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Informit is the leading single source of journal articles, periodicals, books and policy papers written by experts and specialists in Australia. For off-site access you will need a login: follow the link at the top of this page to access our Usernames and Passwords.
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Books in Library
Relevant Books in the Library
Clickview
ClickView Playlist - Frontier Wars
Watch a series of programs, including a three-part series, on the Frontier Wars. Click Here: Playlist | Frontier Wars
Museum Exhibit
The Australian Museum's Unsettled Exhibition
"I was approached to curate the Australian Museum’s Indigenous-led exhibition about Captain James Cook, as a response to the 250th anniversary in 2020 of the HMB Endeavour’s East Coast voyage during 1770. I knew this would be a challenging task. Cook is often celebrated as the founding father of Australia, with hero-like status to non-Indigenous Australians. But he represents the opposite to First Nations peoples: a symbol of destruction and death, pain and suffering. Curating a show about why these differences exist that meets the needs of both these audiences would not be straightforward, especially in Australia’s oldest museum."
Although the exhibit is now closed, you can explore the virtual version here: The Australian Museum's Unsettled exhibition - The Australian Museum
Sources
Background Reading
- Indigenous Colonial HistoryExplore a range of essays, articles and programs which all centre around this topic. "Colonial history refers to the period when European powers expanded their empires and established colonies in different parts of the world. In the context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, colonial history represents a dark chapter marked by dispossession, forced removals, and cultural suppression."
- What you need to know about the Frontier Wars"Every year the nation stops to remember wartime conflicts from Verdun to Vietnam. But where is the same reverence for the wars fought on our very own soil? ... "
- As the toll of Australia's frontier brutally keeps climbing, truth telling is long overdue"A friend sent me a photograph he’d taken in north-west Queensland of the memorial to the Kalkadoon warriors who, in 1884, fought what was perhaps the biggest battle against government forces to unfold on this continent. Local oral history, black and white, has it that dozens of Indigenous fighters were shot dead after they charged native police contingents ... "
- The Killing Times: the massacres of Aboriginal people Australia must confront"The truth of Australia’s history has long been hiding in plain sight. The stories of “the killing times” are the ones we have heard in secret, or told in hushed tones. They are not the stories that appear in our history books yet they refuse to go away ... "
- Indigenous Responses to Cook and his Voyage"This resource is aligned with the Australian Curriculum: Modern History for Senior Secondary students, with specific reference to content descriptions for Unit 2: Movements for Change in the 20th Century, and specifically those that fall under the examination of ‘Recognition and rights of Indigenous peoples’ ... "
- Australia"Beginning in 1788 British colonization drastically diminished the indigenous or Aboriginal population of Australia. Precise enumeration of the decline is impossible. Estimates of the precolonial population range from 300,000 to 750,000 and statistics for the colonial period are unreliable ... "
- Colonisation 1788 - 1890"From 1788, Australia was treated by the British as a colony of settlement, not of conquest. Aboriginal land was taken over by British colonists on the premise that the land belonged to no-one (‘terra nullius’) ... "
Sources
Resources to help you choose a specific event, incident or theme
- Colonial Frontier Massacres - Timeline"The following estimates are provisional and will be adjusted as the project continues. Only sites for which there is good evidence are included. The estimates of the number of people massacred are conservative and include only those we can be reasonably sure were killed during the massacre or immediately afterwards. In some cases the actual deaths may have been many more ... "
- Colonial Frontier Massacres in Central and Eastern Australia 1788-1930"Colonial frontier massacre is a largely under researched topic in Australia. Most studies relate to particular incidents, such as Risdon Cove in Tasmania (1804) which remains highly contested even today ... "
- The Killing Times"The colonisation of Australia is at the heart of calls for a national truth-telling process. This map tells the stories that have long been kept out of our history books. It shows evidence of mass killings from 1788 until 1928: a sustained and systematic process of conflict and expansion ... "
- Frontier Conflict: First Australians Resistance to Colonial ExpansionThis guide has been supplied by the National Library of Australia. "Frontier Conflict, also known as the Frontier Wars, refers to the period of conflict between First Australians and the British Colonists. The exact dates for this period are debated, but it is generally accepted as dating from the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 through to the 1930s."
- The Queensland Native Mounted Police Research Database"The Queensland Native Mounted Police operated for over 50 years, from 1849 until 1904. It was organised along paramilitary lines, consisting of detachments of Aboriginal troopers led by white officers. It operated across the whole of Queensland and was explicitly constituted to protect the lives, livelihoods and property of settlers and to prevent (and punish) any Aboriginal aggression or resistance ... "
Sources
Events | Incidents | Themes
- Frontier WarsAccess Queensland State Archive records relating to the Frontier Wars. "The frontier wars were a series of violent conflicts between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While conflicts and skirmishes continued between European land holders and Traditional Owners, the military instrument of the Queensland Government was the Native Police ..."
- Murdering Gully: settlers killed 35 in Aboriginal camp, and threw bodies into the water"One day at dawn in early 1839, Frederick Taylor and a number of other armed white men rode on horseback into a sleeping camp of Aboriginal people near present-day Terang in Victoria’s western district. Most of the people encamped on the banks of Mount Emu Creek were of the Tarnbeere gundidj clan, members of the Djargurd wurrung language group. The settlers killed about 35 of the roughly 50 people in the camp, and threw the bodies into the water ... "
- Tasmania's Black War: A tragic case of lest we remember?"Tasmania’s Black War (1824-31) was the most intense frontier conflict in Australia’s history. It was a clash between the most culturally and technologically dissimilar humans to have ever come into contact. At stake was nothing less than control of the country, and the survival of a people ... "
- The Wentworth Lecture: ‘Seeing the Australian Frontier: how colonial art subdued our national history’"Professor Lehman has an intimate relationship with the island’s Indigenous culture and his creative works explore the impact of colonisation on Tasmania’s social fabric."
- Trove"Trove helps you find and use resources relating to Australia. It’s more than a search engine. Trove brings together content from libraries, museums, archives, repositories and other research and collecting organisations." Search Trove with the name of your specific Frontier War event or person.
- Tribal alliances with broader agendas? Aboriginal resistance in southern Queensland's 'Black War'." ... In this paper, the author investigates Laurie’s and Cilento’s remarkable assertion (1959) that during the 1840s to 1860s an alliance of at least a dozen Aboriginal groups openly declared war in southern Queensland and conducted a highly effective ‘Black War’ that temporarily impeded settlement ... "
- Frontier War Stories"Boe Spearim is a Gamilaraay & Kooma radio host and podcaster who lives in Brisbane. Frontier War Stories - a podcast dedicated to truth-telling about a side of Australian that has been left out of the history books. Each episode Boe will speak with different Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people about research, books and oral histories which document the first 140 years of conflict and resistance. These times are the Frontier Wars and these are our War Stories."
