the Port Phillip tribe) noted in a Weslayen Mission meeting in 1841 that in the Portland bay area "it was usual for some to go out in parties on the Sabbath with guns, for the ostensible purpose of kangarooing, but, in reality to hunt and kill these miserable beings — the bones and the bodies of the slaughtered blacks had been found — but because the evidence of the native was not admissible in a court, the white murderers had escaped with impunity, and were still pursuing their career of crime and blood". Resisting dispossession, the Gunditjmara concentrated in the Stony Rises from which they waged guerilla warfare against the pastoralists usurping their lands, raiding their flocks and herds. Some protection was also afforded by the native protectorate set up at Mount Rouse, which the tribes used as a basis for their operations. A particular point of ire were settlements that took over sacred sites associated with Mount Napier, Lake Condah and Port Fairy. Due to the ongoing battles in the 1840s, the Gunditjmara became well known as "The fighting Gunditjmara". {| class="wikitable" |+28 massacres in Gunditjmara country 1833/4 to ? ! Date ! Location ! Aborigines involved ! Europeans involved ! Aboriginal deaths reported |- | 1833 or 1834 | Convincing Grounds two miles west of the mouth of the Surrey River | Kilcarer gundidj clan | Whalers | from 60 to 200 people, decimating all but 2 tribespeople |- | June 1838 | Merino Downs station, Wannon River, near Henty | unknown Gunditjmara clan | Joseph Bonsor, shepherd and hutkeeper, who had been waddied | 1 Gunditmara man |- | October 1838 | Merino Downs station, Wannon River, near Henty | unknown Gunditjmara clan | William Heath, shepherd, killed | 1 Gunditmara man, stabbed with sheep shears. Oral version 40. |- | October 1838 | Samuel Winter's station Spring Valley or Murndal, Wannon River, near Merino | unknown Gunditjmara clan | William Jefrey speared, while, with Charles Corrigan and, William Elliot, fighting a mob raiding for sheep | 2 Gunditmara men |- | November 1838 | Samuel Winter's station Spring Valley or Murndal | unknown Gunditjmara clan | 7 whites set upon and shot an Aboriginal group of 20–30 camping at the Wannon River | 1 Gunditjmara youth wounded, fate unknown |- | February 1840 | Merino Downs station, Wannon River, near Henty | unknown Gunditjmara clan |