Australia has long revered the fifth governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, as an enlightened humanitarian who brought civilisation to the colony.



But it’s time for a rethink.

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Macquarie is the Australian leader who used terrorism and slaughter to quell hostile Indigenous resistance to invasion and dispossession.



Macquarie is perhaps the most eulogised and memorialised of colonial governors, with a university, many buildings, a bank, a library and countless statues and plaques named in his honour.



Since 2013 a statue of Macquarie, born in 1762 in Argyll, Scotland, has stood in Hyde Park, the open space he created in central Sydney for public recreation.



Perhaps the statue should be paired with a monument to remember warriors Kanabygal and Durelle, who were among the Aboriginal men, women and children Macquarie ordered murdered at Appin in the NSW highlands 200 years ago this month.



The massacre was a culmination of colonial violence that began with raids by the local Dharawal people on the crops and livestock of the “settlers” who had taken their land. Reprisal attacks from farmers and militias followed. Many men, women and children, black and white, died.



Macquarie’s men, accompanied by Aboriginal trackers, shot and hung the two Dharawal men and one woman in trees to terrorise the other Indigenous people, before hacking off their heads as trophies that ended up at Edinburgh University.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Cataract river, close to the site of the Appin massacre on 17 April, 1816, in which at least 14 Dharawal men, women and children were murdered. Photograph: Paul Daley/The Guardian

Since repatriation from Scotland in 1991, the heads have been stored in the National Museum of Australia’s Canberra repatriation unit, with the remains, at times, of some 700 other Indigenous people whose bodies were stolen and which can’t, for various reasons, be returned to country.

There is continuing dispute between local Indigenous groups around Appin about custodianship of the remains of Kanabygal, Durelle and the woman.



I have stood before these boxes of bones. And then I’ve gone down to the isolated crevices along the banks of the Cataract river near Appin where Macquarie’s soldiers opened fire, forcing many to fall to their deaths over the 60-metre high cliffs.



There are many chilling postscripts to Macquarie’s act of murder and terrorism. Child abduction is but one

Down there I’ve wandered around pondering Macquarie’s instructions: “On any occasion of seeing or falling in with the Natives, either in Bodies or Singly, they are to be called upon, by your friendly Native Guides, to surrender themselves to you as Prisoners of War. If they refuse to do so, make the least show of resistance, or attempt to run away from you, you will fire upon and compel them to surrender, breaking and destroying the Spears, Clubs and Waddies of all those you take Prisoners. Such natives as happen to be killed on such occasions, if grown up men, are to be hanged up on Trees in Conspicuous Situations, to Strike the Survivors with the greater terror.”



Macquarie recommended women and children be spared where possible. But they weren’t.

A Captain Wallis who oversaw the murders recounted: “I formed line ranks, entered and pushed on through a thick brush towards the precipitous banks of a deep rocky creek, the dogs gave the alarm and the natives fled over the cliffs. A smart firing now ensued – it was moonlight the grey dawn of morn appearing, so dark as to be only to discover their figures bounding from rock to rock.



“I had ordered my men to take as many prisoners as possible and to be careful in sparing and saving the women and children ... I regret to say some had been shot and others met their fate by rushing in despair over the precipice.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest A modest memorial close to the site of the 17 April, 1816 Appin massacre, which reads: ‘We will remember them.’ Photograph: Paul Daley/The Guardian

“Twas a melancholy but necessary duty I was employed upon. Fourteen dead bodies were counted in different directions ... I detached Lieut Parker with the bodies of Durelle and Kumnabaygal to be hanged on a conspicuous part of a range of hills.”



A humble monument stands close to the massacre site – something of a counter, really, to Macquarie’s proud statue in Hyde Park.

Every 17 April for 20 years there’s been a commemoration at this memorial, which reads: “The massacre of men, women and children of the Dharawal Nation occurred near here on 17th April, 1816 ... We acknowledge the impact this had and continues to have on the Aboriginal people of this land. We are deeply sorry. We will remember them.”

But who will remember that Macquarie, the man considered by so many to be Australia’s renaissance governor – an aesthete who increased crop and livestock production, brought schools, hospitals and banks to the colony – was also, by his own word, a terrorist?

It’s been skated around, white-inked away.

Take the Australian Dictionary of Biography. His policy concerning the blackfellas was, it says, “an expression of the same humanitarian conscience” he brought to other colonial matters.

“Orders of merit and even an old general’s uniform were bestowed on deserving chiefs. The results of this naive policy were not very encouraging and, in 1816, when the natives showed signs of ungrateful hostility, he organised a military drive to chasten them. But no other governor since Phillip had shown them so much sympathy.”

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Really?

Such humanitarian conscience doesn’t extend to his so-called “Native Institution” at Parramatta, where forcibly removed Indigenous children were kept so they might be “civilised”.



There are many chilling postscripts to Macquarie’s act of murder and terrorism at Appin 200 years ago. Child abduction is but one.

In written orders to a Captain Schaw, the governor commanded: “Select and secure that number [12 Aboriginal boys and six girls, aged between four and six] of fine healthy good-looking children from the whole of the Native Prisoners of war taken in the course of your operations and direct them to be delivered to ... the Native Institution at Parramatta.”

Australia has renamed the landscape to commemorate massacres of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (there are six Slaughterhouse creeks in this continent and eight Skeleton creeks in Queensland alone).

The least we should do is rethink how Lachlan Macquarie, the fifth governor of New South Wales – and a terrorist – is remembered.