"The molehills of history are often swept aside and return quickly to the dust from which they were made. Sometimes they grow into monumental mountains of historical significance and everyone even the uninformed hums a tune about it. John Francis Dowling rode out on his trusty steed from the Paroo with his black pilot beside him hoping to make a line to Mt Murchison Station on the Darling. The country was dry and drought had set in. What did he have to fear, only fear itself? He was a bushman. The sun rose gently from the east, southward was his bearing. The morning was cool and all seemed fair and still. Onwards they went and on the fourth day he wrote his log up only to say the blacks could tell him ""no more about the springs."" He was lost. He never returned. Dowling was found murdered by the blacks. His trusty guide in a moment of madness struck him about his head and crushed his skull and then decamped. How many times must this situation have repeated itself during the early settlement of Australia, no one knows? Arising out of this small tragedy, 300 Aborigines were said to have been massacred by the whites.
