Northern Territory (NT)
Albert, Trish 2009, Remembering Coniston, Rigby/Pearson Education, Port Melbourne, Victoria. Published in collaboration with the National Museum of Australia.
Ashenden, Dean 2022, Telling Tennant’s Story, The strange career of the great Australian silence, Black Inc.
Charola, Erika and Felicty Meakins eds 2016, Yijarni: True Stories From Gurindji Country, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra
(Includes stories about massacres and other events in local languages). An example of collaboration between anthropologists and First Peoples to bring the truth of history to light).
Coniston: one of the greatest injustices of contact history [videorecording] about the massacre at Coniston Station in 1928. A film by David Batty and Francis Jupurruria Kelly, c. 2012. Produced with the assistance of the Indigenous Department of Screen Australia; in association with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and with the assistance of Screen Territory. Dialogue in Walpiri with English subtitles.
Dewar, Mickey 1992, The Black War in Arnhem Land: Missionaries, The Australian National University, North Australia Research Unit, reprinted in 1995: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/49270/1/TheblackWarinArnhemLand2.pdf
Gibson, Jason, Jennifer Green and Joel Perrurle Liddle, ‘Memory lines: Ethnographies of colonial violence in Central Australia,’ in Cameo Dalley and Ashley Barnwell eds, Memory In Place: locating colonial histories and commemoration, ANU Press, 2023. pp. 55–83, e-book on the National Library of Australia’s Trove: https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-3282976008/view. This book is also available in hard copy.
Griffiths, Billy, ‘Searching for Retribution Camp,’ in Cameo Dalley and Ashley Barnwell eds, Memory In Place: locating colonial histories and commemoration, ANU Press, 2023. pp. 105–116, e-book on the National Library of Australia’s Trove: https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-3282976008/view. This book is also available in hard copy.
Kerkhove, Ray 2023, How They Fought: Indigenous Tactics and Weaponry of Australia’s Frontier Wars, Boolarong Press
Koch, Grace and Harold Koch, Kaytetye Country: An Aboriginal history of the Barrow Creek area, Institute for Aboriginal Development Publications, 1993
Lewis, Darrell 2012, A Wild History: Life and Death on the Victoria River Frontier, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne
Lewis, Darrell 2021, The Victoria River District Doomsday Book, second edition, originally published 2017, e-book: https://territorystories.nt.gov.au/10070/836453
McCarthy, Teresa 2008, ‘The Attack at Angkwerl (Anna’s Reservoir) August 1884,’ information collated for the Northern Territory Library’s Anmatyerr community history project.
Nettelbeck, Amanda and Robert Foster 2007, In the Name of the Law: William Willshire and the Policing of the Australian Frontier, Wakefield Press
‘Northern and Western Australia, 1824–1834’ in John Connor 2002, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788–1838, University of New South Wales Press
Perkins, Charles, A Bastard Like Me, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1975, Chapter 2, pp. 19–20. In his autobiography Charles Perkins recounts stories of killings and massacres of his mother’s relatives that took place near Mount Riddock in the Northern Territory before 1914. He also mentions the Brooks Soak incident that was part of the Coniston massacres. Read a copy of the book online:
https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/e_access/book/m0063258/m0063258_a.htm
Read, Peter, ‘Murder, Revenge and Reconciliation on the North Eastern Frontier,’ History Australia, Volume 4, Number 1, 2007, Monash University Press, pp. 0.91–09.15.
Roberts, Tony 2005, Frontier Justice: A History of the Gulf Country to 1900, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane
Roberts, Tony, ‘The brutal truth: what happened in the Gulf Country,’ The Monthly, November (2009), pp. 15–17. A link to the article is at: https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2009/november/1330478364/tony-roberts/brutal-truth, accessed on 9 April 2015.
Rogers, Thomas James, ‘William Murray and the Coniston Massacre–A returned soldier’s frontier crimes were probably not a result of his war service,’ Wartime, Issue 85, Summer 2019, pp. 36–40
Rose, Deborah Bird 1991, Hidden Histories: Black Stories from Victoria River Downs, Humbert River and Wave Hill Stations, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra
Wikipedia, entry on Coniston Massacre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coniston_massacre, accessed 31 May 2023. The “Coniston Massacre” was a series of incidents and reprisals that took place in the Northern Territory in 1928. While “Coniston” is often referred to as the most recent massacre of First Nations people in Australia, there have been other conflicts between colonists, their descendants and First Nations (documented and undocumented), that have occurred on Australian soil since 1928. This website includes some known frontier conflicts beyond 1928.
Compiled by Jane Morrison 2012–2023. Updated April 2022, 2 October 2022, 16 November 2022, 19 April 2023, 31 May 2023, 6, 11 September 2023, 28 April 2024, 4 May 2024.
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