Reading List category: 

New South Wales

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.
Frontier Wars
New South Wales
Demons at Dusk: Massacre at Myall Creek (2007)
Peter Stewart
1838 and the British Empire is expanding relentlessly. On a remote cattle station on the frontier of the young New South Wales colony a lonely convict hut keeper is forced to confront the power and greed which drives that expansion. One of the convict stockmen on the station invites a group of Aborigines to the station with the promise of protection from the bands of marauding troopers and stockmen who roam the countryside. The station's convicts and their overseer develop close relationships with the Aborigines but the threat of violence is never far away. All must ultimately face some terrible choices - choices which reverberate across the colony and leave the young hut keeper struggling to find the courage to stand against powerful oppressors. The story behind 'Demons at Dusk' is true. It is a story of love and courage, betrayal and tragedy, mystery and deceit and the strength of the human spirit.
Frontier Wars
New South Wales
Gudyarra: The First Wiradyuri War of Resistance – The Bathurst War 1822-24 (2021)
Gapps, Stephen
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.
Frontier Wars
New South Wales
Murder at Myall Creek: the Trial that Defined a Nation (2017)
Mark Tedeschi
In 1838, eleven convicts and former convicts were put on trial for the brutal murder of 28 Aboriginal men, women and children at Myall Creek in northern New South Wales. The trial created an enormous amount of controversy because it was almost unknown for Europeans to be charged with the murder of Aborigines. It would become the most serious trial of mass murder in Australia’s history. The trial’s prosecutor was the Attorney General of New South Wales, John Hubert Plunkett. It proved to be Plunkett’s greatest test, as it pitted his forensic brilliance and his belief in equality before the law against the combined forces of the free settlers, the squatters, the military, the emancipists, the newspapers, and even the convict population.
Frontier Wars
New South Wales
Pemulwuy: The Rainbow Warrior (1987, 1988, 2021)
Willmot, Eric
A novel about one of Australia's first true heroes, Pemulwuy. A proud and feared Aboriginal warrior, Pemulwuy leads an uncompromising twelve-year war (1788-1802) against British colonial oppression and makes the supreme sacrifice in order to guide his people to safety.
Frontier Wars
New South Wales
Some Known Frontier Conflicts in New South Wales
Morrison, Jane
Seeks to document the frontier conflicts between European colonists and Australia’s First Peoples. Maps, timelines, names of warriors, memorials, resources, latest news. Separate sites for each state.