Australia's first officially sanctioned massacre of Aboriginal people - Appin 1816
'Twas a melancholy but necessary duty....' (Captain Wallis, 1816) "You can't call it a massacre if it takes place during war...." (Anonymous ex-member of the Australian military, March 2016) The Appin Massacre - what happened? The massacre of a group of Aboriginal men, women and children at Appin, New South Wales, Australia by soldiers of the 46th Regiment of Foot Grenadiers under the command of Captain James Wallis early in the morning of 17 April 1816 can be cited as the first, officially sanctioned massacre in the long history of conflict between the original Australians and invading Europeans following the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney on 26 January 1788. It occurred within the context of a program of punitive actions - in fact a secret declaration of war - taken during 1816 against the Aboriginal population in the immediate vicinity of Sydney, and instigated by Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the colonial military forces, Lachlan Macquar