Authorities took the best part of an hour to get their act together. Police were mustered and armed, a small force from the local army base was alerted and local militia rushed the Barrier Boy's Brigade for rifles.

"There was," the Barrier Miner reported, "a desperate determination to leave no work for the hangman, or torun the risk of the murderers of peaceful citizens being allowed to escape."

Author Patsy Adam-Smith described it less heroically in 1969, saying it was "as close a parallel to the Keystone Cops of silent comedy days as this country is ever likely to see". One of the police cars broke down and when constable Robert Mills, approached the pair not realising they were his quarry, he was shot in the groin and leg.

The fleeing cameleers had already killed another man on their way to the quartz outcrop. Enraged, locals descended on the area. Shootists surrounded the tor and poured hot fire on the pair. Mulla Abdulla fell but Gool Mahomed fought on, keeping several hundred men at bay. His attempt to surrender was ignored.

Just before 1pm police and military rushed the redoubt to find the old man dead and his younger accomplice alive but riddled with 16 bullets. He died on the way to hospital.

What became known as "The Battle of Broken Hill" (thanks largely to a little-seen 1981 film of the same name) was over after three hours.

Six died and at least seven were wounded, including two children. The "Turks'" bodies were disposed off swiftly and secretly. Camel camp residents wanted nothing to do with their purification. They may have buried under an explosives store or in the jail murderer's plot.

Broken Hill celebrated its victory. Souvenir hunters tore the ice-cream cart apart, scavenged bullet-riddle carriages and hunted for spent cartridges. By nightfall a mob full of beer and wind wheeled into Delamore Street to torch the German Club. Fire carts arrived but hoses were chopped up to ensure the building burned to the ground. The mob then headed to the camel camp amid cries of "Remember our women who were shot".

Police unsuccessfully attempted to halt the march. But the lynch mob ran out of steam when confronted by a detachment of civilian and military forces with fixed bayonets lined up across the road outside the camel camp.

The ambush inflamed Australia.

The Sydney Morning Herald's six-deck headline shouted "The fight with the Turks". The Melbourne Argus was equally as shrill: "Turks Attack Train".  In Adelaide, a mob tore down a Muslim flag from the minaret on the Little Gilbert Street mosque. Billy Hughes used the attack to intern all "enemy aliens" for the duration of the war.

Three days after the attack, 11 aliens were arrested in Broken Hill and sent to Adelaide for incarceration in the Torrens Island Concentration Camp. Only one company, Central Mine, stood down aliens. Union leaders said nothing, mindful perhaps that aliens helped hold the line against BHP in the 1909 lockout.

Australia also began a sort of town planning ethnic cleansing: place names like Germanton were changed to Holbrook (NSW) and Grovedale (Victoria) as authorities swept away teutonic vestiges.

Peter Black, former Labor MP for the seat of Murray-Darling who served 19 years as mayor of Broken Hill, said the attack resonated in modern-day Australia.

"It was used for quite terrible purposes. The conservative governments of the day embraced it in the same way we embracing terrorism in Australia today, as a motivational force. While we're talking about terrorism were not talking about a federal budget are we?"

Days after the attack, a miner found three Urdu statements under a rock at the last stand. One was Gool Mahomed's application to join the Turkish army. "I kill your people because your people are fighting my country," he wrote. Mulla Abdulla's mentioned the court case and said both had prayed "to Allah that life was no more use to them ... I have never worn a turban since the day some larrikans threw stones at me ... I wear the turban today." Some dispute the suicide notes' veracity.

On January 7, coroner C.F. Butler, SM, found four Broken Hill residents had died of gunshot wounds "feloniously and maliciously inflicted on them" by the "Afghans".

Broken Hill Historical Society secretary Jenny Camilleri said the attack was buried in the past: "It was never mentioned in school. We didn't even know the meaning of the word Muslim until recently."

But memories did not die.  Technical school students made a replica of the ice-cream cart and it now does duty as a tourist attraction at White Rocks Reserve; a rotting old wooden ore carriage denotes the attack site and the Police and Justice Museum in Sydney has the rifles, the Turkish flag, a bandolier and a Koran.

When Alma Cowie died in Clarrie O'Brien's arms on the picnic train she was wearing his friendship. His son found it when Clarrie died and gave it to a local museum.

For Peggy Corny, Alma's niece, the ring completed the circle. "It was just so lovely to know after so many years that he treasured her all his life," Peggy said.

Alma Cowie is buried in a family grave in the dusty Broken Hill Cemetery about 500 metres from where she was shot. A glass dome filled with delicate porcelain flowers and small birds sits on the white tiled slab. Peggy Corney cleans it occasionally.  "The red dirt gets into everything out here," she says.

Ban islam.

Sprintcyclist wrote on Jan 1^st, 2015 at 3:42pm:



How do you propose to do that?

Be specific, please.

greggerypeccary wrote on Jan 1^st, 2015 at 4:03pm:

One way would be like the Saudis banning everything other than Islam.

But that's heavy handed (ie Islamic).  I would be very content with Islam being ridiculed as much as Christianity is. That should be sufficient, I think.  If Muslims could be made to endure ridicule in good grace, they wouldn't be so hot for jihad.

But there are no jokes in Islam, so we are all self-censoring when it comes to Islam instead.  We would not have a piss Mohammed in a million years because we know that Muslims have no sense of proportion. We know they will kill us if we make them look ridiculous.


Remember what happened to 'Everybody draw Mohammed Day"? It's initiator went into hiding. No jokes in Islam.

there is nothing in islam.
it is a cult
there is islam in islam, that is it.