John Blake
Myall Creek near Bingara was the site of one of the worst incidents in Australia's history in which up to 30 Aborigines were massacred by European settlers on 10th June 1838. After two trials, seven of the 12 settlers involved in the killings were found guilty of murder and hanged. The case led to significant uproar among sections of the population and the media, sometimes voiced in favour of the perpetrators.
John Fleming, the leader of the massacre, was never captured, and was allegedly responsible for further similar massacres throughout the Liverpool Plains and New England regions. John Blake, one of the four men acquitted at the first trial and not subsequently charged, committed suicide in 1852. His descendants say that they like to think he did so out of a guilty conscience.