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
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
First Nations History
How They Fought: Indigenous Tactics and Weaponry of Australia’s Frontier Wars (2023)
Kerkhove, Ray
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.
Frontier Wars
South Australia
In the Name of the Law: William Willshire and the Policing of the Australian Frontier (2007)
Nettelbeck, Amanda and Robert Foster
In 1891 Mounted Constable William Willshire, the Officer in Charge of the Native Police, was arrested for the murder of two Aboriginal men. His career was centred in the Northern Territory (then administered by South Australia) during the 1880s and 1890s. Aboriginal resistance to European incursions upon their land was at its height, and it escalated the hardening of racial attitudes and national sentiment.
Frontier Wars
Queensland
In the Shadow of Holocausts: Australia and the Third Reich (2017)
Loos, Noel
Noel Loos has concluded that the Aboriginal people in Queensland had been subject to a genocide, a holocaust different from that inflicted on the Jews in Europe, but equivalent to it.
First Nations History
Independent Australia
Various authors
Regularly features articles relevant to First Nations history, the Voice and Frontier Wars
First Nations History
Inside Story
Various authors
Regularly features articles relevant to First Nations history, the Voice and Frontier Wars
Frontier Wars
Northern Territory
Jesustown: A Novel (2022)
Daley, Paul
A gripping multi-generational saga about Australian frontier violence and cultural theft, and the myths that stand between us and history's unpalatable truths.
Frontier Wars
Queensland
Killing for Country: a Family Story (2023)
Marr, David
A gripping reckoning with the bloody history of Australia's frontier wars. David Marr was shocked to discover forebears who served with the brutal Native Police in the bloodiest years on the frontier. Killing for Country is the result – a soul-searching Australian history. This is a richly detailed saga of politics and power in the colonial world – of land seized, fortunes made and lost, and the violence let loose as squatters and their allies fought for possession of the country – a war still unresolved in today's Australia.
First Nations History
Western Australia
Living in Hope (2017)
Byrne, Frank with Frances Coughlan and Gerard Waterford
This is the story of the early years of my life. The story of a boy who was taken away from his mother and his family forever when he was just six years old. He had no say in it. His family had no say in it. The government had all the say in everything.
First Nations History
Looking Black (2022)
Martin, Kelrick and Dan Bourchier, Executive Producers; ABC Indigenous
Explores the impact of Indigenous storytelling at the ABC, and how it has created deep and honest conversations about the experience of First Nations journalists, storytellers, and presenters.
First Nations History
Indigenous Affairs: Government
Lowitja: The authorised biography of Lowitja O'Donoghue (2020)
Stuart Rintoul
Lowitja O'Donoghue is a truly great Australian. She is arguably our nation's most recognised Indigenous woman. A powerful and unrelenting advocate for her people, an inspiration for many, a former Australian of the Year, she sat opposite Prime Minister Paul Keating in the first negotiations between an Australian government and Aboriginal people and changed the course of the nation.
Frontier Wars
Queensland
Mapping Frontier Conflict in South-East Queensland (2016-17)
Kerkhove, Ray
Aims to visually (digitally) present the resistance wars in south-eastern Queensland 1820-50 in an easily-digestible and informative manner, by combining maps, images and brief explanations. Dr Kerkhove seeks to better illustrate the typical lifestyle of settlers and Aborigines caught in the resistance wars. He also seeks to develop historical maps that better reflect what was happening from an ‘Aboriginal resistance’ perspective.