Reading list

Here you will find a list of books, websites and other resources below dealing with the Australian Frontier Wars and First Nations. Our listings of Related sites and organisations and Latest news may also be useful.

Note that this list does not include articles in academic or similar journals. Many of the books listed, however, have comprehensive bibliographies, including articles.

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Frontier Wars
Queensland
Battlefront 1: The last stand for Aboriginal South East Queensland (2024)
Frank Uhr
A compendium of the Frontier Wars in Wide Bay, Burnett, Dawson and Leichhardt Districts 1840 – 1866 An account of just twenty-six years of the conflicts for the control of grazing lands and water resources. The defenders were full-time warriors, trained to a warrior’s code and the newcomers were the end of the emigrant generation and the beginning of the colonial-born generation. The Colonial Government introduced the Native Police into this conflict with small mobile, heavily armed patrols of a white officer and usually from four to six semi-trained killers out in the bush looking for mayhem and carnage. They became central to everything good or evil that happened on this frontier and help break the power of the clans for the sake of the Colony’s coffers.
First Nations History
New South Wales
Bennelong and Phillip: A History Unravelled (2023)
Fullagar, Kate
Bennelong and Phillip were leaders of their two sides in the first encounters between Britain and Indigenous Australians, Phillip the colony’s first governor, and Bennelong the Yiyura leader. The pair have come to represent the conflict that flared and has never settled.
First Nations History
Black Founders: the Unknown Story of Australia’s First Black Settlers (2006)
Pybus, Cassandra
Cassandra Pybus reveals that black convicts were among our first fleet. Most of these black founders were originally slaves from America who had sought freedom with the British during the American Revolution only to find themselves abandoned and unemployed in England when the war was over.
Frontier Wars
First Nations History
Blood on the Wattle: Massacres and Maltreatment of Aboriginal Australians since 1788 (3rd edition, 2003)
Elder, Bruce
Draws together most of the information about the massacres of the Aboriginal people which has been recorded in books and journals. It also creates a level of awareness of the scale of the massacres, so that this dimension of Australian history can become part of the Australian consciousness.
Frontier Wars
Queensland
Brisbane: The Aboriginal Presence 1824-1860 (2nd augmented edition, 2020; 1st edition, 1990)
Shaw, Barry, ed.
Seven papers covering overview of race relations, Aboriginal occupation before European settlement, impact of European settlement, Aboriginal resistance and European repression, sexual relations between Aborigines and Europeans. law, administration and the press, Aborigines in the local economy, failure of assimilation, fate of local clans.
First Nations History
Frontier Wars
Bunjil’s Fire
Thorpe, Bunjileenee Robbie
A historically informed, critical analysis of Aboriginal affairs and the ongoing political movement for land rights, treaty, sovereignty and the cessation of genocide. Featuring the best of blak music. Arts, Current Affairs, Environment, Human Rights, Indigenous, Local Communities, Protests.
First Nations History
Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788-1930
University of Newcastle: The Centre for 21st Century Humanities
From the moment the British invaded Australia in 1788 they encountered active resistance from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander owners and custodians of the lands. In the frontier wars which continued into the 1920s frontier massacres were a defining strategy to contain and eradicate that resistance. As a result thousands of Aboriginal men, women and children were killed. This site presents a map, timelines, and information about frontier massacres in Australia between 1788 when British colonisation began until 1930. Only frontier massacres for which sufficient evidence exists and can be verified are included. The map also includes information about frontier massacres of non- Aboriginal people such as colonists and others in Australia in the same period.
Queensland
First Nations History
Colonial Queensland: perspectives on a Frontier society (1996)
Bill Thorpe
An impressive work of historical sociology. Covers Aboriginal labour patterns, environmental history (masculinity, hunting and attempts to eliminate native fauna), issues in colonialism, post-colonialism and Australian Studies, social structure (class, race and gender), colonial political economy and intercolonial and global connections, the so-called 'Queensland difference'. (Full text available at URL)
Indigenous Affairs: Government
Commonwealth Closing the Gap 2023 Annual Report and 2024 Implementation Plan
Productivity Commission
The 2023 Annual Report assesses the Commonwealth’s delivery against actions outlined in the 2023 Implementation Plan. The 2024 Implementation Plan is forward looking, outlining the Commonwealth’s strategic priorities for Closing the Gap over the next year. The 2023 Annual Report and 2024 Implementation Plan is supported by the 2023 Annual Report Background Report and 2024 Implementation Plan – Background Plan as well as an interactive Commonwealth Closing the Gap Actions Table which contains all new and existing measures being undertaken by the Commonwealth to support Closing the Gap efforts. Additional supporting reports are the 2023 Partnership Stocktake and the 2023 Sector Strengthening Plan Action Updates.
Frontier Wars
Northern Territory
Coniston (2019)
Bradley, Michael
Coniston, Central Australia, 1928: the murder of an itinerant prospector triggered a series of police-led expeditions that ranged over vast areas for two months, with the ‘hunting parties’ shooting down Warlpiri victims by the dozen. The official death toll, declared by the whitewash federal inquiry as being all in self-defence, was thirty-one. The real number was certainly many times that.
Frontier Wars
Northern Territory
Coniston Massacre
Wikipedia
The Coniston massacre, August-October 1928,  was the last known officially sanctioned massacre of Indigenous Australians and one of the last events of the Australian Frontier Wars. Between 31 and 200 Indigenous Australians were killed. The Wikipedia article is very well sourced.
Frontier Wars
Queensland
Conspiracy of Silence: Queensland’s Frontier Killing Times (2013)
Bottoms, Timothy
The Queensland frontier was more violent than any other Australian colony. From the first penal settlement at Moreton Bay in 1824, as white pastoralists moved into new parts of country, violence invariably followed. Many tens of thousands of Aboriginals were killed. Europeans were killed too, but in much smaller numbers.