Unlucky Archie

"Let not your right hand know what your left hand doeth." 

Mr Walker's next engagement was with a Mr. Oliver, who took up a large station about 12 miles from the South Australian border, and extending towards Lake Wallace, which was then known as Broad Meadows. The joint owners of this station were Messrs. Oliver and Brown. The blacks here were very treacherous. One day three of them came with their lubras up to the camp fire, and Mr. Brown helped them to smooth a waddy with the tools which he had at hand for building the sheds. Next morning Mr. Brown took the sheep down to water, leaving the others working at the sheds. Some hours went by and as he did not return, Mr. Walker went to look for him. As he neared the waterhole he saw the blacks moving in the opposite direction, and driving a number of sheep before them, and he he thought he could see what was like Mr. Brown's double barrel shotgun in their possession. He now became alarmed, and not without cause, for before he got many paces further he saw Mr Brown lying on the ground quite dead. The blacks had murdered him, presumably with the waddy which he had  helped them to make. The blacks drove the sheep in the direction of Narracoorte, and on coming to the caves sought to hide them there. A number of horsemen tracked them and on the way found Mr Brown's boots and saw one of the murderers standing near a tree with the gun in his hands, the men were not captured, but Mr. Walker thinks that one was wounded, and made for the caves. It is quitc likely that that was the one whose body was afterwards found in the Narracoorte caves, and mysteriously disappeared. In those days the nearest police officer was at Portland.

From a newspaper article on the life of  a Mr A Walker entitled  "Sixty-Four years in Australia ~ An Eventful Career" published  in The Register on Monday the 21st September 1903