New South Wales (NSW)
‘A History of Aboriginal Sydney,’ University of Western Sydney: https://www.historyofaboriginalsydney.edu.au/south-west/1810s
Ailwood, Tim 2018, The Quiet Invasion: A History of Early Sydney, Australian Scholarly Publishing
Australian, Saturday 16 September 1826, p. 2, report of conflict in the Hunter region between Aboriginal people and colonists
Aveling, Marian and Lyndall Ryan, ‘Myall Creek Massacre,’ in Australia 200 Years and Beyond, insert in The Canberra Times, 27 October 1987, pp. 45–50
Barber, Laurie E 2014, Massacre at Myall Creek, Sid Harta Publishers, Glen Waverley, Victoria
Barlass, Tim ‘Frontier wars: Lieutenant’s log maps Haberfield as ground zero,’ The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 March 2019: https://www.smh.com.au/national/frontier-wars-lieutenant-s-log-maps-haberfield-as-ground-zero-20190305-p511ss.html
Beckett, Jeremy and Tamsin Donaldson with Bradley Steadman and Steve Meredith 2003, Yapapunakirri: Let’s Track Back, The Aboriginal World Around Mount Grenfell, written for the Office of the Registrar, Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983 (NSW), p. 23
Bennett, Michael 2020, Pathfinders: A history of Aboriginal trackers in NSW, NewSouth Publishing
Blomfield, Geoffrey 1986, Baal Belbora, the end of the dancing: The agony of the British invasion of the ancient people of the Three Rivers–the Hastings, the Manning and the Macleay in New South Wales, Alternative Publishing Co-operative
‘Bluff Rock,’ Tenterfield Shire Council: https://www.tenterfield.nsw.gov.au/community/aboriginal-torres-strait-islander-other-communities/aboriginal-community/bluff-rock
Bostock, Shauna 2023, Reaching Through Time: Finding My Family’s Stories, Allen & Unwin
Butlin, Noel 1983, Our Original Aggression: Aboriginal Populations of Southeastern Australia 1788–1850, North Sydney
Clayton-Dixon, Callum 2019, Surviving New England: A history of Aboriginal resistance and resilience through the first forty years of the Colonial apocalypse, Anaiwan Language Revival Program, Armidale
Campbell, Judith 2002, Invisible Invaders: Smallpox and Other Diseases in Aboriginal Australia 1780–1880, Melbourne University Press
Campbelltown City Council, Appin Massacre, (April 1816):
https://www.campbelltown.nsw.gov.au/About-Campbelltown/Campbelltown-Aboriginal-Art-and-Culture-Centre/Aboriginal-History/Appin-Massacre,
accessed 1 February 2024
Chase, Diana 2009, Window on Dandaloo: A Community on the Bogan River, Diana Chase, Tottenham Historical Society Inc.
Coe, Mary 1998, Windradyne: A Wiradjuri Koorie, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra
Connor, John 2002, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788–1838, University of New South Wales Press (especially chapters on conflicts in New South Wales)
Corr, Barry, 2016, Pondering the Abyss: a study of the language of settlement on the Hawkesbury Nepean Rivers, online publication, begun in 2008, last updated 28 October 2016.
Coutts-Trotter, Michael, Secretary, New South Wales Department of Communities and Justice, speech at Myall Creek memorial, June 2021:
https://myallcreek.org/michael-coutts-trotter-speech-june-2021-myall-creek/
Davis-Hurst, Patricia 2010, Sunrise Station revisited, Taree, NSW
Debenham, Jennifer, ‘Truth Telling in the Digital Age: A Hunter Valley Massacre,’ History, December 2020, pp. 10–13, accessed on 27 March 2021.
Department of Environment and Climate Change, ‘Frontier massacres and the wall of silence,’ In Sad But Loving Memory: Aboriginal Burials of the Last 200 Years in New South Wales, 1998, Reprinted 2007, p. 17: https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/cultureheritage/0701SadButLoving.pdf
Dunn, Mark 2020, The Convict Valley: The Bloody Struggle on Australia’s Early Frontier, Allen & Unwin
East Ballina Massacre: https://www.liquisearch.com/richmond_river_massacre/massacres/east_ballina_massacre, accessed 11 March 2022.
Erskine, J, E. Ohlsen, Brad Steadman 1997, Mt Drysdale: A Report on the Aboriginal Cultural Significance, prepared for the Western Zone of the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, Sydney, Cultural Services Division
Flannery, Tim ed. 2009, Watkin Tench 1788, Text Publishing, Melbourne
Gamage, Bill 1986, Narranderra Shire, Narrandera Shire Council
Gapps, Stephen 2018, The Sydney Wars: Conflict in the early colony 1788–1817, NewSouth Books, Sydney
Gapps, Stephen 2021, Gudyarra: The first Wiradjuri War of Resistance, The Bathurst War, 1822–1824, NewSouth Books, Sydney
Gipps, John, Every Inch a Governor: Sir George Gipps, Governor of New South Wales 1838–46, Hobson’s Bay Publishing, 1996
Golder, Hillary, ‘Evidence and Accountability: Creating and Using the Public Record,’ The Annual History Lecture, History Council of New South Wales, Sydney, 2006.
Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Australian Aborigines Copies or extracts of despatches relative to the massacres of various Aborigines in Australia, in the year 1838, and respecting the trial of their murderers [electronic resource]. Available at:
https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-52764244/view#page/n1/mode/1up
Hamon, Bruce, They Came to Murramarang: A History of Murramarang, Kioloa and Bawley Point, ANU Press, 1994
Harman, Kristyn 2012, Aboriginal Convicts: Australian, Khoisan and Maori Exiles, UNSW Press, Sydney
Harrison, Rodney 2004, Shared Landscapes: Archaeologies of Attachment and the Pastoral Industry in New South Wales, Volume 3 in Studies in the Cultural Construction of Open Space, UNSW Press and the Department of Environment and Conservation (NSW)
Hill, David 2019, Convict Colony: The remarkable story of the fledgling settlement that survived against the odds, Allen & Unwin, Sydney
‘Hospital Creek Massacre’
See for example, Trove: https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/151756415, Monument Australia: https://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/conflict/indigenous/display/20518-hospital-creek-massacre:
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_Creek_Massacre, accessed 2 May 2021, 14 April 2022
Irish, Paul 2017, Hidden in Plain View: The Aboriginal People of Coastal Sydney, New South Publishing, Sydney
Jackson-Nakano, Ann 2001, The Kamberri: A History of Aboriginal Families in the ACT and Surrounds, Weereewaa History Series Volume 1, Aboriginal History Monograph 8, Canberra
Kabaila, Peter 2011, Survival Legacies: Stories from Aboriginal Settlements of southeastern Australia, Canberra
Jobbins, Sheridan, ‘Skeletons in the Family Tree,’ A&DHS Bulletin, October 2023, pp. 2–7
Kabaila, Peter Rimas 1998, Wiradjuri Places, (Three volumes), Canberra
Karskens, Grace, 2015, ‘Appin Massacre,’ Dictionary of Sydney at: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/appin_massacre
Karskens, Grace 2010, The Colony: A History of Early Sydney, Allen & Unwin, Sydney
Karskens, Grace 2020, People of the River; Lost worlds of early AUSTRALIA, Allen & Unwin, Sydney
Kercher, Bruce, Bar History, ‘Australia on Trial,’ Bar News, Winter 2012, p. 78
Kerkhove, Ray 2023, How They Fought: Indigenous Tactics and Weaponry of Australia’s Frontier Wars, Boolarong Press
(Includes research on the very effective resistance of warriors from the central-western New South Wales Wiradjuri nation).
Krichauff, Skye, ‘The murder of Melaityappa and how Judge Mann succeeded in making “the administration of justice palatable” to South Australian colonists in 1849, Aboriginal History, Vol. 41, 2017, pp. 23–45
Lim, Jonathan 2016, The Battle of Parramatta 21 to 22 March 1797, Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd, North Melbourne, Victoria
Logan, William and Keir Reeves eds c. 2009, Places of pain and shame: dealing with ‘difficult heritage’, Routledge, Milton Park, Abington, Oxon; New York. (Part I Massacre and genocide sites; Part 5 The Myall Creek Memorial: history, identity and reconciliation).
Lydon, Jane, ‘“no moral doubt …”: Aboriginal evidence and the Kangaroo Creek poisoning, 1847–1849,’ Aboriginal History, 1996, 20, pp. 151–175: https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p72561/pdf/article0714.pdf
Lydon, Jane and Lyndall Ryan eds 2018, Remembering the Myall Creek Massacre, NewSouth Books
Macklin, Robert 2016, Hamilton Hume: Our Greatest Explorer, Hachette Australia, Sydney
Mear, Craig, ‘Smallpox in Sydney: 1789,’ Ockham’s Razor with Tegan Taylor, ABC Radio National, Friday 30 September 2011 at: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/craig-mear/3145562
Mear, Craig, ‘The origin of the smallpox outbreak in Sydney in 1789,’ Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 94, Part 1, June 2008, pp. 1–22
Medcalf, Rory c. 1989, 1993, Rivers of blood: massacres of Northern Rivers Aborigines and their resistance to the white occupation 1838–1870, Lismore, New South Wales
Millis, Roger 1992, Waterloo Creek: the Australia Day Massacre of 1838, George Gipps and the Conquest of New South Wales, McPhee Gribble, Ringwood, Victoria
Milne, Edmund, ‘War on the Bogan frontier,’ The Lone Hand, v. 7, no. 7, 1 June 1917, pp. 339–341: https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-392936829/view?sectionId=nla.obj-412083586&partId=nla.obj-392977453#page/n18/mode/1up, accessed on 27 June 2017
‘More Murder By the Blacks,’ Hunter River District News, Armidale, Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser, Saturday, 11 September 1852, p. 2 (Article on the killings that became known as the ‘Meldrum Massacre’) at: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/663728?searchTerm=%22more%20murder%20by%20the%20blacks%22~&searchLimits=dateFrom=1852-01-01|||dateTo=1852-12-31
National Parks and Wildlife Service, New South Wales, Bush Matters, Summer 2003, p. 8
Newbury, Paul, ‘My family connection to Aboriginal genocide,’ Eureka Street, Vol. 23 No. 8, 29 April 2013: https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=35825#.V6U_q5N95PM, accessed on 6 August 2016
New South Wales State Archives and Records, The murder of an Aboriginal man by a runaway convict, 1820, State Archives and Records of New South Wales: https://gallery.records.nsw.gov.au/index.php/galleries/50-years-at-state-records-nsw/1-9/
“Old Hand”, “The Meldrum Massacre”, from ‘Early Dorrigo: Memoirs of Mr W.J. Sinclair,’ Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate, Friday 20 August 1926, p. 6: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/172016500?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FD%2Ftitle%2F879%2F1926%2F08%2F20%2Fpage%2F20543888%2Farticle%2F172016500
Organ, Michael, comp. 1990, A Documentary History of the Illawarra and South Coast Aborigines 1770–1850, Aboriginal Education Unit, Wollongong University
Organ, Michael and AP Doyle 1995, Historical Records of the Illawarra Region of New South Wales, Australia 1770–1855: A Chronological Guide to Sources and Events
Organ, Michael K 2014, Secret Service: Governor Macquarie’s Aboriginal War of 1816, University of Wollongong, Research Online: https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://l.facebook.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1496&context=asdpapers
Organ, Michael K 2016, Appin Massacre and Governor Macquarie’s War 1816, With Secrecy and Despatch Symposium, Campbelltown Arts Centre, 9 April 2016, University of Wollongong Research Online: https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1562&context=asdpapers
O’Rourke, Michael 2009, Passages to the North-west Plains: The Colonial discovery and Occupation of East-Central New South Wales, 1816–26, Canberra. Covers exploration by Oxley, Howe, Lawson and Cunningham and includes an extended discussion of the armed conflict between Aborigines, settlers and police in the Hunter Valley, 1825–26. Available online at SCRIBD: https://www.scribd.com/doc/24478047/Muswellbrook-Merriwa-Mudgee-Aborigines-and-Settlers-1817-26
Poulter, Jim 2016, The Dust of the Mindeye: The use of biological warfare in the conquest of Australia, self-published
Powell, Michael 2016, Musquito Brutality and Exile–Aboriginal Resistance in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, Fullers Bookshop
Proclamation by His Excellency Lachlan Macquarie, Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Saturday 4 May 1816, p. 1:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/2176637
Read, Peter 1988, A Hundred Years War: the Wiradjuri people and the state, Australian National University Press, Canberra
R. v. Kirby and Thompson [1820] NSWKR 11; [1820] NSWSupC 11: trial of convicts John Kirby and John Thompson for the wilful murder of Burragong (King Jack), at Newcastle, New South Wales on 27 October 1820. John Kirby was found guilty of Burragong’s murder and was executed. Kirby was the first European in the colony of New South Wales to be executed for killing an Aboriginal person.
Report of the Myall Creek Massacre, 1838
Held by the State Archives of New South Wales, this is one of the first official reports of the atrocity that happened on Myall Creek station on 10 June 1838 when stockmen murdered 28 Aboriginal men, women and children.
‘In October 1836, William Hobbs became an overseer of Mr Henry Dangar’s three cattle stations on the Big River, one of which was on the Myall Creek (near Inverell). As the first person encountering evidence of the incident [at Myall Creek] and formally reporting it, he became one of the main Crown witnesses in the subsequent murder trials in Sydney. Seven men were eventually convicted and executed for their involvement in the massacre. It was the first time a group of white men were hanged for the murder of Aboriginal people, although the murder of an Aboriginal man by a runaway convict, 1820 had resulted in the execution of an individual (the convict John Kirby).
Hobbs subsequently had difficulty finding employment in the pastoral industry, but he was appointed Chief Constable, Wollombi and McDonald River from 1847-50, Chief Constable Windsor, 1850-64, Gaoler at Windsor 1864-65; and Gaoler at Wollongong from 6 September 1865 until his death on 8 April 1871.’ A copy of the original report and a transcript can be found here: https://gallery.records.nsw.gov.au/index.php/galleries/50-years-at-state-records-nsw/2-10/
Richmond River Massacre: https://www.liquisearch.com/richmond_river_massacre
Salisbury, T and PJ Gresser 1971, Windradyne of the Wiradjuri: Martial Law at Bathurst in 1824, Wentworth Books Pty Ltd, Surry Hills, Sydney
Schlunke, Katrina A 2005, Bluff Rock: Autobiography of a Massacre, Curtin University Books, Western Australia
Silverstein, Ben ed., 2018, Conflict, Adaptation, Transformation: Richard Broome and the practice of Aboriginal history, Aboriginal Studies Press
Smithwick, CA, Early History of the Upper Murray, edited by John Henwood and Margaret Swann, published by John Henwood, 2003
Somerville, Margaret and Tony Perkins 2010, Singing the Coast, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra
Stewart, Lyn 2015, Blood Revenge: Murder on the Hawkesbury, Rosenberg Publishing
Stubbins, Ted and Paulette Smith 2001, The Myall Creek massacre: its history, its memorial and the opening ceremony, Myall Creek Memorial Committee, Bingara, New South Wales
Summons, John 1993, Massacre at Myall Creek, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne. A play about the Myall Creek Massacre.
‘Tabulam’s First Settler: The Tragic End of Peter Pagan,’ Brisbane Courier, Tuesday 13 March, 1928, p. 17
Tedeschi, Mark, ‘Justice evaded, justice denied,’ Inside History, May–June 2014, pp. 40–45. A re-examination of the trials of those responsible for the 1838 Myall Creek massacre, New South Wales. Part 1 in a two-part series.
Tedeschi, Mark, ‘We remember them,’ Inside History, July–August 2014, pp. 46–51. Part 2 of a re-examination of the trial of those responsible for the 1838 Myall Creek massacre, New South Wales.
Tedeschi, Mark 2016, Murder at Myall Creek: The trial that defined a nation, Simon & Schuster (Australia) Pty Limited, Cammeray, New South Wales
Tedeschi, Mark 2017, Speech on War Crimes and Genocide, Myall Creek Massacre Memorial Ceremony, Myall Creek Memorial Site, Sunday 11 June. Contact Friends of Myall Creek: https://myallcreek.org/contact-us/ for full text of speech.
‘The 1838 Myall Creek Massacre Story,’ Friends of Myall Creek: https://myallcreek.org/the-massacre-story/
originally accessed on 14 May 2017, updated link 20 March 2020, 30 April 2021
‘The Myall Creek Massacre’ at: http://www.myallcreekmassacre.com/Myall_Creek_Massacre/Home.html
Thomas, Liz 2013, ‘Aboriginal history of the Coffs Harbour Region,’ Coffs Harbour City Library
Turbet, Peter 2011, The First Frontier: the Occupation of the Sydney Region 1788–1816, Rosenberg
Warren, Chris, ‘Smallpox outbreak of Sydney’s past,’ ABC Radio National, 13 April 2014:
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/smallpox-outbreak-of-sydney27s-past/5375394
Watt, Bruce 2019, Dharawal: the first contact people, 250 years of black and white relations, self-published
Wikipedia, ‘New South Wales Police Force’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_South_Wales_Police_Force
Wikipedia, William Punch (1880–1917): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Punch#:~:text=Private%20William%20Joseph%20Punch%20%2831%20March%201880%20-,
War%20One%20with%20the%20First%20Australian%20Imperial%20Force
Background story on Private William Joseph Punch, a Wiradjuri man, the sole survivor of a massacre at Bland Creek, New South Wales, in 1880 (see also Some Known Conflicts in New South Wales). Punch served in World War I, dying on 29 August 1917.
Wood, Rebecca, ‘Frontier violence and the Bush Legend: The Sydney Herald’s Response to the Myall Creek Massacre Trials and the Creation of Colonial Identity,’ History Australia, Vol. 6, No. 3 (December 2009), pp. 67.1–67.19. Published online on 18 February 2016. Updated most recently 18 April 2022.
Compiled by Jane Morrison 2012–2023. Updated April 2022, 2 October 2022, 16 November 2022, 19 April 2023, 31 May 2023, 6 September 2023, 4 October 2023, 1 February 2024, 5 April 2024, 6 August 2024.
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