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
Good Men and True: The Aboriginal Police Force of the Port Phillip District, 1837-1853 (1988)
Fels, Marie Hansen
Historical perceptions of Native Police Corps treachery or cooperation; recruitment; conditions of employment; status; relationship with remainder of Aboriginal population.
First Nations History
Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia (2018)
Heiss, Anita, ed.
What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia? This anthology attempts to showcase as many diverse voices, experiences, and stories as possible to answer that question. Each account reveals, to some degree, the impacts of invasion and colonisation.
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.
First Nations History
Western Australia
Jilya: How one Indigenous woman from the remote Pilbara transformed psychology (2024)
Tracy Westerman
From humble beginnings in the remote Pilbara, psychologist and Nyamal woman Tracy Westerman has redefined what’s possible at every turn. Despite neither of her parents progressing past primary school, and never having met a psychologist before attending university, Tracy went on to become the first Aboriginal person in Australia to complete a PhD in Clinical Psychology, rising to become one of the country’s foremost psychologists. Against significant odds, she commenced her own private business to challenge the way the mental health profession responds to cultural difference, and recently established a charitable foundation and scholarship program to mentor Indigenous people from our highest-risk communities to become psychologists.
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.