THE ATTACK AT BROKEN HILL

INTRODUCTION

This is a full-sized metal replica of perhaps the most famous ice-cream cart in the world – one that was used in the first terrorist attack ever carried out in Australia. On New Year’s Day 1915, Badsha Mahommed Gool prepared his ice-cream cart for its customary foray into the nearby town of Broken Hill.

Gool’s ice-cream cart was a familiar fixture around town, and locals thought little of it when he wheeled his way among them on that sweltering summer day. The cart carried a small homemade flag, limp in the stale, humid air. The flag, a sun bleached red with a crescent and star on it, represented the Ottoman Empire, a state that Gool had fought for as a soldier.

On that particular January day Gool wasn’t transporting just ice cream in his cart. Its contents also included deadly weapons. Beside him sat another man, not as familiar as Gool, but also a Broken Hill resident nonetheless. The man, Mullah Abdullah, was a local imam and halal butcher.

Driving the cart a short distance outside of town, they rolled to a stop along a deserted stretch of road not far from the train tracks. Leaving the cart behind, Gool and Abdullah walked to an embankment about 30 metres from the tracks, where they settled in to wait.

Around the corner, having just passed through Broken Hill, the local Silverton Tramway Company train chugged into view. The train was carrying passengers to the annual New Year’s Day picnic in nearby Silverton.

About 1,200 picnickers were crammed into 40 open ore trucks pulled along by a steam engine. As the train neared their position Gool and Abdullah pulled out two rifles, flipped onto their bellies and opened fire on the train.

They got off a total of about thirty shots. At first the picnickers thought the shots were part of their outing. Perhaps a gun salute to hail their passing train or a staged fight or even target practice with blanks instead of live rounds.

Their elation was short lived, however, when they saw other passengers on board the train jerking and falling to the ground, blood beneath their bodies as the bullets found their marks.

In the ensuing panic Gool and Abdullah calmly rose from their positions, made their way back to the ice cream cart and hightailed it towards home. They had just engineered and spearheaded the first terrorist attack on Australian soil, while the country was in the thick of World War I.

This week we take a look at not only the Broken Hill terror attack, but a handful of other terror attacks throughout history. What is the common thread that binds them all? And how can we find peace in the midst of the turmoil we live in? Join me as we embark on yet another incredible journey.

A CALCULATED ASSAULT

On the 1st of January 1915, 1,200 men, women and children boarded this Silverton Tramway Company train, consisting of ‘Y12’ locomotive and 40 open ore trucks to travel to Silverton for their annual New Year’s Day picnic. The crowded train of excited people departed Sulphide Street station at 10am.

Shortly after the departure, about 1 kilometre down the track, the train and its passengers were ambushed and attacked by Badsha Gool and Mullah Abdullah, who fired shots from near their ice- cream cart on which the Turkish flag was attached.

When Gool and Abdullah opened fire on the train of unsuspecting picnickers on that New Year’s Day 1915, they were hoping for casualties. They aimed to kill. They didn’t just spray the train with a hail of bullets as a warning, but as a calculated assault.

One of the bullets smashed into seventeen-year-old Alma Cowies’ head, killing her instantly. She slumped against her boyfriend Clarrie O’Brien, who watched in growing horror as her blood pooled over him.

Alma Cowie wasn’t the only one shot. William John Shaw, a foreman in the Sanitary Department was also killed, while his daughter Lucy Shaw was injured. Six other people on the train were injured as well.

The conductor on the train, “Tiger” Dick Nyholm happened to be a crack shot. Whipping out his rifle he returned fire on Gool and Abdullah and proved to be instrumental in protecting the train’s passengers from further harm.

The victims of the Broken Hill train shooting were the first Australians to fall in an act of terrorism perpetrated on home soil. They were also the first Australian casualties to fall on home soil under attack from an enemy during World War I.

The unexpected and vicious attack captured the attention of the nation and the soldiers who were fighting overseas. In an aggressive move, then attorney-general Billy Hughes called for the internment of all enemy nationals.

One young Victorian Anzac stationed overseas wrote to the people of Broken Hill telling them “I can tell you we will be letting the Turks know there will be more to shoot at than a picnic train.” The Gallipoli landing still lay ahead, and though on that New Year’s Day the war was far removed from Broken Hill, it left a calling card in the sleepy outback town, all the same.

When Gool and Abdullah planned their attack they chose a prime location. The area around the stretch of track they ambushed had little cover. Forty years of mining had cleared the saltbush and the trees, to be used as firewood.

They had also chosen the perfect target. The Manchester Unity picnic was an annual event, and that year they were picnicking in Silverton. The 1200 residents who clambered into the freshly swept ore trucks fitted with benches, were sitting ducks in the open carriages.

When the attack ended and the dust settled, there were ten casualties. Four of them died. In the ensuing panic, some adults flung themselves protectively across children, while others jumped off the slow-moving carriages and bolted for safety.

As the train, with its screaming and traumatised passengers drifted out of sight, Gool and Abdullah grabbed up their weapons and ran. They were armed with an ancient Martini-Henry breech-loading rifle, a Snider-Enfield carbine, a revolver, and a homemade bullet pouch.

The death and carnage caused by the two terrorists and their weapons is remembered today by one of the open ore railway wagons that stands at the ambush site. From here, Gool and Abdullah set out on their escape bid.

They headed for this small quartz outcrop, known today as White Rocks Reserve, located about two kilometres away. Gool and Abdullah’s attack was born out of misplaced nationalism and religious zeal.

THE BACKGROUND

At the time of the attack Broken Hill was a mining town that had basically been built on the backs of camels. Camels were cheaper by far than bullocks, and cameleers, their handlers and drivers, were a common sight along the Northwest Frontier.

However, despite the huge demand for their services cameleers were an ostracised group. Though British subjects, they were denied union membership and confined to camel camps on the outskirts of town with their animals.

Local newspapers ran angry articles calling for the expulsion of what they labelled the ‘Afghan menace’ and there was a decided undercurrent of animosity towards cameleers and Afghans in general.

By 1915 Broken Hill had become a township built on its lucrative lead, zinc and silver mines but it was also a town that was isolated and somewhat wary of outsiders. Both Abdullah and Gool had been subjected to a handful of attacks against them which were mostly based on their ethnicity.

However, despite the animosity neither man was known to have retaliated against such attacks in the past. The Sydney Morning Herald reported a case where children had thrown stones at Abdullah because he was a cameleer, but other than for complaining to the police, he had done little else.

Badsha Mahommed Gool was born around 1874, in what is now Afghanistan. He came to Australia as a cameleer, and then shortly after Federation travelled to Turkey to fight for the Ottoman Empire army.

After his brief stint in the army, Gool returned to Australia and took up working in the mines, but when mineral prices bottomed out during the war and work in the mines dwindled, he took to hawking ice cream from a cart.

Mulla Abdullah was born in 1855 near the famous Khyber Pass, in a province of modern-day Pakistan, sitting on the border with Afghanistan. After migrating to Australia, he found work as the imam and halal butcher for the Broken Hill Camel camp.

The Broken Hill attack was a combination of nationalism and religious zeal, fuelled by pent up frustration over personal circumstances and discriminatory treatment that both men experienced.

For example, days before the picnic train attack, Abdullah had been fined for killing sheep off licensed premises by a council sanitary officer. Interestingly, one of the victims of the train attack was the foreman of the sanitary department, William Shaw.

Gool and Abdullah’s attack against innocent unarmed civilians out for a day of fun in the sun was not only an appalling, violent crime, it was also unconscionable. And while violence and hate are never an appropriate response, their actions are rooted in a far deeper overarching issue.

DEEPER ISSUES

As human beings we are inherently wary of everything that is not in keeping with our own cultural ideologies and values. That wariness can often turn into animosity and a sense of condescension, especially when we feel that those who are not like us are also beneath us.

Racism is not just a matter of the colour of someone’s skin, though that does often play a role. Racism is a hatred against anything that is dissimilar to what we are accustomed to, and the root of racism is not so much an issue of skin, as it is the universal problem of sin that we are all afflicted by. You’ve probably heard the saying, ‘Racism is not a skin problem, but a sin problem.’

Once Gool and Abdullah’s attack ended, panic broke out. On their way back to their camp Gool and Abdullah killed another man, Alfred E. Millard, before making their way back home. Meanwhile the train had pulled over at a siding and phoned the police.

The police contacted the local military base, and a small force of police and local militia were mustered. They launched a search for the attackers, and encountered them in the area near the Cable Hotel.

The pair opened fire on the authorities, wounding one of the police officers. Gool and Abdullah then took shelter behind this outcropping of white quartz and settled in for a protracted siege. A 3-hour gun battle followed, during which armed civilians came to the aid of the military and law enforcement.

Towards the end of the battle, only a thin stream of gun fire came from Gool and Abdullah’s hiding place. Police surmised that one of them was most likely dead while the other was wounded.

A local man, James Craig, who lived behind the Cable Hotel, went out to chop wood during the gun battle and was hit by a stray bullet. He became the fourth person to die that day.

Around one o’clock in the afternoon, law enforcement and military personnel decided to storm Gool and Abdullah’s shelter. An eyewitness later reported that Gool had stood up, but was gunned down.

THE AFTERMATH

A note found on Gool’s body stated that he was a subject of the Ottoman Sultan and that he was compelled to carry out the attack in the name of his faith.

Abdullah’s note stated much the same, with a side note about his hatred for the Chief Sanitary Inspector who had fined him, and his intention to kill him first. Turkish sources later claimed that the letters were planted, and the incident was pinned on the Turks to rally the Australian public for the war effort.

In retaliation against the attack local mobs converged on migrant establishments, attributing the actions of Gool and Abdullah to be representative of what they believed to be ‘enemy aliens’.

On the evening of the attack a German Club in Broken Hill was attacked and burned to the ground. The incensed mob went so far as to cut the hoses of the firemen who came to fight the flames, ensuring that the club could not be spared.

The mob then marched to a nearby camp of Afghan camel drivers, but was prevented from attacking the settlement by the police and military, who formed a protective barrier between them and the terrified inhabitants of the camp.

The next day the mines in Broken Hill fired all immigrant employees categorised as ‘enemy aliens’ under the 1914 Commonwealth War Precautions Act. Simultaneously, six Austrians, four Germans and one Turk were ordered to leave Broken Hill by the enraged local community.

Not long after, all migrants who were deemed to be a threat to national security during war time in Australia were interned in camps for the duration of the war.

FURTHER QUESTIONS

The story of the attack at Broken Hill raises a multitude of questions. Foremost among them is this: do the actions of a handful of individuals represent the actions and ideology of the entire community they belong to?

Did the actions of the two Afghan camel drivers represent the feelings of the entire Afghan community in Australia? Did they represent the feelings of the entire German and Austrian community in Australia?

And did the racially motivated discrimination that many Afghan cameleers faced represent the sentiments of the entire population of Broken Hill? The answer to these questions is an obvious No.

The actions of a handful of individuals don’t represent the community or ethnic group they belong to, but in many cases, as human beings, it is easy for us to lump people together under a single banner, and pigeonhole them based on the actions of people who look or speak like them.

The story of the attack at Broken Hill is coloured with overtones of racism and prejudice. Gool and Abdullah targeted a group of innocent pleasure seekers in the name of religious conviction and national fervour.

A DEADLY BREW

But theirs is not the only instance that religion and politics converged in a deadly brew of nationalism, racism and prejudice. One of the earliest terrorist attacks on record took place at the turn of the 17th century in England.

In what is probably one of the most elaborate and daring terrorist attacks in history, a group of ardent Englishmen, motivated by misplaced religious zeal and anger hatched a plot to blow up the Parliament and assassinate the king and his son.

The episode, known as the Gunpowder Plot, is still marked throughout England today. Every year on the 5th of November bonfires are lit throughout the country. There’s even a little verse to mark the occasion. It goes like this: ‘Remember, remember the 5th of November; gunpowder, treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.’

So, what exactly happened on the 5th of November 1605? Well, at the turn of the 17th century, James I was the newly crowned King of England, and the kingdom was restless and divided. At the time England was a firmly protestant nation, having been under the rule of Elizabeth I for over 40 years.

But there were some Catholic factions within the country that were restless, and wanted to see a Catholic monarch take the throne of England once more. Desperate to have their way, and determined to see their cause prosper, a small group of dissidents led by Robert Catesby hatched a diabolical plot.

The plot was simple with a dramatic flair. Catesby and his accomplices, including a man by the name of Guy Fawkes, planned to dispose of the king by using gunpowder to blow up parliament house in Westminster while the parliament was in session.

That way, they surmised, they would not only get rid of the protestant king but his son and heir as well as the king’s closest advisors, who would all be in the same place at the same time.

So the group rented a ground floor vault directly under the House of Lords and ferried all their gunpowder from Catesby’s house in Lambeth to Westminster, by river.

Guy Fawkes was the man appointed to rig the makeshift bomb. Fawkes was a former explosives expert who had served in the Spanish navy, and was the best man to get the job done without mishap.

Providentially, on the night of the 4th of November an anonymous tip was sent to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle. Parker was due to appear in parliament the next day but a friend of his, who was a Catholic and privy to the plot sent him a note begging him not to go.

Well, the note ended with the ominous words “God and man hath concurred to punish the wickedness of the time” Alarmed by the words of warning and the entreaty, Parker alerted the authorities.

The following day, in the early hours of the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes was discovered hiding in an underground vault beneath the House of Lords. He was fully dressed and ready to ride at a moment’s notice, armed with an assortment of goods.

With Fawkes in the vault, were 36 barrels of gunpowder filled to the brim, fuses, matches and a watch to time it all. Fawkes was caught red handed, and hauled off to answer charges of treason.

Catesby and his associates were also arrested, charged and later hanged for treason. To Catesby and his associates, the matter of placing a Catholic monarch on the English throne was a matter of great importance. So important in fact that they were willing to wage a holy war to see it happen.

You see, Catesby saw his actions as necessary for the common good of the nation. Radical but necessary. Interestingly, Catesby believed that the only way to achieve the common good of the nation was to establish his own ideology, through any means necessary.

More often than not racism and discrimination are not so much a matter of skin as of sin. Even though in some instances skin plays a par,t in a great many instances discrimination and racial prejudice has had nothing to do with the colour of one’s skin.

In 1994, over a period of roughly 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority were slaughtered without remorse by members of the armed Hutu militia in Rwanda. It is one of the bloodiest instances of Genocide the world has ever seen.

Estimates place the death toll of the genocide between 500,000 and 800,000 Tutsis. The Rwandan Genocide was racially motivated, but had nothing to do with skin colour. It had its basis in tribal violence and ethnic prejudice.

ETHNIC TENSIONS

Similarly in Sri Lanka in 1983, ethnic tensions led to a brutal killing spree of civilians. Dubbed black July, the 1983 riots were triggered by a Tamil militant group killing thirteen Sri Lankan army soldiers.

In response, anti-Tamil riots took place on the night of the 24th of July in the capital city of Colombo and continued over a period of seven days, where Sinhalese mobs attacked, looted, burned, and killed Tamil targets.

The death toll climbed into the thousands, and over one hundred thousand people were displaced and had to flee their homes. Again, like the Rwandan genocide, the Sri Lankan riots were based solely on ethnicity.

Another stark and universally known instance of Genocide is Hitler’s treatment of the Jews during World War II. An estimated 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust and unnumbered others were brutalised.

The common thread that weaves through all these narratives is this: when one racial, ethnic or religious group feels superior to another the result is always discrimination and violence. It is not just a story of racism, but a story of human pride gone rogue.

The sad reality is that as human beings we are all steeped in a disease that the Bible calls sin. Sin is best described in Isaiah 14:13-14 where the Bible explains the fall of Lucifer, and the attitude he cherished in his heart that led to his fall. Here’s what it says:

For you have said in your heart; I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the most high.

You see, the root cause of sin is pride. Did you notice that Lucifer had an ’I’ problem – I, I and I? The kind of pride that leads us to believe that we are better than someone else simply because of the way we look, think, act or talk or even because of what we believe.

It is this kind of pride that leads to racism, discrimination and the kind of nationalism that can lead to acts of violence and terrorism. And this kind of pride is not something that is isolated to a single demographic of people.

This kind of pride is ingrained in every human heart, because the Bible says in Romans 3:23 that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Each human being inherently seeks to place themselves above others.

But the Bible tells us plainly that there is no room for this kind of pride. In fact, racism, in all its forms, be it discrimination against someone because of the colour of their skin, or their ethnicity or their beliefs is something the Bible always denounces.

In Galatians 3:28 the Bible says, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” You see, the Bible teaches us that we are not to discriminate between ethnic groups, cultural ideologies or social status.

The ground is level at the foot of the cross and we are to treat each other accordingly, without discrimination, hate or bigotry. Each of us has been created in the image of God and saved by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. It is this alone that gives us value.

Though we form different nations, speak different languages and have different cultural values, the Bible tells us that God has made us of one blood. There is no room for discrimination in God’s sight. We are all His Children; all equally valued in his sight.

The good news of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection is a message that is applicable to the entire human race and must be shared with all. God wants us to understand that in his eyes we are all equal; none of us is better than the other.

The desire to exalt ourselves above someone else is a result of sin and it is a malady that plagues all of us. The truth is, no demographic is more racist or discriminatory than another; all of us, given the right conditions, have within us the capacity to be racist.

This is exactly why we need the good news of Salvation. It is through Jesus alone that we can choose to treat each other with the kindness, dignity and respect we all deserve. It is through Jesus alone that we can value each other without consideration of race, social standing, religion or ethnic background.

The Biblical account of creation and salvation places us all on an equal footing and makes us all sons and daughters of God – heirs to the promise of eternal life through Jesus Christ, and the hope that he gives us for true transformation of character.

SPECIAL OFFER AND CLOSING PRAYER

Jesus offers us all the opportunity for transformation. He gives us the opportunity to look at each other through his eyes; to see human beings made in the image of God, inherently valuable because they are God’s children. If you would like to find out more about God’s unconditional love for us, and His plans for a future where peace, love and joy will reign supreme, then I’d like to recommend the free gift we have for all our Incredible Journey viewers today.

It’s the booklet, Seeing Through God’s Eyes. This booklet is our gift to you and is absolutely free. There are no costs or obligations whatsoever. So, make the most of this wonderful opportunity to receive the free gift we have for you today.

If you’ve enjoyed our journey to the outback town of Broken Hill and our reflections on the importance of treating each other with kindness, love and dignity, then be sure to join us again next week when we will share another of life’s journeys together. Until then, let’s pray for God’s leading and guidance in our lives.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you that in Jesus we are all part of one great family, regardless of our language, colour or religion. In Jesus we are all equal. Lord, help us see others through your eyes and to treat all with love, kindness, respect and dignity. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen.