Elliston on the coast of South Australia is a small town carrying a big burden.

It’s a community of 1,400 people at Waterloo Bay, on the rugged Eyre peninsula, seven hours west of Adelaide.

The cliffs are so steep here that the only access to the beach below is via a single line of rope fixed to the rock. It’s remote, unspoiled and slightly dangerous – a surfer’s paradise.

Looking south, the next stop is the Antarctic, and it’s easy to feel as though you’re at the edge of the world on a day like this, when the wind is fierce and the sea is rough.

Waterloo Bay at Elliston and the town’s council building

It was here in 1849 that at least 14 Wirangu and Kokatha men, women and children were herded to their deaths. The Wirangu people say it was more like 200.

Attempts to acknowledge the “incident”, as some locals prefer to call it, were rebuffed by successive councils. In 1970 Elliston rejected a plan to build a cairn as a memorial, saying there was no proof a massacre had taken place.

In 1978 Elliston marked its centenary by publishing a history, “Across the bar to Waterloo bay”. A chapter called “The Elliston Massacre, 1869” gives one version of how the killings began: after a series of frontier clashes, the settler John Hamp was murdered. Police and local men assembled a “punitive force to punish the natives”.

The book says it was “not an easy task” for the posse “to search the bush thoroughly, and the chase was necessarily slow”. They eventually found the Wirangu in open country near the bay. “Several natives” were shot, others went over the cliff.

It then offers this account of the aftermath:

Dr Browne addressed the men who comprised his punitive force, and told them bluntly that by killing a native, or natives, or being a party to such killings, they had all broken the law and could themselves be hung as murderers. He explained that the men had achieved the purpose of the expedition in wiping out the coastal natives, or by driving them to their death over the cliffs. Unless they wanted to be arrested for murder they should say nothing about the events of the last few days, when even one of the party was still alive. So they all swore an oath of secrecy.

The three sources of this 1978 account were the unnamed writer’s father and grandfather, and Alick Miller Jr, whose father admitted he “took part in the hunt”.

In his last few years he talked of the chase after the natives, after extracting a promise from young Alick that he would not speak of it until all persons involved were dead. The only survivors of the massacre were a small boy whose mother had hidden him in the bushes when she fled and a girl, quite young, who was left behind because she was lame. Who cared for these children I do not know.

Silence prevailed until 2017 when, after five months of fiery town meetings, the Elliston council agreed to build a monument near the site.

‘It’s been a long, long time’: driving into Elliston with Wirangu elder Jack Johncock

A Wirangu man, Jack Johncock, says he took up the battle from his mother, who fought her whole life to have the massacre acknowledged.

“They put hurdle after hurdle in front of us for recognition,” he says. “It’s taken us 40 years to get this monument in this little council area of 1,400 people or so. It can be done. What we’ve done is only a small, small thing but it’s a start.

“There are a few people who still don’t accept what happened, it’s embedded in them from their forefathers. But we Wirangu people are absolutely rapt with the outcome, and we give the story wholeheartedly so others can know about our history.”

Former mayor Kym Callaghan and Jack Johncock talk about the massacre

Jack says the council’s change of heart was driven by the persistence of Wirangu elders and an active alliance of local surfers, hippies and artists, who found a sympathetic ear in the town’s then-mayor, Kym Callaghan.

Callaghan is a fourth-generation local who lives in an old stone farmhouse built by John Hamp’s grandson. He’s a former lifesaver and security guard; he ran for council and was elected in 2010. He never had any doubt about what happened at Waterloo Bay.

Kym Callaghan

“I heard about this from when I was a little child. Put it simply – this is the way my nanna told it – the blacks were driven off the cliffs for killing Hamp at Lake Newland.

“It’s known all over the Eyre peninsula, what happened on the cliffs here.”

The original plan was to build a reconciliation walking trail along the clifftop, from Elliston down to the bay.

“Then the word massacre came up. I said to Jack that it could cause a bit of a stir, mainly because it’s a sensitive issue on all sides. But it was only when a person in the community circulated a petition [against the memorial] that it all got a bit out of hand.

Callaghan says there was strong opposition within the council and the township to admitting that any killings took place, let alone building a monument.

“And that started months of ... I wouldn’t say negotiation, I’d say bitterness and battle.”

A mural of the history of Elliston, featuring Aboriginal figures on a clifftop, and an old church in the town

“My two grandchildren were called ‘abo’ and ‘nigger’, and things like that,” Callaghan says. “I didn’t mind people targeting me. I was the chairman, I was the spokesperson for the council. But … that was the part I didn’t like.”

In 2018 the memorial won a national local government award in the “promoting Indigenous recognition” category.

Callaghan says he is very proud of what the council achieved, though he thinks it’s the reason why he was deposed as mayor in November. “I wouldn’t change a thing, because for 169 years these people have been waiting for that terrible atrocity to be acknowledged and it’s like a big dark cloud has been lifted off the town.

“There are thousands of people around the country watching this, and now it’s gone worldwide. It’s a healing story. It’s a good story.

The Waterloo Bay massacre memorial

The monument is coated in anti-graffiti paint and surrounded by large boulders, to deter vandals. Some townsfolk have made no secret of the fact that they want the word “massacre” removed or the monument taken down.

Elliston’s current mayor is Malcolm Hancock, a wheat farmer, who was born and raised in the district. His family, like Callaghan’s, goes back generations.

“There were members of the district saying they were going up there to bulldoze it,” he says. “I’m hoping they were idle threats.

“Reconciliation can’t be achieved when you’ve got these sorts of extremists.

“One of my briefs as mayor is to try to bring unity to the town. We’re bigger than a monument and massacre, and I want people to see that.”

Elliston’s current mayor Malcolm Hancock

Hancock says he too grew up knowing that killings had taken place, but he’s keen to move on.

“Growing up, I heard there were 300 Aborigines pushed off the cliff,” he says. “But I’d question if there were even 300 Aborigines in the area.

“I believe that back in those days Aborigines were seen as vermin because out of their culture they lived off the land, and what they saw, they utilised. If there was a homesteader who had set something up, and Aboriginal people wanted it, they went and helped themselves, which created the retaliation from the homesteaders … ‘Well, that’s vermin and we’ve got to protect ourselves from it’ – like foxes getting into your chookyard, which is a sad reality when you look at humans versus humans.

“We’ve got what we’ve got because of some bloodshed, and every country has done the same thing.”

Jack Johncock sits very still as the new mayor talks about “vermin”. But later, standing on the clifftop where his people died, he speaks about the cost of this battle for him and the Wirangu people.

Jack Johncock at the massacre site

“All they wanted to do was live on their country like they’d done for thousands of years and they lost their lives for it. Our people still grieve when things like this happen. It’s in our heart, what happened, we still feel it.

“My mother fought for 50 years of her life and went to the grave without any results.

“With this last council we had a good, positive dialogue. People got a lot off their chests and we came to a result that 70 to 80% of the district is happy with.”

Many locals are strong supporters of the Wirangu

Since the monument went up, Elliston has heard from other towns around Australia wanting advice on how to embark on a similar process of recognition.

“Do it,” Callaghan says. “Go hand-in-hand with these people. It was their land. It still is their land. Don’t deny it. Acknowledge that atrocities happened, on both sides.

“Acknowledge it, and see the change it will make – the healing. That’s what it’s all about. That’s the best thing you can get. And by us starting it, I suppose it can only be for the better of the country.”