Queensland’s Frontier Wars is an attempt to document the known confrontations between either white settlers or white and native police and First Nations people where deaths were reported. It is now an accepted premise that these confrontations were wars to gain access to the land, because, if not wars, then it was mass murder. No one in Queensland was charged with the murder of First Nations during these confrontations. The book shows the invasion from New South Wales into southern Queensland and the advances from the sea in central and north Queensland. The ‘dispersement’ of the First Nations people from their land was violent and efficient using far superior weaponry. This book adds significantly to the true and uncomfortable history of Queensland.

This text is a comprehensive military history of frontier conflict in Australia. Covering the first 50 years of British occupation in Australia, the book examines in detail how both sides fought on the frontier and examines how Aborigines developed a form of warfare differing from tradition.

The history of Australias Frontier Wars is becoming a hot topic for debate and research. It is now part of our national educational syllabus. However, there are very few books available which explain, in detail, the modes of warfare First Australians applied during the Frontier Wars. How They Fought is written as an introductory guidebook. It is broken into chapters covering organisation, strategies, weaponry, and defences. The book considers both traditional practices and technological and tactical adaptations. To make this complex topic more accessible, How They Fought includes numerous tables, figures and diagrams that illustrate and summarize the contents.

The history of Australia’s Frontier Wars is becoming a hot topic for debate and research. It is now part of our national educational syllabus. However, there are very few books available which explain, in detail, the modes of warfare First Australians applied during the Frontier Wars. How They Fought is written as an introductory guidebook. It is broken into chapters covering organisation, strategies, weaponry, and defences. The book considers both traditional practices and technological and tactical adaptations. To make this complex topic more accessible, How They Fought includes numerous tables, figures and diagrams that illustrate and summarize the contents.

As Europeans moved into new lands in Queensland in the 19th century, violent encounters with local Aboriginals mostly followed. Drawing on extensive original research, Timothy Bottoms tells the story of the most violent frontier in Australian colonial history.

In 1840, Brisbane was the furthest outpost of settled Australia. On all sides, it was embedded in a richly Indigenous world. Over the next few years, mostly from across New South Wales northern plains, a large push of pastoralists poured into the Darling Downs, Lockyer and much of southern Queensland, establishing huge sheep stations. The violence that erupted welded many of the tribal groups into an alliance that, by 1842, was working to halt the advance. The Battle of One Tree Hill tells the story of one of the most audacious stands against this migration. It concerns actions engineered by a father and son, Moppy and Multuggerah. In 1843, this culminated in an ingenious ambush and one of the first solid defeats of white settlement in Queensland. The battle at Mount Table Top, 128 kilometres west of Brisbane, astounded many at the time. The response was most likely the largest action of the frontier wars: the assembly of some 100 or more officers, soldiers, police and armed settlers – much of the region’s white settlement – drawn from hundreds of square kilometres. This force sought to drive out the warriors, but despite their best efforts, resistance not only persisted, but managed a few more victories. A fort had to be established to protect travellers, and brutal skirmishes, massacres, raids and robberies trickled on for decades. The Battle of One Tree Hill introduces us to many of the flamboyant characters, curious reversals of fortune and neglected incidents that together helped establish early Queensland. This narrative work combines decades of archival research, analysis, reconstruction and interviews conducted by historians Ray Kerkhove and Frank Uhr.

The publication of this book in 1981 profoundly changed the way in which we understand the history of relations between indigenous Australians and European settlers. Describes in meticulous and compelling detail the ways in which Aborigines responded to the arrival of Europeans.