The Wiradyuri clans occupied the area west of the Blue Mountains around present day Bathurst and Mudgee. It was rich country and the Wiradyuri were one of the largest Indigenous groups in Australia. In the early 1820s they mounted an effective military resistance which temporarily set back British settlement west of the Mountains.
In Gudyarra Stephen Gapps provides a detailed account of this struggle using a rich selection of primary sources supplemented by oral histories taken from descendants of the Wiradyuri.
The Bathurst frontier was the first area of Eastern Australia to be settled with the primary view of commercial farming. Millennia of Aboriginal fire farming had produced a landscape perfect for grazing cattle and sheep.
The original settlement however was small, and Governor Macquarie did not initially make private land grants but established a number of government farms. In the period between 1816 to 1822 the frontier was relatively peaceful.
That changed as private land grants were taken up and the convict stockmen came into conflict with the Wiradyuri who attacked isolated outstations and drove off stock. Regular soldiers and settlers sought to retaliate. In 1824 Martial Law was declared. There were a number of pitched, albeit small-scale, battles. There were several massacres. Gapps estimates that about ten percent cent of the Wiradyuri were killed in the conflict.
There was no treaty concluding hostilities – though a prominent Wiradyuri leader Windradyne did cross the mountains to meet Governor Brisbane at Parramatta in late 1824 – and thus there was no cession of sovereignty. The Wiradyuri are still there.
Reviewed by Grant Hansen
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I am an historian committed to bringing the Frontier Wars (1788-1930) into broader public recognition as Australia’s First Wars. I have published two award winning books The Sydney Wars 1788-1817 (NewSouth, 2018) and Gudyarra – The First Wiradyuri War of Resistance, The Bathurst War 1822-1824 (NewSouth 2021).
I have also previously worked as a consultant historian and as a museum curator at the Australian National Maritime Museum where I co-curated the major new permanent exhibition Shaped by the Sea – Stories of Deep Time Australia (2022). As Senior Associate – Historianat Artefact I bring over 20 years experience in a wide range of areas and places of history – from sites of conflict and commemoration to riverways and sea lanes.
0 Comments