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
Queensland
Conspiracy of Silence: Queensland’s Frontier Killing Times (2013)
Bottoms, Timothy
The Queensland frontier was more violent than any other Australian colony. From the first penal settlement at Moreton Bay in 1824, as white pastoralists moved into new parts of country, violence invariably followed. Many tens of thousands of Aboriginals were killed. Europeans were killed too, but in much smaller numbers.
First Nations History
Creative Spirits
Korff, Jens
Creative Spirits is an extensive resource for students, teachers and those hungry to know what they weren't taught—the truth about Aboriginal culture. I've distilled hundreds of sources into in-depth articles, an ebook, infographics and multimedia for you to explore.
First Nations History
Crikey
Various authors
Regularly features articles relevant to First Nations history, the Voice and Frontier Wars
First Nations History
Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? (2014)
Pascoe, Bruce
Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for precolonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing—behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag.
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.
Frontier Wars
New South Wales
Dirrayawadha (Rise Up) (2024)
Anita Heiss
Miinaa was a young girl when the white ghosts first arrived. She remembers the day they raised a piece of cloth and renamed her homeland 'Bathurst'. Now she lives at Cloverdale and works for a white family who have settled there. The Nugents are kind, but Miinaa misses her miyagan. His brother, Windradyne, is a Wiradyuri leader, and visits when he can, bringing news of unrest across their ngurambang. Miinaa hopes the violence will not come to Cloverdale. When Irish convict Daniel O'Dwyer arrives at the settlement, Miinaa's life is transformed again. The pair are magnetically drawn to each other and begin meeting at the bila in secret. Dan understands how it feels to be displaced, but they still have a lot to learn about each other. Can their love survive their differences and the turmoil that threatens to destroy everything around them?
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’.