of troops and supplies, which was known as No. 5 Australian Personnel Staging Camp. It was the first overnight stop on the northern trip from Alice Springs to Birdum. Water limits Barrow Creek population Barrow Creek has always had a problem with both quantity and quality of groundwater supplies. This problem was already recognized in the 1870s, and only 20 years after the Telegraph Station was built there is evidence of plans to shift it about 40 kilometres further north to the crossing at Taylor Creek because of better groundwater supplies. There is still a bore at that locality called New Barrow Bore. Today, the only good water at Barrow Creek is rainwater and that is limited due to the arid climate. Crime 1870 killing During 1870 some 3,000 sheep from the Lake Hope area in South Australia were overlanded to the Northern Territory, for the men working on the line at Roper River, by Ralph and John Milner. Near Wauchope Creek 900 sheep died after eating poisonous herbs. John Milner was killed by some Aboriginal people and Ralph arrived at the Roper River with only 1,000 sheep. 1874 Barrow Creek outrage and aftermath On 22 February 1874, a group of Kaytetye men attacked the Overland Telegraph repeater station at Barrow Creek, whose staff were relaxing outside the compound, immediately killing linesman John Frank, mortally wounding Canadian telegraphist and stationmaster James Lawrence Stapleton (died on the following day) and injuring several others. A monument was erected at Barrow Creek to their memory (the spelling "Franks" is almost certainly incorrect). Contemporary press reports described the incident as the "Barrow's Creek outrage". On orders from Adelaide, police trooper Samuel Gason recruited a group of volunteers to apprehend the perpetrators. Several Aboriginal people were killed in two separate battles over the two months that followed, with Gason reporting that some of the dead had been identified as having taken part in the 'outrage'. Anthropologist Ted Strehlow reported in 1932 that Alex Ross, who'd visited the area in 1875, doubted whether the real culprits had been found. "Well of course nobody ever knew," Ross was quoted as saying. 1928 Coniston Massacre Barrow Creek was central to the last major Aboriginal massacre in the Northern Territory. In the 1920s Mounted Constable William George Murray was in charge of the local police station and also the Chief Protector of Aborigines in the area. When an old