ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the dynamic behind frontier massacres in New South Wales during the first seven decades of the colony’s existence, drawing on data produced by a long-range project to identify, describe and map frontier massacres that took place in central and eastern Australia between the start of colonisation in 1788 and 1930. It traces changing patterns of civilian-as well as state-led massacres over this period, focusing on such aspects as techniques and motives, as well as collusion between civilian, military and government agents in the perpetration of violence against indigenes. Frontier massacres of Aboriginal people were not unknown in New South Wales, but it was the first time since the colony was founded, 50 years earlier, that perpetrators were brought to justice and hanged. The atrocity was only brought back to public view in 1973, when John Molony published an account of the Myall Creek trials in his biography of prominent nineteenth-century New South Wales politician John Hubert Plunkett.
