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Concept
Battle of Broken Hill
Summary
The Battle of Broken Hill was an incident which took place in Australia near Broken Hill, New South Wales, on 1 January 1915. Two men shot dead four people and wounded seven more before being killed by police and military officers. Though politically and religiously motivated, the men were not members of any sanctioned armed force and the attacks were criminal. The two men were later identified as former camel drivers from colonial India (some sources incorrectly identify them as Turkish).
The attackers were former camel-drivers working at Broken Hill. They were Badsha Mahommed Gool (born c. 1874), an ice-cream vendor, and Mullah Abdullah (born c. 1854), at one point a halal butcher and often reported as a local imam, though this is open to dispute.
Gool's ice-cream cart was well known in town and was used to transport the men to the attack site. They also fashioned a home-made Ottoman flag which they flew. They appear to have made little effort to hide their identities.
Abdullah had arrived in Broken Hill about 1898 and worked as a camel driver. Several days before the killings he was convicted by Police Court for slaughtering sheep in unsanitary premises not licensed for slaughter. It was not his first offence.
Each New Year's Day the local lodge of the Manchester Unity Order of Oddfellows held a picnic at Silverton. The train from Broken Hill to Silverton was crowded with 1200 picnickers in 40 open ore trucks. Three kilometres out of town, Gool and Abdullah positioned themselves on an embankment about 30 metres from the tracks. As the train passed, they opened fire with two rifles, discharging 20 to 30 shots.
The picnickers initially thought that the shots were being discharged in honour of the train's passing, as a sham fight, or as target practice. Alma Cowie, aged 17 died instantly. William John Shaw, a foreman in the Sanitary Department, was killed on the train and his daughter Lucy Shaw was injured. Six other people on the train were injured: Mary Kavanagh, George Stokes, Thomas Campbell, Alma Crocker, Rose Crabb and Constable Robert Mills.
Official source
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