Rev Benjamin Hurst (missionary to the aborigines of Port Phillip) noted in a Weslayen Mission meeting in 1841 that in the Portland bay area 'it was usual for some to go out in parties on the Sabbath with guns, for the ostensible purpose of kangarooing, but, in reality to hunt and kill these miserable beings — the bones and the bodies of the slaughtered blacks had been found— but because the evidence of the native was not admissible in a court, the white murderers had escaped with impunity, and were still pursuing their career of crime and blood'.