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The Australian Frontier Wars

The Australian Frontier Wars

The Australian frontier wars were a series of conflicts fought between Indigenous Australians and European settlers that spanned a total of 146 years. The first fighting took place several months after January 26, 1788 and the last clashes occurred as late as 1934.

 

A recent study calculated indigenous fatalities caused by the Queensland Native Police Force alone to no less than 24,000, and most scholars accept an overall minimum of 20,000 for all the colonies. Violent frontier deaths of Europeans and associates, on the other hand, have been estimated as between 2,000 and 2,500.

 

Far more devastating in their impact on the Aboriginal population, however, were the effects of disease, followed by infertility, loss of hunting ground, starvation and general despair, loss of pride, and the alcoholic ‘remedy’ for this devastation. There are powerful indications that small-pox epidemics may have impacted some Aboriginal tribes with depopulation in large sections of what is now Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland with up to 50% or more, even before the move inland from Sydney of squatters and their livestock. Then other diseases hitherto unknown in the Indigenous population—such as the common cold, flu, measles, venereal diseases and tuberculosis—made a second impact, significantly reducing their numbers and tribal cohesion, so limiting their ability to adapt and resist invasion and dispossession.

 

The Black War refers to the period of conflict between British colonists and Tasmanian Aborigines in the early nineteenth century.  Although historians vary on their definition of when the conflict began and ended, it is best understood as the officially sanctioned time of declared martial law by the colonial government between 1828 and 1832.

 

The term Black War is also sometimes used to refer to other, later conflicts between European colonists and Aboriginal Australians on mainland Australia.

In 1770 a British expedition under the command of then-Lieutenant James Cook made the first voyage by Europeans along the Australian east coast. On 29 April Cook and a small landing party fired on a group of Tharawal people who threatened them when they attempted to come ashore at Botany Bay. Two Tharawal men threw spears at the British, before fleeing in alarm after being fired on again. Cook did not make further contact with the Tharawal, but later established a peaceful relationship with the Kokobujundji people when his ship, HM Bark Endeavour, had to be repaired at present-day Cooktown.

 

Cook, in his voyage up the east coast of Australia, observed no signs of agriculture or other development by its inhabitants. Some historians argue that the prevailing European law was such land was deemed terra nullius or land belonging to nobody or land ’empty of inhabitants’ (as defined by Emerich de Vattel).  Cook claimed the east coast of the continent for Britain on 23 August 1770.

The British Government decided to establish a prison colony in Australia in 1786.

 

Some historians argue that Britain took possession of Australia under the European legal doctrine that it wasterra nullius. Under this classification Indigenous Australians’ were not recognised as having property rights and territory could be acquired through ‘original occupation’ rather than conquest or consent. The colony’s Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, was instructed to “live in amity and kindness” with Indigenous Australians, however and sought to avoid conflict.

 

However, other historians argue as an inhabited land annexed by Britain, colonists could be granted the right to occupy such areas of the annexed land that did not appear to be under cultivation or some other kind of development (such as a village or town) but were generally expected to respect the property rights of the original inhabitants. These historians contend that as, in European terms, property rights were principally exercised by the cultivation of land, the marking of boundaries and by the building of permanent buildings and settlements, the settlers did not believe that Indigenous Australians claimed property rights to the lands they roamed over. Instead, nomadic hunter-gatherers seemed, to the Europeans, to be concerned only with the right to hunt and kill the wild game, which was their principal source of food. Many of the violent incidents between white settlers and Aborigines seem to have occurred when Aborigines objected to settlers hunting wild game, rather than because the settlers were ‘occupying’ Aboriginal territory.

 

History

 

Violence between Indigenous Australians and Europeans began several months after the First Fleet established Sydney on 26 January 1788. The local Indigenous people became suspicious when the British began to clear land and catch fish, and in May 1788 five convicts were killed and an Indigenous man was wounded. The British grew increasingly concerned when groups of up to three hundred Indigenous people were sighted at the outskirts of the settlement in June.

 

Despite this, Phillip attempted to avoid conflict, and forbade reprisals after being speared in 1790. He did, however, authorise two punitive expeditions in December 1790 after his huntsman was killed by an Indigenous warrior named Pemulwuy, but neither was successful.

 

During the 1790s and early 19th century the British established small settlements along the Australian coastline. These settlements initially occupied small amounts of land, and there was little conflict between the settlers and Indigenous peoples. Fighting broke out when the settlements expanded however, disrupting traditional Indigenous food-gathering activities, and subsequently followed the pattern of European settlement in Australia for the next 150 years. Indeed whilst the reactions of the Aboriginal inhabitants to the sudden arrival of British settlers were varied, they became inevitably hostile when their presence led to competition over resources, and to the occupation of their lands. European diseases decimated Indigeous populations, and the occupation or destruction of lands and food resources sometimes led to starvation.

 

By and large neither the Europeans nor the Indigenous peoples approached the conflict in an organised sense, with the conflict more one between groups of settlers and individual tribes rather than systematic warfare, even if at times it did involve British soldiers and later formed mounted police units. Not all Indigenous Australians resisted white encroachment on their lands either, whilst many also served in mounted police units and were involved in attacks on other tribes.

 

Regardless a pattern of frontier warfare emerges, with Indigenous resistance beginning in the 18th century and continuing into the early 20th century, belying the “myth” of peaceful settlement in Australia. Settlers in turn often reacted with violence, resulting in a number of indiscriminate massacres.

 

It may be inaccurate, however, to depict the conflict as one sided and mainly perpetrated by Europeans on Indigenous Australians. Although many more died than Europeans, some cases of mass killing were not massacres but military defeats, and this may have had more to do with the technological and logistic advantages enjoyed by Europeans. Indigenous tactics varied, but were mainly based on pre-existing hunting and fighting practices—utilising spears, clubs and other primitive weapons. Unlike the indigenous peoples of New Zealand and North America, on the main they failed to adapt to meet the challenge of the Europeans, and although there were some instances of individuals and groups acquiring and using firearms, this was not widespread.

 

In reality the Indigenous peoples were never a serious military threat, regardless of how much the settlers may have feared them. On occasions large groups attacked Europeans in open terrain and a conventional battle ensued, during which the Aborigines would attempt to use superior numbers to their advantage. This could sometimes be effective, with reports of them advancing in crescent formation in an attempt to outflank and surround their opponents, waiting out the first volley of shots and then hurling their spears whilst the settlers reloaded. Usually however such open warfare proved more costly for the Indigenous Australians than the Europeans.

 

Central to the success of the Europeans was the use of firearms, however the advantages this afforded have often been overstated. Prior to the 19th century, firearms were often cumbersome muzzle-loading, smooth-bore, single shot weapons with flint-lock mechanisms. Such weapons produced a low rate of fire, whilst suffering from a high rate of failure and were only accurate within 50 metres (160 ft). These deficiencies may have given the Aborigines some advantages, allowing them to move in close and engage with spears or war clubs.

 

However by 1850 significant advances in firearms gave the Europeans a distinct advantage, with the six-shot Colt revolver, the Snider single shot breech-loading rifle and later the Martini-Henry rifle as well as rapid-fire rifles such as the Winchester rifle, becoming available. These weapons, when used on open ground and combined with the superior mobility provided by horses to surround and engage groups of Indigenous Australians, often proved successful. The Europeans also had to adapt their tactics to fight their fast-moving, often hidden enemies. Strategies employed included night-time surprise attacks, and positioning forces to drive the Aborigines off cliffs or force them to retreat into rivers while attacking from both banks.

 

Fighting between Indigenous Australians and European settlers was localised as Indigenous groups did not form confederations capable of sustained resistance. As a result, there was not a single conventional war, but rather a series of violent engagements and massacres across the continent.  According to the historian Geoffrey Blainey, in Australia during the colonial period: “In a thousand isolated places there were occasional shootings and spearings. Even worse, smallpox, measles, influenza and other new diseases swept from one Aboriginal camp to another … The main conqueror of Aborigines was to be disease and its ally, demoralisation”.

 

The Caledon Bay crisis of 1932–4 saw one of the last incidents of violent interaction on the ‘frontier’ of indigenous and non-indigenous Australia, which began when the spearing of Japanese poachers who had been molesting Yolngu women was followed by the killing of a policeman. As the crisis unfolded, national opinion swung behind the Aboriginal people involved, and the first appeal on behalf of an Indigenous Australian to the High Court of Australia was launched. Following the crisis, the anthropologist Donald Thompson was despatched by the government to live among the Yolngu.

 

Elsewhere around this time, activists like Sir Douglas Nicholls were commencing their campaigns for Aboriginal rights within the established Australian political system and the age of frontier conflict closed. While this was the end of the Australian Frontier Wars it was not the end of the Australian Frontier itself as the NT and the ACT hadn’t been classified as states which both remain territories to this day.

 

Frontier encounters in Australia were not universally negative. Positive accounts of Aboriginal customs and encounters are also recorded in the journals of early European explorers, who often relied on Aboriginal guides and assistance: Charles Sturt employed Aboriginal envoys to explore the Murray-Darling; the lone survivor of the Burke and Wills expedition was nursed by local Aborigines, and the famous Aboriginal explorer Jackey Jackey loyally accompanied his ill-fated friend Edmund Kennedy to Cape York.  Respectful studies were conducted by such as Walter Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen in their renowned anthropological study The Native Tribes of central Australia (1899); and by Donald Thompson of Arnhem Land (c.1935–1943). In inland Australia, the skills of Aboriginal stockmen became highly regarded.

 

New South Wales

 

The first frontier war began in 1795 when the British established farms along the Hawkesbury River west of Sydney. Some of these settlements were established by soldiers as a means of providing security to the region.  The local Darug people raided farms until Governor Macquarie dispatched troops from the British Army 46th Regiment in 1816. These troops patrolled the Hawkesbury Valley and ended the conflict by killing 14 Indigenous Australians in a raid on their campsite. Indigenous Australians led by Pemulwuy also conducted raids around Parramattaduring the period between 1795 and 1802. These attacks led Governor Philip Gidley King to issue an order in 1801 which authorised settlers to shoot Indigenous Australians on sight in Parramatta, Georges River and Prospect areas.

 

Bathurst War

 

Main article: Bathurst War

Conflict began again when the British expanded into inland New South Wales. The settlers who crossed the Blue Mountains were harassed by Wiradjuri warriors, who killed or wounded stock-keepers and stock and were subjected to retaliatory killings. In response, Governor Brisbane proclaimed martial law on 14 August 1824 to end “…the Slaughter of Black Women and Children, and unoffending White Men…”. It remained in force until 11 December 1824, when it was proclaimed that “…the judicious and humane Measures pursued by the Magistrates assembled at Bathurst have restored Tranquillity without Bloodshed…”.

 

There is a display of the weaponry and history of this conflict at the National Museum of Australia. This includes a commendation by Governor Brisbane of the deployment of the troops under Major Morisset: “I felt it necessary to augment the Detachment at Bathurst to 75 men who were divided into various small parties, each headed by a Magistrate who proceeded in different directions in towards the interior of the Country … This system of keeping these unfortunate People in a constant state of alarm soon brought them to a sense of their Duty, and … Saturday their great and most warlike Chieftain has been with me to receive his pardon and that He, with most of His Tribe, attended the annual conference held here on the 28th Novr….”

 

Brisbane also established the New South Wales Mounted Police, who began as mounted infantry from the third Regiment, and were first deployed against bushrangers around Bathurst in 1825. Later they were deployed to the upper Hunter Region in 1826 after fighting broke out there between Wonnarua and Kamilaroi people and settlers.

 

Van Diemen’s Land

 

Poster issued in Van Diemen’s Land during the Black War implying a policy of friendship and equal justice for white settlers and Indigenous Australians. Such a policy did not actually exist at the time.

 

The British established a settlement in Van Diemen’s Land (modern Tasmania) in 1803. Relations with the local Indigenous people were generally peaceful until the mid-1820s when pastoral expansion caused conflict over land. This led to sustained frontier warfare (the ‘Black War’), and in some districts farmers were forced to fortify their houses.  Over 50 British were killed between 1828 and 1830 in what was the “most successful Aboriginal resistance in Australia’s history”.

 

In 1830 Lieutenant-Governor Arthur attempted to end the ‘Black War’ through a massive offensive. In an operation which became known as the ‘Black Line’ ten percent of the colony’s male civilian population were mobilised and marched across the settled districts in company with police and soldiers in an attempt to clear Indigenous Australians from the area. While few Indigenous people were captured, the operation discouraged the Indigenous raiding parties, and they gradually agreed to leave their land for a reservation which had been established at Flinders Island.

 

Northern Australia

 

The British made three attempts to establish military outposts in northern Australia. The initial settlement at Fort Dundas on Melville Island was established in 1824 but was abandoned in 1829 due to attacks from the local Tiwi people. Some fighting also took place near Fort Wellington on the Cobourg Peninsula between its establishment in 1827 and abandonment in 1829. The third British settlement, Fort Victoria, was also established on the Cobourg Peninsula in 1838 but was abandoned in 1849.

 

Western Australia

 

The first British settlement in Western Australia was established by the British Army at Albany in 1826. Relations between the garrison and the local Minang people were generally good. Open conflict between Noongar and European settlers broke out in Western Australia in the 1830s as the Swan River Colony expanded from Perth. The Battle of Pinjarra is the best known single event, it was fought on 28 October 1833 between a party of British soldiers and mounted police led by Governor Stirling attacked an Indigenous campsite on the banks of the Murray River.

 

The Noongar people forced from traditional hunting grounds and denied access to sacred sites turned to stealing settlers crops and killing livestock to supplement their food supply. In 1831 a Noongar person was killed taking potatoes this resulted in Yagan killing a servant of the household as was the response permitted under tribal law. In 1832 Yagan and two others were arrested and sentenced to death, settler Robert Menli Lyon argued that Yagan was defending his land from invasion as such he should be treated as a prisoner of war. The argument was successful and the three men were exiled to Carnac Island under the supervision of Lyon and two soldiers, the group later escaped from the island.

Fighting continued on into the 1840s along the Avon River near York.

 

In 1841 a massacre of all Ganeang men found, occurred in and around Lake Mininup, in the area of the Vasse and Blackwood.

The discovery of gold near Coolgardie in 1892 brought thousands of prospectors onto Wangkathaa land, causing sporadic fighting.

Continued European expansion in Western Australia led to further frontier conflict, Bunuba raiders also attacked European settlements during the 1890s until their leader Jandamarra was killed in 1897.  Sporadic conflict continued in northern Western Australia until the 1920s, with a Royal Commission held in 1926 finding that at least eleven Indigenous Australians had been killed in the Forrest River massacre by a police expedition in retaliation for the death of a European.

Wars on the plains.

 

An illustration of the explorer Charles Sturt’s party being “threatened by blacks (sic) at the junction of the Murray and Darling, 1830”, near Wentworth, New South Wales.

 

From the 1830s British settlement spread rapidly through inland eastern Australia, leading to widespread conflict. Fighting took place across the Liverpool Plains, with 16 British and up to 500 Indigenous Australians being killed between 1832 and 1838. The fighting in this region included several massacres of Indigenous people including as the Waterloo Creek massacre and Myall Creek massacres in 1838 and did not end until 1843. Further fighting took place in the New England region during the early 1840s.

 

Fighting also took place in Victoria after it was settled by British in 1834. A clash at Benalla in 1838 marked the beginning of frontier conflict in the colony which lasted for fifteen years. The Indigenous groups in Victoria concentrated on economic warfare, killing tens of thousands of sheep. Large numbers of British settlers arrived in Victoria during the 1840s, and rapidly outnumbered the Indigenous population. By the late 1840s frontier conflict was limited to the Wimmera and Gippsland. Considerable fighting also took place in South Australia between 1839 and 1841 and in Queensland. Indeed, most conflict in the 1870s took place in western and north Queensland and northern Western Australia.

 

Queensland

 

Fighting near Creen Creek, Queensland in September 1876

 

The frontier wars were particularly bloody and bitter in Queensland. The invasion of what is now Queensland commenced as the Moreton Bay penal settlement from September 1824. It was initially located at Redcliffe but moved south to Brisbane River a year later. Free settlement began in 1838 but a wholesale invasion and settlement only really began with the great rush to take up the surrounding land in the Darling Downs, Logan and Brisbane Valley and South Burnett onwards from 1840, in many cases leading to widespread fighting and heavy loss of life. The conflict later spread north to the Wide Bay and Burnett River and Hervey Bay region, and at one stage the settlement of Maryborough was virtually under siege. Both sides committed atrocities, with settlers poisoning a large amount of Indigenous people, e.g. at Kilcoy on the South Burnett in 1842 and on Whiteside near Brisbane in 1847 and Indigenous warriors killing 19 settlers during the Cullin-La-Ringo massacre on 17 October 1861.

 

Queensland’s infamous Native Police Force was formed by the Government of New South Wales in 1848 and under the well connected first Commandant Frederick Walker.

 

Central Queensland was particularly hard hit during the 1860s and frontier violence peaked on the northern mining frontier during the 1870s, most notably in Cook district and on the Palmer and Hodgkinson River goldfields, with heavy loss of Aboriginal lives and several well known massacres. Battle Camp and Cape Bedford belong amongst the best known massacres of Aboriginal people in Cook district, but they were certainly not the only ones.

 

Raids conducted by the Kalkadoon held settlers out of Western Queensland for ten years until September 1884 when they attacked a force of settlers and native police at Battle Mountain near modern Cloncurry. The subsequent battle of Battle Mountain ended in disaster for the Kalkadoon, who suffered heavy losses. Fighting continued in north Queensland, however, with Indigenous raiders attacking sheep and cattle while native police mounted punitive expeditions. The frontier wars in Queensland was overall the bloodiest the history of Colonial Australia. The latest studies gives evidence to some fifteen hundred whites and associates killed at the Queensland frontier during the 19th century and strong indications suggest that upwards of 30 000 Aborigines were shot and otherwise killed at the Queensland frontier, sections of Central and North Queensland were particularly bad.

 

Northern Territory

 

The final battles of the Australian frontier wars took place in the Northern Territory. A permanent settlement was established at modern-day Darwin in 1869 and attempts by pastoralists to occupy Indigenous land led to conflict. This fighting continued into the 20th century, and was driven by reprisals against European deaths and the pastoralists’ desire to secure their land. At least 31 Indigenous men were killed by police in the Coniston massacre in 1928 and further reprisal expeditions were conducted in 1932 and 1933.

 

Historiography

 

 

The existence of armed resistance to white settlement was generally not acknowledged by historians until the 1970s. In 1968 anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner wrote that historians’ failure to include Indigenous Australians in histories of Australia or acknowledge widespread frontier conflict constituted a ‘great Australian silence’. Works which discussed the conflicts began to appear during the 1970s and 1980s, and the first history of the Australian frontier told from an Indigenous perspective, Henry Reynolds’ The Other Side of the Frontier, was published in 1982.

 

Between 2000 and 2002 Keith Windschuttle published a series of articles in the magazine Quadrant and the book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. These works argued that there had not been prolonged frontier warfare in Australia, and that historians had in some instances fabricated evidence of fighting. Windschuttle’s claims led to the so-called ‘History wars’ in which historians debated the extent of the conflict between Indigenous Australians and European settlers.

 

The frontier wars are not commemorated at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. The Memorial argues that the Australian frontier fighting is outside its charter as it did not involve Australian military forces. This position is supported by the Returned and Services League of Australia but is opposed by many historians, including Geoffrey Blainey, Gordon Briscoe, John Coates, John Connor, Ken Inglis, Michael McKernan and Peter Stanley. These historians argue that the fighting should be commemorated at the Memorial as it involved large numbers of Indigenous Australians and paramilitary Australian units.

 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_frontier_wars

 

 

1700s

•             1790 In December, Governor Arthur Phillip issued an order for “a party…of two captains, two subalterns and forty privates, with a proper number of non-commissioned officers from the garrison…to bring in six of those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay; or, if that number shall be found impracticable, to put that number to death”. This was largely in response to the spearing by Pemulwuy of the Governor’s gamekeeper, McEntire, and his subsequent death. McEntire was suspected of violence towards Aboriginal people and Watkin Tench writes he was “the person of whom Baneelon had, on former occasions, shown so much dread and hatred”.

 

And, “from the aversion uniformly shown by all the natives to this unhappy man, he had long been suspected by us of having in his excursions shot and injured them”. On his deathbed, McEntire “began…to accuse himself of the commission of crimes of the deepest dye”, but “declared that he had never fired but once on a native, and then had not killed but severely wounded him in his own defence.” Tench wrote of this denial, “Notwithstanding his deathbed confession, most people doubted the truth of the relation, from his general character and other circumstances.”

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_frontier_wars

 

1800s

 

The first known massacre of Aboriginal people by the British occurred in 1804 at Risdon Cove, in 1816, along the Cataract River,[clarification needed] a tributary of the Nepean River, south of Sydney. Governor Macquarie sent parties against the Gundungurra and Dharawal people, allegedly in reprisal over their encroachments against white farms in the “Nepean” and “Cowpastures” Districts. The British raiding parting split in two at Bent’s Basin, with one group moving south-west against the Gundungurra, and the other moving south-east against the Dharawal. This latter group came upon Cataract Gorge,where the soldiers used their horses to force men, women and children to fall from the cliffs of the Gorge, to their deaths below. The occurrence of the Cataract Gorge (or Appin) Massacre is confirmed by Heritage NSW and the University of Western Sydney.

 

•             The Black War in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) refers to a period of intermittent conflict between the British colonists, whalers and sealers (including those of the American sealing fleet) and Aborigines in the early years of the 19th century. The conflict has been described as a genocide resulting in the elimination of the full-blood Tasmanian Aboriginal population.

 

There are currently some 20,000 individuals who claim Tasmanian Aboriginal descent.

 

The culmination of this period was the transfer of some 200 survivors, rounded up by George Augustus Robinson in the 1830s, to Flinders Island in Bass Strait. Some historians such as Henry Reynolds have described the Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment on Flinders Island, as ‘by far the best equipped, most heavily funded and lavishly staffed of all colonial institutions for Aborigines ’. Josephine Flood notes that they were provided with housing, clothing, rations of food, the services of a doctor and educational facilities. Convicts were assigned to build housing (Henry Reynolds notes that the cottages for Aboriginal people were extremely well built) and do most of the work at the settlement including the growing of food in the vegetable gardens.

 

However, in 1839, Governor Franklin appointed a board to inquire into the conditions at Wybalenna that rejected Robinson’s claims regarding living conditions and found the settlement to be a failure. Camp conditions had deteriorated and many of the residents had died of ill health and homesickness. The report was never released and the government continued to promote Wybalenna as a success in the treatment of Aboriginal Australians.  Of the original 220 who arrived, most died in the following 14 years from introduced disease, with the 47 survivors moved to a settlement at Oyster Cove, south of Hobart, in 1847. Some historians have described the Wybalenna settlement as not suitable: the food and living conditions as poor, and allege that many died of malnutrition as well as disease. Some descendants of sealers and whalers who brought Aboriginal Tasmanians and other women from elsewhere still live on Flinders Island and nearby Cape Barren Island.

 

1810s

 

•             1816 Appin massacre, New South Wales: After some earlier raids on settlers which had resulted in deaths, on April 17, around 1 AM soldiers arrived at a camp of Dharawal people at Appin. Captain Willis from the party of soldiers wrote: “The fires were burning but deserted. A few of my men heard a child cry […] The dogs gave the alarm and the natives fled over the cliffs. It was moonlight. I regret to say some (were) shot and others met their fate by rushing in despair over the precipice. Fourteen dead bodies were counted in different directions.” How many more who might have died when they plunged over the precipice will never be known.

 

1820s

 

•             1824 Bathurst massacre, New South Wales: Following the killing of seven Europeans by Aboriginal people around Bathurst, New South Wales, and a battle between three stockmen and a warband over stolen cattle which left 16 Aborigines dead, Governor Brisbane declared martial law to restore order and was able to report a cessation of hostilities in which ‘not one outrage was committed under it, neither was a life sacrificed or even Blood spilt’. Part of the tribe trekked down to Parramatta to attend the Governor’s annual Reconciliation Day.

 

•             1828, 10 February – Cape Grim massacre, Cape Grim, Tasmania. Four shepherds ambushed and killed 30 Pennemukeer Aboriginal people.

 

1830s

 

•             1830 Fremantle, Western Australia,: The first official ‘punishment raid’ on Aboriginal people in Western Australia, led by Captain Irwin took place in May 1830. A detachment of soldiers led by Irwin attacked an Aboriginal encampment north of Fremantle in the belief that it contained men who had ‘broken into and plundered the house of a man called Paton’ and killed some poultry. Paton had called together a number of settlers who, armed with muskets, set after the Aboriginal people and came upon them not far from the home. ‘The tall savage who appeared the Chief showed unequivocal gestures of defiance and contempt’ and was accordingly shot. Irwin stated, “This daring and hostile conduct of the natives induced me to seize the opportunity to make them sensible to our superiority, by showing how severely we could retaliate their aggression.” In actions that followed over the next few days, more Aboriginal people were killed and wounded.

 

•             1833-34 Convincing Ground massacre of Gunditjmara: On the shore near Portland, Victoria was one of the largest recorded massacres in Victoria. Whalers and the local Kilcarer clan of the Gunditjmara people disputed rights to a beached whale carcass. Reports vary with from 60 to 200 Aborigines killed, including women and children.

 

An 1842 report on the incident notes that the Gunditjmara people believed that only two members of the Kilcarer clan survived.

•             1834: Battle of Pinjarra, Western Australia: Official records state 14 Aboriginal people killed, but other accounts put the figure much higher, at 25 or more.

 

•             1836: August, Lieutenant Bunbury after killings in the York area, tracked one wounded Aboriginal man into the bush and shot him through the head. Bunbury also recorded the names of another 11 Aboriginal men he killed during this period. Settlers to the district collected ears of Aboriginal men slain.

 

•             1838 26 January Waterloo Creek massacre, also known as the Slaughterhouse Creek or Australia Day massacre. A Sydney mounted police detachment, despatched by the Lieutenant Governor of New South Wales Colonel Kenneth Snodgrass, attacked an encampment of Kamilaroi people at a place called Waterloo Creek in remote bushland. The official reports spoke of between 8 and 50 killed. The missionary Lancelot Threkeld set the number at 120 as part of his campaign to garner support for his Mission. Threkeld also claimed Major James Nunn later boasted they had killed from two to three hundred natives, a statement at odds with his own claim, and both not based on any direct evidence but endorsed by historian Roger Milliss.  Other estimates range from 40 to 70, but judge that most of the Kamilaroi were wiped out; as the band involved was only part of the tribe, this is hard to reconcile.

 

•             1838 11 April, by the Broken River at Benalla. A party of some 18 men, in the employ of George and William Faithful, were searching out new land to the south of Wangaratta for their livestock. According to Judith Bassett, some 20 Aborigines attacked, according to one recent account possibly as a reprisal for the killing of several Aboriginal people at Ovens earlier by the same stockmen and at least one Koori and eight Europeans died. It was long known locally as the Faithfull Massacre though Chris Clark argues that ‘there is no reason to view this incident as anything other than a battle which the Aborigines won’. Local reprisals ensued resulting in the deaths of up to 100 Aboriginal people. It also seems they were camping on a ground reserved for hunting or ceremonies.

 

Additional murders of these people occurred at Wangaratta on the Ovens River, at Murchison (led by the native police under Dana and in the company of the young Edward Curr, who could not bring himself to discuss what he witnessed there other than to say he took issue with the official reports). Other incidents were recorded by Mitchelton and Toolamba.

 

This “hunting ground” would have been a ceremonial ground probably called a ‘Kangaroo ground’. Hunting grounds were all over so not something that would instigate an attack. The colonial government decided to “open up” the lands south of Yass after the Faithful Massacre and bring them under British rule. This was as much to try and protect the Aboriginal people from reprisals as to open up new lands for the colonists. The Aboriginal people were (supposedly) protected under British law.

 

•             1838 Myall Creek massacre – 10 June: 28 people killed at Myall Creek near Inverell, New South Wales. This was the first Aboriginal massacre for which European settlers were successfully prosecuted. Several colonists had previously been found not guilty by juries despite the weight of evidence and one colonist found guilty had been pardoned when his case was referred to Britain for sentencing. Eleven men were charged with murder but were initially acquitted by a jury. On the orders of the Governor, a new trial was held using the same evidence and seven of the eleven men were found guilty of the murder of one Aboriginal child and hanged. In his book, Blood on the Wattle, journalist Bruce Elder says that the successful prosecutions resulted in pacts of silence becoming a common practice to avoid sufficient evidence becoming available for future prosecutions. Another effect, as one contemporary Sydney newspaper reported, was that poisoning Aboriginal people became more common as “a safer practice”. Many massacres were to go unpunished due to these practices, as what is variously called a ‘conspiracy’ or ‘pact’ or ‘code’ of silence fell over the killings of Aboriginal people.

 

•             Mid-1838. Gwydir River. A war of extirpation, according to local magistrate Edmund Denny Day, was waged all along the Gwydir River in mid-1838. ‘Aborigines in the district were repeatedly pursued by parties of mounted and armed stockmen, assembled for the purpose, and that great numbers of them had been killed at various spots’.

 

•             1838 In July 1838 men from the Bowman, Ebden and Yaldwyn stations in search of stolen sheep shot and killed 14 Aboriginal people at a campsite near the confluence of the Murrumbidgeeand Murray Rivers in New South Wales.

 

•             May–June 1839 Campaspe Plains massacre, Campaspe Creek, Central Victoria, killing Daung Wurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung people. In May 1839, Daung Wurrung killed two shepherds in reprisal for the murder of three Daung the previous month. An armed party of settlers led by station owner Charles Hutton killed up to 40 Daung at a campsite near Campaspe Creek. The following month, Hutton led an armed party of police who killed six Dja Dja Wurrung at another camp. All six had been shot in the back while fleeing. The Assistant Protector of Aborigines for the region, described the massacre as “a deliberately planned illegal reprisal.”

 

•             Mid 1839 The Murdering Gully massacre near Camperdown, Victoria was carried out by Frederick Taylor and others in retaliation for some sheep being killed on his station by two unidentified Aborigines. The Tarnbeere Gundidj clan of the Djargurd Wurrung people, around 35-40 people, was wiped out. Public censure led to Taylor’s River being renamed Mount Emu Creek and, fearing prosecution for the massacre, in late 1839 or early 1840 Taylor fled to India. Of particular note for this massacre is the extent of oral history, first hand accounts of the incident, the detail in settler diaries, records of Weslayan missionaries, and Aboriginal Protectorate records.

 

•             1830s—1840s Wiradjuri Wars: Clashes between European settlers and Wiradjuri were very violent, particularly around the Murrumbidgee. The loss of fishing grounds and significant sites and the killing of Aboriginal people was retaliated through attacks with spears on cattle and stockmen. In the 1850s there were still corroborees around Mudgee but there were fewer clashes. Known ceremony continued at the Murrumbidgee into the 1890s. European settlement had taken hold and the Aboriginal population was in temporary decline.

 

1840s

 

•             1840-50 – the Gippsland massacres in which 250-1000 Indigenous Australians were indiscriminately killed.

 

•             1840 8 March. The Whyte brothers massacred, according to various estimates, from 20 to 51 Jardwadjali men, women, and children on the Konongwootong run near Hamilton, Victoria. Aboriginal tradition puts the death toll as high as 80.

 

•             1841 27 August. The Rufus River massacre, various estimates – between 16-50.

 

•             There was an extensive massacre at Lake Minimup in Western Australia, lead by Captain John Molloy who “gave special instructions that no woman or child should be killed, but that no mercy should be offered the men. A strong and final lesson must be taught the blacks. … The white men had no mercy. The black men were killed by dozens, and their corpses lined the route of march of the avengers.”

 

•             1842             Settlers poisoned 50 Aboriginal people to death in the Brisbane valley in 1842

 

•             On the outskirts of Kilcoy Station owned by MacKenzie, 30-60 people of the Kabi Kabi died from eating flour laced with strychnine or arsenic.

 

•             1842 Evans Head massacre – the 1842 massacre of 100 Bundjalung Nation tribes-people at Evans Head by Europeans, was variously said to have been in retaliation for the killing of ‘a few sheep’, or the killing of ‘five European men’ from the 1842 ‘Pelican Creek tragedy’. It is also referred to as the ‘Goanna Headland massacre’.

 

•             1843 Warrigal Creek massacre, amounting to 100-150 Aboriginal people.

 

•             1846 George Smythe’s surveying party shot in cold blood from 7 to 9 Aboriginal people, all but one women and children, at Cape Otway.

 

•             1849 By 1849 clashes between Aboriginal people and settlers occurred on the Balonne and Condamine Rivers of Queensland.

 

•             1849 Massacre of Muruwari people at Hospital Creek in retribution for a suspected killing of a white stockman.

 

•             1849 Massacre of Aboriginal people at Butchers Tree near Brewarrina, along the Barwon River, and on the Narran River.

 

•             1849 Avenue Range Station Massacre (Mount Gambier region of South Australia) – at least 9 indigenous Buandig Wattatonga clan people allegedly murdered by the station owner James Brown who was subsequently charged with the crime. The case was dropped by the Crown for lack of (European) witnesses.Christina Smith’s source from the Wattatonga tribe refers to 11 people killed in this incident by two white men.

 

1850s-1890s

 

•             1857 Massacre of the Yeeman. In the early hours of the 27 October 1857, members of the Yeeman tribe attacked the Fraser’s Hornet Bank Station in the Dawson River Basin in Queensland(the Hornet Bank massacre) killing 11 people in retaliation for the deaths of 12 members shot for spearing some cattle and the deaths of an unknown number of Yeeman nine months earlier who had been given strychnine laced Christmas puddings by the Fraser family. Following the deaths of his parents and siblings, William Fraser, who had been away on business, began a campaign of extermination that eventually saw the extinction of the Yeeman tribe and language group. Fraser is credited with killing more than 100 members of the tribe with many more killed by sympathetic squatters and policemen. By March 1858 up to 300 Yeeman had been killed. Public and police sympathy for Fraser was high, and he gained a reputation as a folk hero throughout Queensland.

 

•             1861 Central Highlands of Queensland. Between October and November 1861, police and settlers killed an estimated 170 Aboriginal people in what was then known as the Medway Ranges following the killing of the Wills family.

 

•             1865 The La Grange expedition in Western Australia was a search expedition carried out in the vicinity of La Grange Bay in the Kimberley region of Western Australia led by Maitland Brownthat led to the death of up to 20 Aboriginal people. The expedition has been celebrated with the Explorers’ Monument in Fremantle, Western Australia.

 

•             1867 Goulbolba Hill Massacre, Central Queensland: large massacre in early 1867 involving men, women and children. This was claimed to be the result of settlers pushing Aboriginal people out of their hunting grounds and the Aboriginal people being forced to hunt livestock for food. A party of Native Police, allegedly under Frederick Wheeler, who had a reputation for violent repressions, was sent to “disperse” this group of Aboriginal people, who were “resisting the invasion”. He is supposed to have also mustered up a force of 100 local whites. Alerted to Wheeler’s presence by a native stockman, the district’s Aboriginal people hid in caves on Goulbolba hill. According to eyewitness testimony taken down from one local white in 1899 (thirty years after the event), that day some 300 Aboriginal people, including all the women and children, were shot dead or killed by being herded into the nearby lake for drowning. There is no other supporting evidence of this event.

 

•             1868 Flying Foam Massacre, Dampier Archipelago, Western Australia. Following the killing of two police and two settlers by local Yaburara people, two parties of settlers from the Roebournearea, led by prominent pastoralists Alexander McRae and John Withnell, killed an unknown number of Yaburara. Estimates of the number of dead range from 20 to 150.

 

•             1873 Battle Camp Massacre, Far North Queensland: The event took place during the first rush of miners travelling from the Endeavour River to the Palmer river in about November or December 1873. In an article in the Queenslander’s Sketcher in December 1875, one digger recalled the Palmer rush two years earlier. One morning he and his party had, he told: …passed ‘Battle camp’ … It was here the blacks of the interior first re-ceived their ‘baptism of fire;’ where they first became acquainted with the death-dealing properties of the mysterious weapon of the white man;…Here and there a skull, bleached to the whiteness of snow, with a round bullet-hole to show the cause of its present location…

 

•             1874 Barrow Creek Massacre, Northern Territory: In February Mounted Constable Samuel Gason arrived at Barrow Creek and a police station was opened. Eight days later a group of Kaytetyemen attacked the station, either in retaliation for treatment of Kaytetye women, the closing off of their only water source, or both. Two white men were killed and one wounded. Samuel Gason mounted a large police hunt against the Kaytetye resulting in the killing of many Aboriginal men, women and children – some say up to 90. Skull Creek, where the massacre took place, 50 miles south of Barrow Creek, takes its name from the bleached bones found there long after.

 

•             1874-75 Blackfellow’s Creek Massacre, Far North Queensland. A letter from a miner dated “Upper Palmer River April 16, 1876”, describes his camp at a place known locally as “Blackfellows creek”. He explained, leaving very little doubt as to its appearance, that: “…To my enquiry as to why it was so named, the answer is that not long since ‘the niggers got a dressing there’ – whatever that may mean; possibly a bright coloured shirt apiece, for decency’s sake. There have been, certainly, ‘dressings’ of another sort dealt out in this part of the country to the blacks,…. Be that as it may, however, the Golgotha on which we are at present camped would well repay a visit from any number of phrenological students in search of a skull, or of anatomical professors in want of a ‘subject.'”

 

•             1879 Cape Bedford, Far North Queensland: Cape Bedford massacre on 20 February 1879 – taking the lives of 28 Aborigines of the Guugu-Yimidhirr tribe north of Cooktown – Cooktown based Native Police Sub-inspector Stanhope O’Connor with his troopers, Barney, Jack, Corporal Hero, Johnny and Jimmy hunted down, subsequently “hemmed in” a group of Guugu-Yimidhirr Aborigines in “a narrow gorge”, north of Cooktown on, “of which both outlets were secured by the troopers. There were twenty-eight men and thirteen gins thus enclosed, of whom none of the former escaped. Twenty-four were shot down on the beach, and four swam out to the sea” never to be seen again. This was just one of numerous similar episode, most of which will remain uncounted for, on the Far North Queensland mining frontier during the 1870s.

 

•             1880s-90s Arnhem Land, Northern Territory: Series of skirmishes and “wars” between Yolngu and whites. Several massacres at Florida Station. Richard Trudgen also writes of several massacres in this area, including an incident where Yolngu were fed poisoned horse meat after they killed and ate some cattle (under their law, it was their land and they had an inalienable right to eat animals on their land). Many people died as a result of that incident. Trudgen also talks of a massacre ten years later after some Yolngu took a small amount of barbed wire from a huge roll to build fishing spears. Men, women and children were chased by mounted police and men from the Eastern and African Cold Storage Company and shot.

 

•             1884 Battle Mountain: 200 Kalkadoon people killed near Mount Isa, Queensland after a Chinese shepherd had been murdered.

 

•             1887 Halls Creek Western Australia. Mary Durack suggests there was a conspiracy of silence about the massacres of Djara, Konejandi and Walmadjari peoples about attacks on Aboriginal people by white gold-miners, Aboriginal reprisals and consequent massacres at this time. John Durack was speared, which led to a local massacre in the Kimberley.

 

•             1888 Diamantina River district in south west Queensland. A killing of a station cook near Durrie on the Diamantina in 1888 led to a reported attack by a party of the Queensland Native Police led by sub-inspector Robert Little. The attack was timed to coincide with an assembly of young Aborigines around the permanent waters of Kaliduwarry. Great gatherings of Aboriginal youth were held at Kaliduwarry on the Eyre Creek on a regular basis and attracted youths from as far away as the Gulf of Carpentaria to below the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Perhaps as many as two hundred Aborigines might have been killed on this occasion.

 

•             1890 Speewah Massacre, Far North Queensland: Early settler, John Atherton, took revenge on the Djabugay by sending in native troopers to avenge the killing of a bullock. Other unconfirmed reports of similar atrocities occurred locally.

 

•             1890-1926 Kimberley region, Western Australia – The Killing Times – East Kimberleys: During what the colonial government called “pacification”, recalled as “The Killing Times”, a quarter of Western Australia’s police force was deployed in the Kimberley where only 1% of the white population dwelt.

Violent means were used to drive off the Aboriginal tribes, who were hounded by police and pastoralists alike without judicial protection. The indigenous peoples reacted with payback killings. Possibly hundreds were killed in the Derby, Fitzroy Crossing and Margaret River area, while Jandamarra was being hunted down.  Reprisals, and the “villainous effects” of settler policy left the Kimberley Aboriginal people decimated.  Massacres in retaliation for attacks on livestock are recorded as late as 1926. The Gija people alone recall 10 ten mass killings for this period.

 

 

1900s

 

Kimberley region – The Killing Times – 1890-1920: The massacres listed below have been depicted in modern Australian Aboriginal art from the Warmun/Turkey Creek community who were members of the tribes affected. Oral history of the massacres were passed down and artists such as the late Rover Thomas have depicted the massacres.

 

1910s

 

•             1906-7 Canning Stock Route: an unrecorded number of Aboriginal men and women were raped and massacred when Mardu people were captured and tortured to serve as ‘guides’ and reveal the sources of water in the area after being ‘run down’ by men on horseback, restrained by heavy chains 24 hours a day, and tied to trees at night. In retaliation for this treatment, plus the party’s interference with traditional wells, and the theft of cultural artefacts, Aboriginal people destroyed some of Canning’s wells, and stole from and occasionally killed white travellers. A Royal Commission in 1908, exonerated Canning, after an appearance by Kimberley Explorer and Lord Mayor of Perth, Alexander Forrest claimed that all explorers had acted in such a fashion.

 

•             1915 Mistake Creek Massacre: Seven Kija people were alleged to have been killed by men under the control of a Constable Rhatigan, at Mistake Creek,

East Kimberley. The massacre is supposed to be in reprisal for allegedly killing Rhatigan’s cow, however the cow is claimed to have been found alive after the massacre had already taken place. Rhatigan was arrested for wilful murder apparently due to the fact that the killers were riding horses which belonged to him, but the charges were dropped, for lack of evidence that he was personally involved. While there are four versions of the incident in the oral histories they vary only in minor details. The historian Keith Windschuttle disputes the version put forward by former Governor-General of Australia,William Deane, in November 2002. The official 1915 Turkey Creek police station files which document the massacre contains a claim by an Aboriginal person that Rhatigan was involved, supporting the view of Aboriginal oral history. Despite this, Windschuttle claims that the police inquest ultimately cleared Rhatigan (eyewitnesses reported that Rhatigan was not present) and that the massacre was not a reprisal attack by whites over a cow, but “an internal feud between Aboriginal station hands” over a woman. “No Europeans were responsible. There was no dispute over a stolen cow, and it had nothing to do with theories about terra nullius or of Aborigines being subhuman.”Members of the Gija tribe, from the Warmun (Turkey Creek) community have depicted the massacre in their artworks (see Warmun Art).

 

•             1918 Bentinck Island: Part of the Mornington Island group, Bentinck Island was home to the Kaiadilt clan of just over 100 people. In 1911 a man by the name of McKenzie (other names unknown) was given a government lease for nearby Sweers Island that also covered the eastern portion of the much larger Bentinck Island. Arriving on Bentinck with an Aboriginal woman and a flock of sheep, he built a hut near the Kurumbali estuary. Although the Kaiadilt avoided contact and refrained from approaching McKenzie’s property he is alleged to have often explored the island, shooting any males he found while raping the women. In 1918 McKenzie organised a hunt with an unknown number of settlers from the mainland and, beginning from the northern tip of the island, herded the Indigenous inhabitants to the beach on its southern shore. The majority of the Kaiadilt fled into the sea where those that were not shot from the shore drowned. Those that tried to escape along the beach were hunted down and shot, with the exception of a small number who reached nearby mangroves where the settlers’ horses could not follow. Several young women were raped on the beach, then held prisoner in McKenzie’s hut for three days before being released. As the Kaiadilt remained isolated throughout much of the 20th century, the massacre remained unknown to the authorities until researchers recorded accounts given by survivors in the 1980s.

 

1920s

 

•             1924 Bedford Downs massacre: a group of Gija and Worla men were tried in Wyndham for spearing a milking cow on the Bedford Downs station. When released from the court they were givendog tags to wear and told to walk the 200 kilometres back to Bedford Downs. On arrival they were set to work to cut the wood that was later used to burn their bodies. Once the work was finished they were fed food laced with strychnine by white station hands and their writhing bodies were then either shot or they were clubbed to death. The bodies were subsequently burned by the local police. This massacre has been depicted in artworks by members of the Gija tribe, the identities of the alleged perpetrators passed down and the events re-enacted in a traditionalcorroboree that has been performed since the massacre allegedly occurred. It has been questioned by Rod Moran (a Western Australian journalist) whether this massacre actually occurred or if it is merely a local legend with no foundation in fact. In a magazine article, he argues that there is no evidence for such a massacre and that it is much more likely to be an invention.

 

Moran bases his argument on the implausibility of the claim that the men were ‘marked for death’ with a ticket or tag that they declined to remove even when warned to do so; that it is improbable, because of the number of perpetrators allegedly involved, that word of such an alleged massacre would not have ‘leaked out’ until over sixty years later; on a lack of written contemporary documentation; and that the Europeans and survivors that are mentioned are not named. The accounts became widely known after oral histories collected for the 1989 East Kimberley Impact Assessment Project (EKIAP) were published in 1999. As is customary for Indigenous reports, the EKIAP did not name anyone who was dead. Moran was unaware that several of the original written accounts did name not only the eyewitnesses and survivors but also the killers and other whites who were present but did not participate.

 

•             1926 Forrest River massacre in the East Kimberleys: in May 1926, Fred Hay, a pastoralist, attacked an Aboriginal man by the name of Lumbia and was speared to death. A police patrol led by Constables James St Jack and Denis Regan left Wyndham on 1 June, to hunt for the killer, and in the first week of July Lumbia, the accused man, was brought into Wyndham. At his preliminary hearing, Lumbia testified that Hay had flogged him 20-30 times with his stockwhip because Hay believed he had butchered one of the station’s cattle, which he denied. According to a claim made by the Rev Ernest Gribble at the later Royal Commission, Hay had then raped one of Lumbia’s child wives and was speared and killed by Lumbia as he was departing. At his trial Lumbia was not provided with a lawyer but was represented by Aborigines Department Inspector E.C. Mitchell, who acted as his advocate. After escaping from the courthouse and being recaptured, Lumbia was chained to a post in the street while the jury continued to hear the prosecution case before finding him guilty in his absence. The prosecutor claimed Hay was murdered while protecting his stock and the alleged rape was not mentioned. Statements by Lumbia and his wives recorded before the trial through an Aboriginal interpreter, Mrs Angelina Noble of Forrest River Mission and produced in court, made no mention of rape.

 

In the months that followed, rumours circulated of a massacre by the police party. The Rev. Ernest Gribbleof Forrest River Mission (later Oombulgurri) alleged that 30 people had been killed by the police party and a Royal Commission, after sending out an evidence-gathering party, found that 11 people had been massacred and the bodies burned. In May 1927, St Jack and Regan were charged with the murder of Boondung, one of the 11. However, at a preliminary hearing, Magistrate Kidson found there was insufficient evidence to proceed to trial.

 

•             1928 Coniston massacre: A WW1 veteran shot 32 Aboriginal people at Coniston in the Northern Territory after a white dingo trapper and station owner were attacked by Aboriginal people. A survivor of the massacre, Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, later became part of the first generation of Papunya painting men. Billy Stockman was saved by his mother who put him in acoolamon. A court of inquiry said the European action was ‘justified’.

tp://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/history/genocide.html

 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War