Boe Spearim is a Gamilaraay and Kooma radio host and podcaster who lives in Brisbane. Frontier War Stories - a podcast dedicated to truth-telling about a side of Australia that has been left out of the history books. Each episode Boe will speak with different Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people about research, books and oral histories which document the first 140 years of conflict and resistance. These times are the Frontier Wars and these are our War Stories.

Image galleries (Frontier Wars, prisoner abuse, freedom fighters, massacres, habitats and villages), plus resources and history with lots of references.

The frontier wars were a series of violent conflicts between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While conflicts and skirmishes continued between European land holders and Traditional Owners, the military instrument of the Queensland Government was the Native Police. The Native Police was a body of Aboriginal troopers that operated under the command of white officers on the Queensland frontier from 1849 to the 1920s. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men were often forcefully recruited from communities -- already diminished due to colonisation -- that were normally a great distance from the region in which they were to work. They were offered low pay, along with rations, firearms, a uniform and a horse. Many deserted. Although we will never know exactly how many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were killed during the frontier wars, estimates range from thousands to tens of thousands. Regardless of the number, many First Nations peoples were killed on the land that became known as Queensland.

Historical perceptions of Native Police Corps treachery or cooperation; recruitment; conditions of employment; status; relationship with remainder of Aboriginal population.

Traces the co-ordinated resistance warfare by the Wiradyuri under the leadership of Windradyne, and others such as Blucher and Jingler, in a vast area across the central west of New South Wales. Detailing drastic counterattacks by colonists and punitive expeditions led by armed parties of colonists and convicts that often ended in massacres of Wiradyuri women and children.

Written as an introductory guidebook, it is broken into chapters covering organisation, strategies, weaponry, and defences. It 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 summarise the contents.