Reading list

Here you will find a list of books, websites and other resources below dealing with the Australian Frontier Wars and First Nations. Our listings of Related sites and organisations and Latest news may also be useful.

Note that this list does not include articles in academic or similar journals. Many of the books listed, however, have comprehensive bibliographies, including articles.

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Frontier Wars
Victoria
Deadly Story: Frontier War
VACCA, SNAICC, Koorie Heritage Trust, Federation of Victorian Traditional Owners Corporation, Bright Labs, Victorian Department of Health and Human Services
This article looks at the Frontier Wars that occurred during the invasion and colonisation of what we now call ‘Australia’. We will discuss acts of oppression and violence in some detail against our people and there will be images and videos depicting the conflict. Children should speak to a trusted adult before reading.
First Nations History
Defending Country: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Military Service Since 1945 (2016)
Riseman, Noah and Richard Trembath
Few Australians realise the extent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participation in the military. Using compelling personal narratives and rigorous archival research, Defending Country explores how military service impacted the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander recruits. It also reveals how their involvement in Australia’s defence contributed to the advancement of Indigenous rights.
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.
First Nations History
Victoria
Dhoombak Goobgoowana: A History of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne Volume 1: Truth (2024)
Ross L Jones, James Waghorne & Marcia Langton (eds)
Dhoombak Goobgoowana means ‘truth telling’ in the Woi Wurrung language of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people on whose unceded lands several University of Melbourne campuses are located. This is a book about race and how it has been constructed by academics in the University. It is also about power and how academics have wielded it and justified its use against Indigenous populations, and about knowledge, especially the Indigenous knowledge that silently contributed to many early research projects and collection endeavours. Although many things have changed, the stain of the past remains. But the University no longer wishes to look away.
First Nations History
Queensland
Edenglassie (2023)
Lucashenko, Melissa
Goorie author Melissa Lucashenko tells two extraordinary stories set five generations apart. Torches Queensland’s colonial myths, while reimagining an Australian future.
Frontier Wars
Victoria
Eumeralla Wars
Wikipedia
The Eumeralla Wars were the violent encounters over the possession of land between British colonists and Gunditjmara Aboriginal people in what is now called the Western District area of south west Victoria.
Frontier Wars
Western Australia
Every Mother's Son is Guilty: Policing the Kimberley Frontier of Western Australia 1882-1905 (2016)
Owen, Chris
The policing of Aboriginal people changed from protection under law to punishment and control. The subsequent violence of colonial settlement and the associated policing and criminal justice system that developed, often of questionable legality, was what Royal Commissioner Roth in 1905 termed a ‘brutal and outrageous state of affairs’.
Indigenous Affairs: Government
First Nations History
Everything You Need to Know about the Voice (2023)
Davis, Megan and George Williams
This updated edition charts the journey of this nation-building reform from the earliest stages of Indigenous advocacy, explores myths and misconceptions and, importantly, explains how the Voice offers change that will benefit the whole nation.
Frontier Wars
South Australia
Fatal Collisions: The South Australian Frontier and the Violence of Memory (2002)
Foster, Robert, Rick Hosking and Amanda Nettelbeck
History of race relations between settlers and Indigenous people; book not intended to be a history of violence on the South Australian frontier but rather 'an exploration of the ways in which the violence has been remembered'.
Frontier Wars
Tasmania
Fate of a Free People (1995, 2022)
Reynolds, Henry
Challenges the myth about the fate of Tasmania’s Indigenous people, vividly describing the extent of their resistance to colonisation, discussing the terms of the peace agreement under which they called themselves the ‘free Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land’, and arguing that they weren’t defeated—but betrayed.
Frontier Wars
First Nations History
Fighting Wars
Australian Museum, Sydney
Australia was not peacefully settled; it was taken by force through strategic, political and military campaigns. The early colony was militarised to protect it from foreign attacks, to maintain civil order over the convict population, and to suppress Aboriginal resistance against colonial interests. Defining the decades of armed, violent conflicts between sovereign First Nations and the colonists as “wars”, is often contested. However, the historical records from this period included this specific term to describe events on the frontier. The ongoing refusal to recognise this history of First Nations warriors and their adversaries denies them the memory, and the respect, they deserve.
First Nations History
First Inventors (2023)
Behrendt, Larissa, Director; NITV/Network ten
Rob Collins describes Indigenous inventions (SBS/NITV, four episodes, June-July 2023)