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Australian frontier wars

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The Australian frontier wars were a series of conflicts fought between Indigenous Australians and European settlers that spanned a total of 146 years. The first fighting took place several months after January 26, 1788 and the last clashes occurred as late as 1934.

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1788

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Mounted police engaging Indigenous Australians during the Slaughterhouse Creek Massacre of 1838

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Most common estimate: 20,000 minimum 2000

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Indigenous Australians

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Australia

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Australian frontier wars

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The Australian frontier wars were a series of conflicts fought between Indigenous Australians and European settlers that spanned a total of 146 years. The first fighting took place several months after January 26, 1788 and the last clashes occurred as late as 1934. Queensland, by all accounts the most populated section of indigenous Australia, represents also the single bloodiest backdrop of the Australian colonial frontiers. Thus the records of Queensland document the most frequent reports of shootings and massacres of indigenous people, the three deadliest massacres on white settlers, the most disreputable frontier police force, and the highest number of white victims to frontier violence on record in any Australian colony. A recent study thus calculate indigenous fatalities caused by the Queensland Native Police Force alone to no less than 24,000, whereas most scholars accept an overall continental minimum of 20,000 such fatalities. However Queensland's Native Police was responsible for only a certain period and section of the violence on the Queensland frontier. Thus should the 24.000 prove to be true, we will have to face an Aboriginal frontier violent death toll in Queensland alone which by far exceeds 30,000. This problem naturally affects also the death toll on the European and settler side of the frontier. The continental death toll of Europeans and associates have thus been roughly estimated to between 2,000 and 2,500, yet we now have fairly solid evidence that Queensland alone accounted for an estimated 1,500 of these fatal frontier casualties. Far more devastating in their impact on the Aboriginal population, however, were the effects of disease, followed by infertility, loss of hunting ground, starvation and general despair, loss of pride, and the alcoholic 'remedy' for this devastation. There are powerful indications that small-pox epidemics may have impacted some Aboriginal tribes with depopulation in large sections of what is now Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland with up to 50% or more, even before the move inland from Sydney of squatters and their livestock. Then other diseases hitherto unknown in the Indigenous populationsuch as the common cold, flu, measles, venereal diseases and tuberculosismade a second impact, significantly reducing their numbers and tribal cohesion, so limiting their ability to adapt and resist invasion and dispossession.