Colonial settlers frequently clashed with Indigenous people (on continental Australia) during and after the wave of mass immigration of Europeans into the continent, which began in the late 18th century and lasted until the early 20th. Throughout this period, settlers attacked and displaced Indigenous Australians, resulting in significant numbers of Indigenous deaths. These attacks are considered to be a direct and indirect (through displacement and hunger) cause of the decline of the Indigenous population, during an ongoing colonising process of mass immigration and land clearing for agricultural and mining purposes. [1]
There are over 400 known massacres of Indigenous people on the continent. [2] [3] [4] There are at least 26 recorded instances of mass poisonings of Aboriginal Australians. [5] [6] [7] [8]
A project headed by historian Lyndall Ryan from the University of Newcastle and funded by the Australian Research Council has been researching and mapping the sites of these massacres. [9] A massacre is defined as "the deliberate and unlawful killing of six or more undefended people in one operation", and an interactive map has been developed. [5] [10] [6] As of 16 November 2021 [update] , an estimated 304 massacres had been recorded as having taken place in the period between 1788 and 1930. [6] As of 2022 the number of documented massacres of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had risen to 412. [11]
The following list tallies some of the massacres of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by colonial authorities and settlers (or their descendants), most of which took place during the mass-immigration period.
(formerly Van Diemen's Land)
Records in the early days in Port Phillip were sparse and unclear, and the level of resistance to the European settlers and other aspects of Aboriginal culture before this is a source of continuing investigation. [81] It is estimated that massacres by white settlers resulted in the death of approximately 11% of the Aboriginal population between 1836 and 1851. [82]
(then part of New South Wales)
(then part of South Australia)
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 histories of the massacres were passed down and artists such as Rover Thomas have depicted the massacres.
The Coniston massacre, which took place in the region around the Coniston cattle station in the territory of Central Australia from 14 August to 18 October 1928, was the last known officially sanctioned massacre of Indigenous Australians and one of the last events of the Australian frontier wars.
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.
The Pinjarra massacre, also known as the Battle of Pinjarra, occurred on 28 October 1834 in Pinjarra, Western Australia when a group of Binjareb Noongar people were attacked by a detachment of 25 soldiers, police, and settlers led by Governor James Stirling. According to Stirling, "about 60 or 70" of the Binjareb people were present at the camp and John Roe, who also participated, estimated about 70–80. This roughly agrees with an estimate of 70 by an unidentified eyewitness. The attack at Pinjarra was in response to sustained aggression by the Binjarebs, including robberies and murder of settlers and members of other Nyungar tribes.
The Cullin-la-ringo massacre, also known as the Wills tragedy, was a massacre of white colonists by Indigenous Australians that occurred on 17 October 1861, north of modern-day Springsure in Central Queensland, Australia. Nineteen men, women and children were killed in the attack, including Horatio Wills, the owner of Cullin-la-ringo station. It is the single largest massacre of colonists by Aboriginal people in Australian history. In the weeks afterwards, police, native police and civilian posses carried out "one of the most lethal punitive expeditions in frontier history", hunting down and killing up to 370 members of the Gayiri Aboriginal tribe implicated in the massacre.
Australian native police were specialised mounted military units consisting of detachments of Aboriginal troopers under the command of White officers appointed by colonial governments. These units existed in various forms in colonial Australia during the nineteenth and, in some cases, into the twentieth centuries. From temporary base camps and barracks, Native Police were primarily used to patrol the often vast geographical areas along the colonial frontier in order to conduct indiscriminate raids and punitive expeditions against Aboriginal people. The Native Police proved to be a brutally destructive instrument in the disintegration and dispossession of Indigenous Australians. Armed with rifles, carbines and swords, they were also deployed to escort surveying groups, gold convoys and groups of pastoralists and prospectors.
The Forrest River massacre, or Oombulgurri massacre of June 1926, was a massacre of Indigenous Australian people by a group of law enforcement personnel and civilians in the wake of the killing of a pastoralist in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
The Hornet Bank massacre was the killing of eleven British settlers, which included eight members of the Fraser family, by a group of mostly Yiman Indigenous 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 expeditions 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 near-extermination of the entire Yiman 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 primarily British settlers during the colonial period of Australia.
Frederic Charles Urquhart was a Native Police officer, Queensland Police Commissioner and Administrator of the Northern Territory.
The Border Police of New South Wales was a frontier policing body introduced by the colonial government of New South Wales with the passing of the Crown Lands Unauthorised Occupation Act 1839.
Edric Norfolk Vaux Morisset was a high-ranking officer in both the paramilitary and civilian police forces of the New South Wales and Queensland colonies of the British Empire. He was Commandant of the paramilitary Native Police from 1857 to 1861 and concurrently became the first Inspector General of Police in Queensland in 1860. Morisset afterwards was appointed Superintendent of Police at Bathurst and then later on at Maitland. From 1883 until his death in 1887, Morisset was Superintendent of the Southern Districts and Deputy Inspector General of Police in New South Wales.
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.
The Eumeralla Wars were the violent encounters over the possession of land between British colonists and Gunditjmara Aboriginal people in what is now called the Western District area of south west Victoria.
Robert Arthur Johnstone was an officer in the Native Police paramilitary force which operated in the British colony of Queensland. He was stationed at various locations in central and northern Queensland between 1867 and 1880 conducting regular punitive expeditions against clans of Indigenous Australians who resisted colonisation. He also participated in several surveying expeditions in Far North Queensland, including those under the leadership of George Elphinstone Dalrymple.
Criminal activity in New South Wales, Australia is combated by the New South Wales Police Force and the New South Wales court system, while statistics about crime are managed by the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. Modern Australian states and cities, including New South Wales, have some of the lowest crime rates recorded globally with Australia ranked the 13th safest nation and Sydney ranked the 5th safest city globally. As of September 2018 the City of Penrith (475.7) and City of Blacktown (495.1). Rural areas have comparatively high crime rates per 100,000 with rural shires such as Walgett Shire (1350.3) and Moree Plains Shire (1236.2) having some of the highest violent crime rates in the state. The overall NSW crime rate has been in steady decline for many years.
Beilba, sometimes referred to as Beilbah or Bielbah, was an Indigenous Australian resistance fighter from the Expedition Range area of what is now known as Queensland. He became famous for being a leader in the Hornet Bank massacre of 1857, where Aboriginal forces killed 11 British settlers.
Alexander Kennedy was a Scottish colonist who was at the forefront of the British occupation of the Cloncurry region in Queensland, Australia. He established large cattle stations around Cloncurry and participated in several massacres of Aboriginal Australians who were resident to this area. Kennedy was also involved in the creation of the copper mining industry in this region. In later life he became interested in aviation and was a founding investor and director of the Qantas airline company. Kennedy became the first passenger to fly on a regular air service route for the Qantas airline.
From the late 1700s until the end of the 19th century, the British Empire established, expanded and maintained a number of colonies on the continent of Australia. These colonies included New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land, Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and Queensland. Many of these were initially formed as penal settlements, and all were built on land occupied by Indigenous Australians. In order to keep the large number of transported convicts under control, enforce colonial law and fight the Australian frontier wars, British military elements, including the British Army, were deployed and garrisoned in Australia. From 1790 to 1870 over 30 different regiments of the British Army consisting of a combined total of around 20,000 soldiers were based in the Australian British colonies.
Augustus Lucanus or August Lucanus was a police officer and businessman in British colonial Australia. He played an important role in facilitating the colonisation of various goldfield regions in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. As both a police officer and civilian, Lucanus helped lead numerous punitive expeditions against Indigenous Australians resulting in multiple massacres of these people.
William Edington Armit was a soldier, sailor, Native Police officer in the British colony of Queensland, explorer, naturalist and colonial administrator in British New Guinea. Armit is regarded as one of the most violent officers of the paramilitary Native Police force.
...Professor Ryan said she thought the number of sites could rise to 500.
[One of the party of soldiers, Captain Willis, 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."
... and the whalers having used their guns beat them off and hence called the spot the Convincing Ground.
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