This post links to Ray Kerkhove, 'Alice Duncan-Kemp's "Warrior Lodges" and Kooroongoora: structures of resistance during Australia's Frontier Wars', Oceania, Volume 95, Issue 1, March 2025, pp. 71-93, March 2025. First published online 16 April 2025, an open access version facilitated by University of Southern Queensland, as part of the Wiley-University of Southern Queensland agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.
Defending Country thanks Ray Kerkhove for bringing the article to our attention. His most recent book is How They Fought: Indigenous Tactics and Weaponry of Australia’s Frontier Wars (2023). Our review article also covered four earlier (2019-20) pieces by him either solo or jointly.
ABSTRACT
Addressing recent critiques concerning the accuracy of Alice Duncan-Kemp's accounts of the Channel Country, this essay evaluates her extraordinary statements concerning the structure of the Kooroongoora millenarian movement and what she called ‘warrior lodges’. The essay considers the implications of these descriptions for our current understandings of how First Nations groups organised militant resistance against inroads of settlement. After defining millenarian movements and warrior sodalities, the paper considers how Duncan-Kemp's accounts align with common features of these phenomena. Evidence is presented for large-scale alliances, medicine man resistance leaders and warrior associations in many regions of Australia. The author suggests these may have been central to First Nations resistance during Australia's Frontier Wars.
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CONCLUSION: RE-EVALUATING AUSTRALIAN ‘WARRIORHOOD’
There is ample evidence that intertribal alliances existed across the continent, and that millenarian cults led by far-travelling, charismatic medicine men such as Boxer operated across vast areas ...
Likewise, Australia had squads of warriors manifesting all the usual traits of warrior sodalities or ‘lodges’ found in other parts of the world: names and regalia related to predator-guardians; widespread policing; sanctuary for members; and grades and insignia obtained by payment or achievement. The diversity of this phenomenon both within and beyond Australia, as represented in the material collected in this essay, demonstrates a fine ‘line’ between warrior lore, totemic and moiety obligations, and male initiation. In many ways, these entities resemble and extend traditional pinya (revenge) parties as reported in different parts of the continent. One explanation is that the latter probably became more powerful and organised in many regions, in response to the challenges of resisting settler incursions.
The issues expounded in this essay highlight the need for more research into how Australian First Nations peoples organised themselves militarily, especially during the Frontier Wars. Australian First Nations have rarely been assessed with a military lens. As a result, terms like ‘warrior lodge’ and ‘alliance’ sit uncomfortably with current understandings even if entities of this sort likely underpinned much of what happened during Australia's Frontier Wars.
Picture credit: SE Queensland tribal alliances recalled by Gairabau. Source: Ray Kerkhove, 'The accidental explorer: unknown and under-rated exploration of the sunshine coast/Cooloola region, 1827–1860', Queensland History Journal, Vol. 24, no. 3, 2019, pp 299-313.
24 July 2026
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