Thomas Wentworth Wills was an Australian sportsman who is credited with being Australia's first cricketer of significance and a founder of Australian rules football. Born in the British penal colony of New South Wales to a wealthy family descended from convicts, Wills grew up in the bush on stations owned by his father, the squatter and politician Horatio Wills, in what is now the state of Victoria. As a child, he befriended local Aboriginal people, learning their language and customs. Aged 14, Wills went to England to attend Rugby School, where he became captain of its cricket team and played an early version of rugby football. After Rugby, Wills represented Cambridge University in the annual cricket match against Oxford, and played at first-class level for Kent and the Marylebone Cricket Club. An athletic bowling all-rounder with tactical nous, he was regarded as one of the finest young cricketers in England.
Springsure is a town and a locality in the Central Highlands Region, Queensland, Australia. It is 66 kilometres (41 mi) south of Emerald on the Gregory Highway. It is the southern terminus of the Gregory Highway and the northern terminus of the Dawson Highway. It is 765 kilometres (475 mi) northwest of Brisbane. In the 2021 census, the locality of Springsure had a population of 950 people.
The history of Queensland encompasses both a long Aboriginal Australian presence as well as the more recent periods of European colonisation and as a state of Australia. Before being charted and claimed for the Kingdom of Great Britain by Lieutenant James Cook in 1770, the coast of north-eastern Australia was explored by Dutch and French navigators. Queensland separated from the Colony of New South Wales as a self-governing Crown colony in 1859. In 1901 it became one of the six founding states of Australia.
Frederick Walker was a British public servant of the Colony of New South Wales, property manager, Commandant of the Native Police, squatter and explorer, today best known as the first Commandant of the Native Police Force that operated in the colonies of New South Wales and Queensland. He was appointed commandant of this force by the NSW government in 1848 and was dismissed in 1854. During this time period the Native Police were active from the Murrumbidgee/Murray River areas through the Darling River districts and into what is now the far North Coast of NSW and southern and central Queensland. Despite this large area, most operations under Walker's command occurred on the northern side of the Macintyre River. Detachments of up to 12 troopers worked on the Clarence and Macleay Rivers in NSW until the early 1860s and patrols still extended as far south as Bourke until at least 1868. After his dismissal from the Native Police, Walker became involved in the pastoral industry as a squatter, as well as organising a private native police force and leading a number of expeditions into Northern Queensland.
"Squatting" is a historical Australian term that referred to someone occupying a large tract of Crown land to graze livestock. Initially often having no legal rights to the land, squatters became recognised by the colonial government as owning the land by being the first European settlers in the area. Eventually, the term "squattocracy", a play on "aristocracy", came into usage to refer to squatters and the social and political power they possessed.
Horatio Spencer Howe Wills was an Australian pastoralist, politician and newspaper owner.
Australian native police units, consisting of Aboriginal troopers under the command (usually) of at least one white officer, existed in various forms in all Australian mainland colonies during the nineteenth and, in some cases, into the twentieth centuries. The Native Mounted Police utilised horses as their transportation mode in the days before motor cars, and patrolled huge geographic areas. From established base camps they patrolled vast areas to investigate law breaches, including alleged murders. Often armed with rifles, carbines and swords, they sometimes also escorted surveying groups, pastoralists and prospectors through country considered to be dangerous.
Moyston is a town in the Western District region of Victoria, Australia, near the Grampians mountain range. The town is located in the Rural City of Ararat local government area, 224 kilometres (139 mi) north west of the state capital, Melbourne. At the 2021 census, Moyston and the surrounding area had a population of 403.
The Hornet Bank massacre involves the killing of eleven settlers and one Aboriginal station-hand, by a group of Iman Aboriginal Australians. The massacre occurred at about one or two o'clock in the morning of 27 October 1857 at Hornet Bank station on the upper Dawson River near Eurombah in central Queensland, Australia. It has been moderately estimated that 150 Aboriginal people succumbed in subsequent punitive missions conducted by Native Police, private settler militias, and by William Fraser in or around Eurombah district. Indiscriminate shootings of "over 300" Aboriginal men, women, and children, however, were reportedly conducted by private punitive expedition some 400 kilometres eastward at various stations in the Wide Bay district alone. The result was the believed extermination of the entire Iman tribe and language group by 1858; this claim was disputed, however, and descendants of this group have recently been recognised by the High Court of Australia to be the original custodians of the land surrounding the town of Taroom.
The Australian frontier wars were the violent conflicts between Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous settlers during the colonisation of Australia. The first conflict took place several months after the landing of the First Fleet in January 1788, and the last frontier conflicts occurred in the early 20th century, with some occurring as late as 1934. An estimated minimum of 100,000 Indigenous Australians and between 2,000 and 2,500 settlers died in the conflicts. Conflicts occurred in a number of locations across Australia.
The Colony of Queensland was a colony of the British Empire from 1859 to 1901, when it became a State in the federal Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. At its greatest extent, the colony included the present-day State of Queensland, the Territory of Papua and the Coral Sea Islands Territory.
Peter Fitzallan MacDonald was a Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly.
Old Rainworth Stone Store is a heritage-listed storehouse and now museum at Wealwandangie Road, Cairdbeign, 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) south of the town of Springsure, Central Highlands Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built in 1862 by George Goldring. It is also known as Old Rainworth Fort and Rainworth Head Station Store. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
The Yiman, also known as Yeeman, Eoman or Jiman, and by themselves in modern times as Iman, are an Aboriginal Australian people living in the Upper Dawson River region around Taroom of eastern Central Queensland.
John O'Connell Bligh was a Native Police officer in the British colonies of New South Wales and Queensland. He achieved the rank of Commandant of this colonial paramilitary force from 1861 to 1864. Bligh is probably best known for an incident in Maryborough, where he shot a number of Aboriginal Australians along the main street and into the adjoining Mary River. After retiring from the Native Police, Bligh became a police magistrate in the towns of Gayndah and Gympie.
The Gayiri, people, also spelt or known as Kairi, Kararya, Kari, Khararya and Kaira, Bimurraburra, Gahrarja, Gara Gara, Ara Ara, and Kara Kara, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of Queensland.
John Murray was a Scottish officer in the Australian native police in the British colonies of New South Wales and Queensland. He was an integral part of this paramilitary force for nearly twenty years, supporting European colonisation in south-eastern, central and northern Queensland. He also had an important role in recruiting troopers for the Native Police from the Riverina District in New South Wales.
George Poultney Malcolm Murray or simply G.P.M. Murray was a British-born senior officer in both the paramilitary Native Police and civilian Queensland Police Force.
