Captain James Beevor was one of the most respected and well liked pioneers of early South Australia: a former cavalry officer who had fought in the First Carlist War in Spain before carving out a remote sheep station with a partner beyond Port Lincoln. Known for his generosity, including toward the Aboriginal people living near his run, he was alone at the hut on 3 May 1849 when he was killed. His body was found without a mark of struggle, and the hut had been stripped of flour, blankets and clothing.
Two men were convicted of his killing. Rather than hang in the city, they were shipped back to the isolated station where Beevor had died and hanged from a gum tree on this day in 1849, a deliberate show of warning to the surrounding district.
One of the condemned confessed, moments before the drop fell, that he had delivered the fatal blow.
