the (dry) river...they bashed the brains out of the babies and threw them into the river with their mothers and burnt the lot (there)...there's a lot of bodies. It took a long time to burn...With the women was a mother and her two kids...they had bush names. They couldn't speak English...The boy's name (was) Numbunnung and the girl was Loorabane...the boy spoke to his sister in language and told her that when that chain came off to grab mum and head for the bush...they were at the end of the chain...but (when they ran away) the police shot at them...they killed the mother and the girl got shot in the leg there (pointing)...they hid in the roots of the pandanus grass in the Forrest River. They hid under water and breathed through a bit of pandanus grass, you know, it's hollow, like a straw...the police looked for them everywhere but they just kept real still, not moving 'cause they were so scared...by evening, when they thought it was safe to leave, they moved out...swam across the Forrest River and travelled all the next day and then the day after until the evening until they reached the mission where they knew they'd be safe...I was playing with the other girls...when Loorabane came...She was shaking with fright...She told us what happened and we told Mamma (Angelina Noble) and Mamma told Jim (Reverend James Noble) and he told old Gribble. However, during the Royal Commission, conducted in the first half of 1927, the Rev. James Noble was asked (Question 1417 in the Commission record) by Commissioner Wood if "any of the natives told you about blacks being shot and burnt?" Noble replied that no-one had told him and said he had "merely heard the news brought into the station". Similarly, when asked by both Commissioner Wood and by W.N. Nairn, who represented the police officers and other parties under investigation, about the sources of his information about alleged killings, the Rev. Ernest Gribble did not supply the names of any Aborigine or any other person as having provided information although he had recorded the names of Aborigines allegedly killed. Accusations of false claims In 1999, journalist Rod Moran published a book Massacre Myth which reviewed the evidence and argued that Gribble had promoted and spread rumours of the alleged massacres and that many of the stories surrounding the events were fabrications by Gribble.