1934, the three men convicted of murdering the Japanese trepangers were sentenced to twenty years' hard labour, and on 3 August 1934 Dhakiyarr was sentenced to death by hanging in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory by Judge Wells and 12-person jury. NT newspapers supported Judge Wells' sentence, but there were protests from many quarters, not only about the sentence, but about the fairness of the trial and the Judge's comments during the trial. Four days before Dhakiyarr's scheduled hanging, on 29 August 1934, Governor-General Isaac Isaacs ordered a stay of execution, pending an appeal, and the following day, the High Court granted the right to appeal. Appeal: Tuckiar v The King On 29–30 October 1934 the appeal was heard at the High Court of Australia in Melbourne, in a case known as Tuckiar v the King, Dhakiyarr's sentence was quashed after numerous irregularities in the first trial were pointed out, and he was released from jail and taken to Kahlin compound, but was never seen again. Oral tradition has it that he was murdered by friends of McColl. Aftermath The resulting crisis threatened to bring about even more bloodshed. To defuse the situation, a young anthropologist, Donald Thomson, offered to investigate the causes of the conflict. He travelled to Arnhem Land, on a mission that many said would be suicidal, and got to know and understand the people who lived there. After a seven months’ investigation, he persuaded the Federal Government to free the three men convicted of the killings and returned with them to their own country, living for over a year with their people, documenting their culture. In the course of his negotiations, he wrote of Wonggu sending a message stick to his sons, at that time in prison, to indicate a calling of a truce. In etched angles, it showed people sitting down together, with Wonggu at the centre, keeping the peace. The message stick is now housed in the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre at Yirrkala. He formed a strong bond with the Yolngu people, and in 1941 he persuaded the Army to establish a special reconnaissance force of Yolngu men known as the Northern Territory Special Reconnaissance Unit, including Wonggu and his sons, to help repel Japanese raids on the northern coastline of Australia. The historian Henry Reynolds has suggested that the Caledon Bay crisis was a decisive moment in the history of Aboriginal-European relations.