The strategies and weapons Indigenous people used in the face of invasion

Australia has ignored the horrors of the Frontier Wars for too long, and denied the truth of the fierce Aboriginal resistances. Changing the narrative could change the country.

The tactics of Aboriginal warriors were many and varied, and did significant damage to the early colonists.

The Rufus River runs through Maraura Country, near the juncture of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.

It had already been providing for the peoples of that land for thousands of years when, in 1841, its course suddenly become host to a new livestock route.

In April of that year, 5000 head of sheep were being led along the river's bends the white stockmen corralling them unaware they were being watched.

Suddenly, a coordinated attack by Aboriginal warriors descended upon the group. Two stockmen were killed, one wounded, and the entire flock of sheep captured and herded away.

The Rufus River, where Maraura people launched a successful guerilla attack on white stockmen.

The group were pursued by a full military expedition involving scores of marines, but despite several skirmishes, they repeatedly escaped with their booty, the colonists' precious livestock.

A final embarrassment was in store for the settler force: unable to catch up to the Aboriginal group and desperate to regain the sheep, they were surprised by the appearance of an ambassador who said he was authorised to lead them to the captured animals.

But upon reaching a clearing, the British were dismayed to find all of the livestock had been killed, thousands of bloodied carcasses littering the area.

"Plenty sheep! Plenty sheep!" came the taunting cries (in English) of the Aboriginal warriors.

The episode was an enormous logistical success: hundreds of warriors had been called in from different areas, a successful guerilla operation planned and executed, and the enormous flock expertly herded away.

It was not an isolated incident. As increasing numbers of white settlers desperately tried to gain a foothold in the unfamiliar territory of the invaded continent, Aboriginal peoples were ferociously defending their land, and winning significant tactical battles.

Repairing history

An 1861 painting of the Wills Tragedy, a pivotal moment in the Queensland Frontier Wars. Credit: State Library of Queensland

A new book has detailed some of these victories, as well as the advances in weaponry that accompanied them.

Ray Karkhove's 'How They Fought' details just how varied, sophisticated and successful many of the Aboriginal militaristic operations were against the British colonisation efforts, such as the Rufus River raid.

In a country that still barely acknowledges the Frontier Wars, let alone the finer details of Indigenous resistance, the book is a welcome addition to the histories, says host of the Frontier War Stories podcast, Boe Spearim.

"It's a testament to how we held ourselves," the Gomeroi Kooma man told NITV.

"It’s elevating Aboriginal peoples, whereas usually books of that nature talk as if Aboriginal people were defeated.

Hitting them where it hurt

The strategies used by Indigenous people were likely as numerous as the sovereign Aboriginal nations they came from, but Kerkhove highlights one that struck at the heart of the colony.

Unlike the people whose land they were taking, the British held their value in hard assets: houses, crops, and livestock. These were easily destroyed or taken.

"There were hundreds and hundreds of cattle and sheep being dispersed or slaughtered over a whole area," said Kerkhove, an associate professor at the University of Southern Queensland.

"But they'd also destroy the pasture by continually burning it off so that there was nowhere for the cattle to eat. They burned down all the fences, burned and all the huts.

"They would basically rip the economy out of the hands of white people."

Though this tactic was effectively used to discourage colonists from settling in an area, Aboriginal people were not afraid to go further. As the brutalisation of their peoples continued, they met like with like.

"They would harass anyone travelling along the road, so if they saw any white person, they'd throw spears at them. They would sometimes kill the station owners... There were payback killings that would sometimes carry on for decades.

"It had a devastating effect. There was a whole world of fear along the frontier.

"In the Lockyer Valley, people were afraid to go there even into the 1870s, 30 or 40 years after the first explorers ever went there. That's quite an enduring resistance."

Sophisticated combat structures and weapons

The discipline and skill required to undertake such resistances was equal to that of any military force. Indeed, many of the marines that Aboriginal warriors were fighting had experience in the Napoleonic wars.

The Aboriginal forces, for their part, had been through combat training as part of their initiation, and their skill with weapons was fearsome.

Kerkhove says the perception that nothing could compete with the British guns is disproved by early colonial records.

Aboriginal warriors had sophisticated fighting structures.

“A warrior carrying a bundle of spears, which they normally did, could just shoot them off. He might have 12, even 16 spears with him, and could shoot them off often more rapidly than the British could reload their muskets.

"The range was was quite similar to a musket, and often they were much more accurate... Particularly in the early days, the tally of deaths [in combat] was the same on both sides," he said.

Other weapons included boomerangs that could strike targets hidden behind trees and spiked clubs thrown at enemies.

The research also reveals that Aboriginal people were adapting in real time to the introduction of new materials: trade saw steel and glass spread across the entire continent with incredible speed.

"They had their own workshops where they did their own smelting... they'd get little bits of iron and make them into these wonderful spear heads. They had a hammer to shape them.

"All sorts of new implements were invented... It was such a quick quick adaptation to an entirely different technology."

Changing the narrative

While the events and heroism of the Frontier Wars have a much stronger presence in the oral teachings of individual Aboriginal nations, very little has historically been taught in Australian schools.

Spearim's podcast, which is dedicated to "truth-telling about a side of Australia that has been left out of the history books".

"For the last 100 years since federation, they have set the narrative about what happened to us," he said.

"But what this book does, and what I try to do with the podcast, is reclaim our actions.

"It changes the mould on how non-Aboriginal people could, should and maybe would talk of Aboriginal people and our experiences through those times."

At least in education, that change is slowly underway. Despite political brawls in recent years about the introduction of "overly negative" materials, the curriculum is beginning to reflect the truth of colonisation.

It also comes after years of wrangling over whether the Frontier Wars should be commemorated at the Australian War Memorial.

While the former chair Dr Brendan Nelson resisted growing calls in the final years of his tenure to give the conflicts greater prominence, the institute's new head, Kim Beazley, has signalled he is more amenable to the change.

Spearim is supportive of more recognition, and says the move towards truth-telling rights the fundamental wrong at the heart of colonisation.

"We need the opportunity for people to really grasp what happened to us, whether that's reading in the books, visiting a museum, or having conversations with our people.

"From the beginning, there was this narrative that we didn't matter, and that not mattering justifies everything that has happened: the corralling of our mob, the massacres, putting us on missions to the assimilation policy, to the Aboriginal Protection Board stealing young ones to indoctrinate them.

"This country has a long way to go in finding a better future and being more representative of Aboriginal people.

"At the moment it's not... because it continues to marginalise us and brutalise us."