Content warning: This article discusses a massacre and includes historic materials that some may find distressing.

In 1886 the largest recorded massacre of First Nations peoples in Western Australia took place, following the death of John Durack, known to his friends as ‘Big Johnny’.

The Durack family was a prominent pioneering family at the time, controlling vast areas of land in the Kimberley region. In 2010 the Federal electorate of Durack was named after seven members of the family, but not John.

Durack is the largest electorate in Australia, spanning 1,383,954 sq km and covering 42 local government areas.

The seven family members the electorate is named after lived between 1834 and 2008.

They include Dr W. J. Durack who was the first to diagnose leprosy in in the indigenous people of the area; author and historian Dame Mary Durack; artist Elizabeth Durack OBE; irrigation agronomist Kim Durack; and Senator Peter Durack, who introduced the Freedom of Information Act.

John Durack was a member of the family not included in the list of honourees. Big Johnny was one of the first pastoralists of the East Kimberley region.

On November 16 (or 17), 1886, John and his younger bother (or cousin) John Wallace Durack were riding around the Ord River station when he was speared. There are different accounts of the sequence of events leading up to the conflict.

Some sources state that people from Gija or Djaru groups attacked John. While others explain that Big Johnny began firing on First Nations people, who only then protected themselves using spears. All agree though that John was speared and died.

Dr Chris Owen is a consultant historian, specialist in Western Australian Aboriginal family history and archival research. He researched this conflict, and the massacre that followed, for a book he wrote called Every Mother’s Son is Guilty: Policing the Kimberley Frontier of Western Australia 1882-1905.

He found that oral history favours the second version of events: that “Big Johnny was just shooting everything that moved.”

He said that following the death of Big Johnny, the biggest revenge massacre in Western Australia ensued, and hundreds were killed. He found a letter to The West Australian from the time saying eye-witnesses reported being involved in a “summary justice” in which police, settlers and squatters “rounded about 120 natives up and shot a large number consisting of men, women and children.”

The number of casualties recorded varies. Professors from the University of Newcastle investigated Aboriginal massacres as a part of the Colonial Frontier Massacres digital map project. Their research concluded more than 220 First Nations people were killed by police (and volunteers) in retaliation for the death of Big Johnny.

So should an electorate be named after this family, when they were involved in the largest revenge massacre in WA  history?

Dr Owen treads carefully around this topic.

He said the death of Big Johnny Durack sparked a murderous expedition, but “the Durack’s were also well known for looking after black fellas.” Dr Owen has met some members of the Durack family and said they were open to discussing their family’s history.

Kimberley artist Ben Ward has first hand experience of the Duracks’ kindness. Ward is a Miriwoong man born in 1949 and a member of the stolen generation.

He worked as a stockman on stations, as a mechanic and he was a medical student, but he was injured in a car accident years ago which left him bound to a wheelchair. Since his accident he has become an artist.

Ward works with young Indigenous people in his community as an elder and mentor. He said he sits with them and teaches them traditional customs.

His father knew the Duracks and considered them part of his family. Ward grew up around the family.

He recounted a time when Elizabeth Durack (a writer, artist and nurse), came and saw him in hospital. She referred to him as her grandson. This stands out as a proud moment for him, to have been acknowledged as a part of their family.

He says his name was given to him by Dame Mary Durack, who named him after the Ben Ord River

The river was on a 14,000 acre (5665 Hectare) property of the same name in the wheat bealt that the Duracks owned and used for fattening Kimberley cattle, prior to selling them.

Ward described the Duracks as good people who deserve the electorate to be named after them. He said that they shouldn’t be questioned: “There is so much anger around things that happened in the past, but it has happened and cannot be changed.

“We survive because we know what’s happened.”

Ward said it isn’t good to talk about the past because it makes it harder to move on from all that pain and suffering.

He believes there is an abundance of hatred in society, “but love is around all the time.”

This article is part of a larger project called Where What Why. You can find the whole collection of stories about places and their names here.