James Brown ( 1819 – 7 February 1890) was a Scottish-born mass murderer and pastoralist of the South East of South Australia responsible for the Avenue Range Station massacre of between nine and eleven Aboriginal Australians. He was never convicted, despite the magistrate who committed him for trial observing that there was "little question of the butchery or the butcher". The Aboriginal Witnesses Act specified that a court could not base a conviction of a white man on the testimony of an Aboriginal witness alone. After his death, his widow Jessie Brown pursued several philanthropic ventures in his name. Two charitable institutions — the Kalyra Consumption Sanitorium at Belair and Estcourt House, near Grange were founded in his memory, and out of the proceeds of his estate.
Life
James Brown was born in East Fife, Scotland, and in company with his brother, Archibald, left Liverpool on the barque Fairfield on 1 November 1838. After a wearisome voyage of 185 days they arrived in South Australia on 4 May 1839. In 1840 they settled in Allendale in the Hindmarsh River valley, the owners of 640 sheep. By 1844 they owned 1,290 ewes, 14 cattle, 6 pigs and 14 acres of wheat. In 1849 Brown moved to the South East where he founded the Avenue Range station consisting of 69 square miles of country, which was secured for an annual rental of 10/ per square mile. The area was subsequently enlarged to 83 square miles, some 50 miles north-east of Guichen Bay where the wool was shipped. The greater portion of it was covered with water during the winter, and the stock suffered from footrot and coast disease. Brown built a ten-room stone house with a verandah. The sheep were shepherded until June 1864, when Avenue Range and his other leases were fenced at a cost of £6,000. Soon he had 24,000 sheep besides cattle and horses. Another name for the Avenue Range run was Kalyra, a native word meaning 'hop bush'.
A drawback to this property was the volume of public traffic passing over the run. It lay on the overland route to Melbourne and Mount Gambier, and about 60,000 sheep crossed the best part of the station during the first three months of every year. Bullock teams passing from Victoria and the Tatiara district were continually breaking gates and pulling over the posts. Accordingly, Brown had posts at one gate put eight feet into the ground, and awaited the arrival of the next delinquent. Before long a teamster appeared, and carelessly ran a wheel against one of these deeply embedded posts. It would not budge, and much to Brown's delight, the "bullocky" had to take out his team and pull the waggon back. Retribution followed, and Brown later had the mortification of finding that his stout posts had been burnt to the ground.
Avenue Range Station massacre
In 1849, Brown was charged with having murdered "unknown aboriginal natives", estimated at between nine and eleven victims. The date of the massacre is unclear. Moorhouse's original report in March 1849 stated that it had occurred some months before, and in his published report of October 1849, he placed it "about September" of 1848. On 19 February, the Protector of Aborigines, Matthew Moorhouse arrived in the district to investigate reports that some Aboriginal people had been murdered near Guichen Bay. An Aboriginal witness, Leandermin, took Moorhouse to the site of the alleged crime. He told Moorhouse that, on the day the killings occurred, he and a white man named Parker were walking along a road when they heard shots. He went to see what was happening and, from behind some trees, saw four or five Aboriginal women lying on the ground with fresh wounds. He also saw others on the ground, whom he presumed were dead because they were not moving. Two white men were present. Leandermin identified Brown as one of them, and stated that he had seen Brown standing over the victims with a gun in his hand. Brown's overseer, Eastwood, was suspected of being his accomplice. Moorhouse's party then located five holes containing human remains. Scattered nearby they found human bones and cartridge paper discharged from a firearm. Eighty paces from the graves they located the remains of a fire which contained more bones. Moorhouse concluded that the bodies had first been buried, but later exhumed and burnt in an attempt to destroy the evidence.