Some Known Frontier Conflicts in the Northern Territory

Encounter with the Natives at “the Officer”, Musgrave Range, [Central Australia, September [?] 1873. The ‘Musgrave Ranges’ straddle the boundary of today’s South Australia and the Northern Territory, extending into Western Australia]. Image from Ernest Giles, Australia Twice Traversed: The Romance of Exploration, 1880 [?], published by The University of Adelaide as an ebook, 14 December 2014

The Northern Territory of Australia was officially part of colonial New South Wales from 1825 to 1863 and was briefly called the Colony of North Australia from February to December 1846. The Northern Territory was officially part of the colony of South Australia from 1863 to 1 January 1911 when it separated from South Australia. ‘Central Australia’ is the region in the southern part of the Northern Territory. First Nations people retaliated against uninvited colonial and immigrant intruders on Country for reasons such as illegal killings, interference with and maltreatment of women and children, desecration of food and water sources, hunting grounds, and sacred sites.

The list below includes locations of some known conflicts that took place geographically in the area that we know today as the Northern Territory. Although, apart from the incident at Attack Creek in 1860, up to 1 January 1911, the locations were officially in the Northern Territory of the colony of South Australia, except for places that were located in the colony of Queensland from 12 April 1862, like Annandale Station, the vicinity of which was the site of a massacre of Aboriginal people in 1879. Additional locations and summaries of conflicts are being added to this list as new information is found.

The ‘Coniston Massacre’, a series of incidents that occurred in the Northern Territory in 1928, is often referred to as last massacre of First Nations peoples on Australian soil. However, conflicts between colonists, immigrants, and First Peoples continued beyond 1928. While it was believed that these types of conflicts ended in the Northern Territory in the 1940s, new research shows that they continued even until the 1980s. On 16 March 2022, Lorena Allam reported in The Guardian that University of Newcastle historian, Dr Robyn Smith, had discovered a massacre in Alice Springs as recently as 1981: Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/16/attempted-aboriginal-massacres-took-place-as-recently-as-1981-historian-says

Main Sources
Some of the main sources of information about conflicts that happened in the Northern Territory are included in such hard copy and online publications as:

A Bastard Like Me, Charles Perkins, 1975, Ure Smith, Sydney Chapter 2, pp. 19–20. Available from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies: https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/e_access/book/m0063258/m0063258_a.htm, accessed 27 September 2022.

A Wild History: Life and Death on the Victoria River Frontier, Darrell Lewis, Monash University Publishing, 2012

Coniston Massacre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coniston_massacre, Wikipedia, accessed 31 May 2023

Frontier Justice: A History of the Gulf Country to 1900, Tony Roberts, University of Queensland Press, 2005

How They Fought: Indigenous Tactics and Weaponry of Australia’s Frontier Wars, Ray Kerkhove, Boolarong Press, 2023

In the Name of the Law: William Willshire and the Policing of the Australian Frontier, Amanda Nettelbeck and Robert Foster, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, South Australia, 2007

Kaytetye Country: An Aboriginal history of the Barrow Creek area, Grace Koch, complier and editor, Harold Koch, translations, Institute for Aboriginal Development Publications, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, 1993

Mataranka and the Daly, Two Studies in the History of Settlement in the Northern Territory, Jane Gleeson and Michaela Richards, Australian National University, North Australia Research Unit Monograph, Darwin, 1985, available at: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/49390/3/MatarankaandtheDaly,TwoStudiesintheHistoryofSettle2.pdf

‘Northern and Western Australia’ in The Australian Frontier Wars 1788–1838, John Connor, University of New South Wales Press, 2002, pp. 68–83

Remembering the Coniston Massacre, Teresa McCarthy, Northern Territory Library Anmatyerr community history project, 2008, now at Territory Stories: https://territorystories.nt.gov.au/10070/213508/0

The Black War in Arnhem Land: Missionaries and the Yolgnu 1908–1940, Mickey Dewar, The Australian National University, North Australia Research Unit, reprinted in 1995, available at: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/49270/1/TheblackWarinArnhemLand2.pdf

Yijarni: True Stories from Gurindji Country, Erika Charola and Felicity Meakins eds, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra, 2016

For more references see the Bibliography, Books and Journal Articles. Also check Resources in the main menu. Scroll down to Databases, Films and Television, Memorials and Monuments, Videos, and Warriors. The News page includes posts about some related First Nations issues.

Map: To see a map of some of the known conflicts that happened in the Northern Territory, please follow this link. All coordinates are approximate. Summaries of what happened at each place are being added gradually to the Northern Territory map as time permits.

Many thanks to readers who email information about colonial frontier conflict sites. Locations will be added to the list below as new information is found and time permits. If you know of incidents that occurred, are not included in the list below and wish to contact the author of this website, please use the form on the Contact page.

WARNING: Some of the placenames listed below are offensive and may be upsetting to some readers. Derived from geographical names registers, historic and modern-day maps and other primary and secondary sources, these placenames reflect the attitudes, racism and activities of those people who gave these places English names during the frontier period.

*Entries marked with an asterisk at the end of the table are from Gurindji historians as told in Erika Charola and Felicity Meakins eds, Yijarni: True Stories from Gurindji Country, AIATSIS, 2016. Exact dates of the incidents are not known, but massacres and conflicts occurred in Gurindji Country in the Killing Times, from c. 1882/83, when British colonists invaded Gurindji lands for pastoral pursuits, until some time in the 1920s.

© Jane Morrison 2015–2024. Updated 3 June 2022, 27 September 2022, 5-7, 28 October 2022, 7 November 2022, 31 May 2023, 4 May 2024. Compiled from the sources mentioned above and from the main Bibliography. No responsibility taken for errors in primary or secondary sources.