The first people thrived on the New England Tableland since the first sunrise. But in the 1830s, squatters began invading the region with their plagues of livestock. Colonisation plunged Aboriginal society into utter chaos, driving us off our lands and decimating the traditional way of life. Our people's remarkable history of resistance and survival has faded into obscurity. It is their story which this book sets out to reclaim, co-opting the colonial archive and subverting the colonial narrative, deconstructing their story in order to uncover our own.

Authors are Peter FitzSimons (long description of events, drawing upon previous authors), SMH editorial writer, Jordan Baker (First Nations view), Mark Tedeschi (the work of Justice Plunkett), Brooke Boney (descendant), Lyndall Ryan (massacre mapping project), Linda Burney (Minister). The SMH notes how the paper at the time added to the rancid atmosphere around the massacre. Illustration credit (Wikimedia Commons): ReColouration of Myall Creek Massacre scene from 177 year old lithograph - "Australian Aborigines Slaughtered by Convicts, by Phiz, The Book of Remarkable Trials, 1840; Chronicles of Crime V. II, 1841." for a Gamilaraay Surviving Descendants community education project. (Creative Commons)

Tells the history of military engagements between Europeans and Aboriginal Australians—described as ‘this constant sort of war’ by one early colonist—around the greater Sydney region from the arrival of a British expedition in 1788 to the last recorded conflict in the area in 1817.

The contact history and political background to race relations in early colonial New South Wales; Kamilaroi territorial groupings, traditional subsistence social organisation, religion and language; pastoral expansion, government policy and attitudes toward Aborigines; violent conflict and the legal and political response; Waterloo Creek, Slaughterhouse Creek, Gravesend and Myall Creek massacres; subsequent inquiries; establishment of the Australian Aborigines Protection Society and Aboriginal Protectorate.

History of early contact based on documentary sources; traces changing attitudes of both Aborigines and whites and the increasingly devastating effects of settlement.