The first was on Moreton Island, traditional home of the Ngugi people. On 1 July 1831, the then Commandant of the colony, Captain Clunie with a detachment of the 17th Regiment surrounded a Ngugi camp at dawn on the edge of the freshwater lagoon close to the island's southern extremity, killing up to twenty of them. George Watkins recorded: ‘nearly all were shot down. My informant, a young boy at the time, escaped with a few others by hiding in a clump of bushes’