83 Tasmanian-born composer Peter Sculthorpe wrote his String Quartet no. 14 (1997) in response to a brutal incident reported to have occurred during the early nineteenth century at Quamby Bluff, a rather forbidding, mountainous outcrop in Northern Tasmania. According to Sculthorpe’s account, colonial government soldiers drove a tribe of indigenous Tasmanians to the bluff’s edge and gave them the option either of being shot or of jumping. As they jumped, they cried out ‘Quamby!’, meaning ‘Save me!’, and the bluff was so named from that time. 1 The social justice issues that inspired the composition of the String Quartet no. 14 have been the creative impetus for many works throughout Sculthorpe’s oeuvre. This article will consider Sculthorpe’s response to the events at Quamby Bluff in his String Quartet no. 14, and the signifcance of several pre-existing musical sources and other compositional techniques used symbolically to represent the incident and the landscape. Sculthorpe has composed several works that raise social justice issues pertaining to the indigenous population of Australia. His exploration of historical events and sacred places in his works, his depictions of the Australian landscape, and his use of Aboriginal titles refect his desire to create a nexus between his music and indigenous Australia.  The frst real evidence of Sculthorpe’s interest in indigenous culture appeared in 1946, in the form of a piano piece (now lost) entitled Aboriginal Legend. 3 However, as Sculthorpe biographer Graeme Skinner points out, despite the evocative title, the composer ‘admits that there was no “legend” as such’ behind the work. 4 Aboriginal Legend was followed in 1949 by the Two Aboriginal Songs for solo voice and orchestra, which borrowed indigenous melodies collected by H.G. Lethbridge.  * I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Anne-Marie Forbes, Heather Monkhouse and Graeme Skinner in the preparation of this article. 1 Peter Sculthorpe, Sun Music: Journeys and Refections from a Composer’s Life (Sydney: ABC Books, 1999) 16.  Roger Covell, ‘Peter Sculthorpe,’ New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 001), vol. 3, 18. 3 Deborah Hayes, Peter Sculthorpe: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993) 36. 4 Communication from Graeme Skinner, March 006.  Hayes, Peter Sculthorpe, 39; communication from Graeme Skinner, March 006. Peter Sculthorpe’s String Quartet no. 14: A Musical Response to Social Injustice * Carolyn Philpott