Ray Kerkhove is a prolific writer on the Australian Wars in Queensland. An important recent book of his is How They Fought: Indigenous Tactics and Weaponry of Australia's Frontier Wars (2023). His posts on the Defending Country site deal with the evidence of frontier conflict in Queensland (here and here) and the structures that protected settlers from blacks during that conflict (here and here).
Dr Kerkhove has now sent us his recent article for the Queensland History Journal, 'Rediscovering the Frontier Wars: Queensland’s contribution and the role of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland 1950s-1960s' (Volume 26, No. 6, May 2026, pp. 511-522). Dr Kerkhove says the article 'was written to demonstrate that "frontier wars" is not (as the far right claim) a recent "leftist" invention, but was a term used since the 1930s-1950s and part of a long history of writing about Indigenous-settler conflict in Australia'.
Dr Kerkhove's article is based on his Clem Lack Oration at the Royal Historical Society of Queensland (RHSQ) on 20 November 2025. The article includes illustrations of some of the people and books mentioned. Following are some extracts and paraphrases from the article.
Queensland pioneered post 1980s writing on the Australian (Frontier) Wars, through the work of Henry Reynolds, Robert Ørsted-Jensen, Noel Loos and others. Much earlier, there was Clem Lack (born 1902), journalist and writer on history, whose work on frontier conflict dates back to 1938.
Lack was almost certainly the first Australian to popularise frontier war history, and the first to present Dundalli as a resistance leader. He began this task incredibly early, through Courier-Mail articles such as ‘Black Raiders of the Early Days’ (July 1938) and ‘When Black Men Routed the Whites’ (April 1938). The latter article was the first twentieth-century history of the Battle of One Tree Hill near Toowoomba. (p. 513)
Lack's 1964 book with Harry Stafford, The Rifle and the Spear, was
probably the first to cover all the key incidents of Queensland’s Frontier Wars including Hornet Bank (p. 7), the conflict on the Maranoa (p. 27), the Wide Bay/Burnett (p. 69), Cullin-La-Ringo (p. 99) and Cape York (p. 196). What is notable about The Rifle and the Spear is its candid admissions concerning the intensity of warfare between Aboriginal peoples and settlers. (p. 515).
Arthur Laurie, RHSQ Vice-President, gave papers on frontier conflict to the society in the 1950s. Sir Raphael Cilento, long-time RHSQ President and distinguished medical administrator, despite his record of conservative and racist statements, 'passionately pursued progressive social policies. He was deeply concerned with improving Indigenous health, making a field trip in 1933 across much of northern Australia to better understand the situation.' (p. 517) He welcomed Aboriginal families to his home and advised on their health.
In Triumph in the Tropics (1959), co-authored by Cilento and Clem Lack,
Chapter 16 (‘The Aborigines’), has the subtitle, ‘The Guerilla War Along the Fragmentary Aboriginal Frontiers; and the Attempt at Rehabilitation and Assimilation’, and offers one of Australia’s first recognitions of the Frontier Wars. This is extraordinary. ‘Guerilla warfare’ and ‘frontier’ are terms we use regularly to discuss the Australian Wars, but here it is written 22 years before Reynolds’ ground-breaking exposure. Triumph in the Tropics went as far as outlining specific theatres of conflict: the mining frontier, maritime frontier, forest frontier, and pastoral frontier.
Cilento's unpublished work continued the theme. One manuscript, 'The Black War in Queensland', includes these paragraphs:
"Early Queensland was as much a frontier land as the American West. On the Darling Downs and in the Burnett and the Northwest can still be seen the survivals of a grim era in our history – solidly built slab homesteads and huts with loopholes pierced in the thick walls for rifles." [For more on this, see Dr Kerkhove's articles (here and here). DC.]
The manuscript candidly admits the genocidal nature of the fighting, using words, ‘massacre,’ ‘extermination,’ ‘invaders,’ and ‘war’, that would be hotly contested during the 2000s History Wars:
"War between the whites and the blacks, marked by bloody massacre and equally bloody reprisal, flares sporadically for more than half a century … the darkest chapter in the history of relations between the white settler and the aboriginal native occurred in Queensland. Extermination of the black tribes by the settler’s rifle … can neither be denied nor palliated ... The consistent and systematic attacks made on white settlement by the tribes in the period from 1842 onwards suggest they were acting in concert and had in fact declared war on the white invaders of their country ... This war on the whites by the blacks was, according to Dr [James Dunmore] Lang, common talk among the residents of Brisbane [emphasis added]." (p. 519)
Dr Kerkhove finds Queensland frontier conflict writing as far back Blagden Chambers in the 1920s and John Campbell in 1875 and he concludes:
Queensland played a much greater role in the development of Australia’s Frontier War studies than is currently recognised ... Far from Queensland being enveloped in ‘The Great Australian Silence’ on Aboriginal matters, there was an unbroken lineage of research into Indigenous-settler conflict extending back to the participants. (p. 520)
Dr Kerkhove's own writings sit alongside those of the Queenslanders he writes about and, more recently, Henry Reynolds, Humphrey McQueen, Timothy Bottoms, and now the many contributors (besides Dr Kerkhove himself) to The Australian Wars book. Lists and links like the one following, developed by Dr Kerkhove, also offer easily accessible sources.
'History of the Black War in Van Diemen's Land', Port Phillip Gazette, 4 December 1841
The great object was to drive the aborigines into the southeastern corner of the island, and capture them where there was little chance of escape. The divisions therefore started from certain fixed points, and gradually moved in the direction ordered, until they became more concentrated. The blacks, who could not comprehend the scape of the grand manoeuvre, and a species of cross-firing being kept up, retreated towards where they found no men at arms. Fires were kept upon the most conspicuous hills, to guide the movements of the different sections towards certain definitive points.
'The Aborigines' [from the Maitland Mercury, April 8], The Australian [Sydney], 14 April 1843
[I]f the Government will not awake to a proper sense of its duty, the stock proprietors, whose interests are affected, should shake off their apathy, and with the "spirit of free men", adopt those means which the British Constitution admits and suggests to compel its attention, and force it to open its unwilling eyes to the loss of life and the ruin which its negligence is causing.
It is high time that this folly should cease, and that a government which has in trust such great and important interests, which, in their present depressed condition require the most careful fostering, should now awaken from its lethargy, and shake off the effects of that dose of sickly sentimentality which has relaxed its energy, and rendered it, with regard to one large portion of its duties, absolutely useless.
This is our country by right of discovery and conquest ...
'Books worth reading: White conquest', Sydney Morning Herald, 1 April 1876
According to the author [Hepworth Dixon], these conflicting races are four—the white, red, black, and yellow, with innumerable varieties and shades, caused by the intermingling of blood. What will be the result of this bringing face to face of diverse nationalities remains to be seen ... Eventually, according to a natural law, seen even in insect life "White must conquer". A colony of black ants usually settles near a colony of red. Does nature mean her duskier children to be seized and made to labour for the fairer kinds ? The red ants hunt them down. A red ant is no bigger in body no stronger in mandible than a black ant yet the Amazons always beat their duskier sisters and enslave their brood.
'The Westralian Aborigines', Evening Observer [Brisbane], 1 February 1905
It is the old, old story of the white man’s conquest of the black—the meanest recital to which human ears can attend. No doubt there are many men engaged in the pearl-fishing trade who are clean, honest, and humane, but Dr. Roth’s report [into the conditions of Aborigines in parts of WA] would appear to indicate that there are some who disgrace the white man’s name and, for the sake of paltry profit or passing passion, have introduced amongst the blacks the scourges that degrade civilisation.
'The Aborigines', Morgans Courier [Mount Morgan, WA], 28 April 1906
Our own aborigines are low in the scale of intelligence, and while they have been incapable of any serious opposition to the white man's advance, they have, and still do so, constituted a problem that is difficult of solution in accordance with the huge demands of humanity and of justice. It has been alleged that in the early days of Western Australia, as well as in the Eastern States, the natives were shot down by the pioneers in order to get rid of them. Slavery in the north has been more than hinted at in recent years, and the large number of half-cast children found in different parts of the State are ample eyidence of the existence of widely diffused and criminal immorality ...
'Aborigines and half-castes', [from 'Arunda'] The Register [Adelaide], 19 November 1910
I wish to urge those interested in the welfare of the aborigines and half-castes, and in the Bill now before Parliament for their better protection, that, instead of taking the half-caste children to Adelaide and placing them under the care of the State Children's Department, where they would have to associate with many of the worst class of white children, a large school be formed in Central Australia for them, under the management of capable Christian teachers, where the children would be taught to fear God and learn the three R's, useful trades, and domestic duties.
'The conquest of Cape York: fighting blacks, impassable scrub, and lawyer vines' [E.J.W], The World's News [Sydney], 25 February 1911
The story of their [the pioneering Jardine brothers] success is a record of constant tribulation, crowned in the end by a due reward for their indomitable pluck and determination. Dense scrubs, in which the atrocious lawyer vine flourishes at its best, rough mountainous country broken only by deadly swamps and morasses, treacherous niggers thirsting for their blood following them from camp to camp, and the wonder of it was that they got through as they did with only the loss of a few head of cattle and some horses.
Dr Kerkhove's Queensland History Journal article is made available by the author and RHSQ; to both our thanks. DC.
Picture credit: Massacre at Skull Hole, Mistake Creek, Queensland (Carl Lumholtz, 1888/Wikimedia Commons). This was the site of the alleged Bladensburg massacre, in which around 200 Aboriginal people were killed in c.1872.
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