Gday...

1928  -             Dingo hunter Frederick Brooks is killed, sparking the Coniston Massacre of Australian Aborigines.

Coniston Station is a large cattle station in central Australia, about 300 km northwest of Alice Springs. Covering 2178 sq km, it is bordered by the Tanami Desert to the west. The cattle station was founded by pastoralist Randall Stafford in 1923 and named after a town in his native England.

On 7 August 1928 the body of white dingo hunter, Frederick Brooks, was found on the property. Traditional aboriginal weapons lay nearby, implicating the local indigenous people. Constable William Murray, officer in charge at Barrow Creek, investigated and came to the conclusion that the killing had been done by members of the Warlpiri, Anmatyerre and Kaytetye people.

Within a few days, Constable Murray began to take matters of 'white justice' into his own hands, instigating a series of revenge killings that came to be known as the Coniston Massacre. This was the last known massacre of Australian Aborigines. Between 14 and 30 August, Murray shot at least 17 members of the Aboriginal tribes he believed were responsible, and claimed his actions were made in self-defence and that each tribal member he had killed was in possession of some item belonging to Brooks.

Murray was never punished for his actions. On the contrary, the Board of Enquiry members were selected to maximise damage-control. It was believed at the time that Murray's actions were appropriate for the circumstances. The Central Land Council organised the seventy-fifth anniversary of the massacre, commemorated near Yuendumu on 24 September 2003.

1947  -             The voyage of Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl ends after the 'Kon-Tiki' crashes into a reef off the Polynesian Islands.

Thor Heyerdahl was a Norwegian anthropologist and marine biologist who developed an interest in the origins of settlement in the islands of the south Pacific. The purpose of the Kon-Tiki expedition was to prove that people from South America could have settled Polynesia in the south Pacific before European exploration made any impact in the area. The Kon-Tiki was a simple balsawood raft made in a design similar to that used by South American natives. The craft carried modern communications equipment, but no food, as Heyerdahl planned to live off food from the ocean. Heyerdahl and his 5 companions sailed the Kon-Tiki for 101 days over a distance of nearly 7,000km across the Pacific Ocean before crashing into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on 7 August 1947.

Heyerdahl believed this proved his theory of the origins of the south Pacific peoples, and the subsequent documentary he produced received wide acclaim. However, more recent research and DNA testing has shown that the natives of the area bear more similarities to the people of southeast Asia than to the people of South America.

1987  -             American woman Lynne Cox becomes the first person to swim from the United States to the Soviet Union.

It was an exercise which found favour with the Russians but went largely unnoticed by her fellow Americans. On 7 August 1987, Lynne Cox, 30, became the first woman to swim the Bering Strait, the channel forming the boundary line between Alaska in the United States and Siberia, in the Soviet Union. The swim across the 4.3km strait opened the U.S.-Soviet border for the first time in forty-eight years. Cox swam without a shark cage, wet suit, or lanolin grease to protect her from the 5 degrees Celsius waters. Weighing in at over 82 kilograms proved an advantage to Cox, as her 36% body fat insulated her effectively. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev later said, "She proved by her courage how closely to each other our people live." US President Ronald Reagan had no idea about whom Mr Gorbachev was speaking.

Cox had a history of endurance swimming. At ages 15 and 16, she broke the men's and women's world records for swimming the English Channel, swimming 53km in nine hours and thirty-six minutes. At 18, she swam the 32km Cook Strait between the North and South Islands of New Zealand. She was also the first to swim the Straits of Magellan, considered to be the world's most treacherous stretch of water, though only 4.8km, and she was the first to swim the Cape of Good Hope.

1998  -             200 people are killed and 1000 injured as bombs explode at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The al Qaeda terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden first drew international attention in August 1998. Al Qaedas list of grievances against the West included American participation in the first Gulf War, military operations in Somalia, military involvement in Yemen and US presence in Saudi Arabia by way of permanent US military installations. Osama bin Laden believed that the Americans were infidels and their garrisons propped up a corrupt, insufficiently Islamic Saudi elite. Thus, al Qaeda sought to target US interests abroad.

At approximately 10:30 local time on 7 August 1998, car bombs exploded outside the US Embassy buildings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, in eastern Africa. 207 Kenyans and 12 US citizens died in Nairobi, Kenya, and 11 people died in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. 4000 more were injured. No-one claimed responsibility for the bombings at the time, but following investigations, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation placed bin Laden on its Ten Most Wanted list. In May 2001, four men linked to al-Qaeda were convicted and sentenced to lifetime in jail.   

Cheers - John