “erase” Aboriginal people.  

He said Deakin made calculated amendments to the bill and rushed it through parliament.  

“If there was one person, one single person, most responsible for the Half Caste Act [sic] and the Stolen Generations, it could be Alfred Deakin,” Peter said. 

The law led to mass removal of Aboriginal children, and other states adopted similar laws.  

“It was the architecture for the Stolen Generations,” Bridget said.  

Looking to the future, the Four Corners took in the historic ceremony marking the beginning of Victoria’s Treaty negotiations.  

“We have resisted, we have survived and now Treaty is about striking a fairer deal,” Rueben Berg, a co-chair of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, told the audience.  

The program’s final words were left to three eminent Victorian Elders. 

“The hard thing is making sure the change happens that truth should bring,” Aunty Eleanor said. 

“It’s about knowing our history and accepting it and not tucking it away. Australia can only be a better place if we all understand each other,” Uncle Russell said.  

“It’s our ancestral obligations and it’s our obligations to future generations that we will continue, that we will always be here,” Uncle Paul Briggs said.