Discovering a Bloody Past at Bluff Rock, Australia

We set off on the first day of our Great Australian Road Trip with the intention of making it to Uralla, a town just south of Armidale in New South Wales. As it turned out, with the mucking around that we did before hand and much of the road being severely pot holed, there was no way that we were going to make it there by dark. So after consulting our camping book we stopped for the night in a road side rest area just south of Tenterfield called Bluff Rock.

This free camp site is simply a basic rest stop, but it is popular with people travelling in caravans and motor homes for overnight stops, as we found out as we all managed to cram into the tiny area.

This entire part of New South Wales is full of history as it was settled not long after the first Europeans came to Australia, and as I found out from the plaque and information at the rest stop, Bluff Rock also has an interesting history of it’s own.

Bluff Rock from the highway at the rest area

According to the plaque, there are conflicting versions of the story of a massacre that took place at Bluff Rock in the 1840’s. Back then it was known as Swithins Bluff, and there are reports of a tribe of local Aborigines killing a shepherd on Bolivia Station that borders the bluff. The story says that after the killing, four armed men set off from the station to track down the tribe and when found, they fled to the top of Bluff Rock where they were chased off the edge, killing most of them and injuring the rest. The tribe of Aborigines was never seen on the station again.

Farmland near Bluff Rock

There is also a story that still exists among the local Aboriginal people that talks of a baby surviving the fall off Bluff Rock in it’s mother’s arms. These different accounts all seem to point to some kind of event that would suggest that there is at least some truth to the tale, and although it sounds like Bluff Rock has a bloody history, it certainly has an interesting story to tell today.