The Coniston massacre, which took place in the region around the Coniston cattle station in the then Territory of Central Australia (now the Northern Territory) from 14 August to 18 October 1928, was the last known officially sanctioned massacre of Indigenous Australians and one of the last events of the Australian Frontier Wars. In a series of punitive expeditions led by Northern Territory Police constable William George Murray, people of the Warlpiri, Anmatyerre, and Kaytetye groups were killed. The massacre occurred in response to the murder of dingo hunter Frederick Brooks, killed by Aboriginal people in August 1928 at a place called Yukurru, also known as Brooks Soak. Official records at the time state that at least 31 people were killed, however analysis of existing documentation and Aboriginal oral histories reveal that the fatalities were likely to have been as high as 200. Background Central Australia was Australia's last colonial frontier, sparsely populated and, by 1928, was facing the fourth year of the harshest drought on record. Parched conditions, though later discounted by authorities as a precipitating factor, were to play a key role in events at Coniston. Appropriating water resources was fundamental to pastoral economy, and exclusive control over water was a priority in order to maintain cattle in good condition on any station. With the worsening of the drought, as waterholes dried up, the starving nomadic Aboriginals were forced to move back in towards the permanent waterholes and soaks located on the new station properties. It was generally believed in the white community that the interests of traditional Aboriginal land owners and those of cattle stations could not be reconciled. Either one or the other must prosper. Pastoralists regarded their presence, begging for food or spearing cattle, as an "aggravation", and would drive the incoming Aboriginals from these few remaining water sources, according to Cribbin, in order to ensure the survival of their cattle. The killing of Fred Brooks 61-year-old Fred Brooks had worked as a station hand on Randall Stafford's Coniston station, north-west of Alice Springs, in a number of stints since World War I. In July 1928 he asked Stafford if he could have a go at dingo hunting. Stafford warned him that he and the woman he cohabited with, Alice, had been threatened by "myalls" (an offensive term denoting traditional living Aboriginal people) and that venturing any further than west would be unsafe. Alice was