Rottnest Island, often colloquially referred to as "Rotto", is a 19 km2 (7.3 sq mi) island off the coast of Western Australia, located 18 km (11 mi) west of Fremantle. A sandy, low-lying island formed on a base of aeolianite limestone, Rottnest is an A-class reserve, the highest level of protection afforded to public land.
William Buckley, also known as "wild white man", was an English bricklayer and served in the military until 1802, when he was convicted of theft. He was then transported to Australia where he helped construct buildings for the fledgling penal settlement at Port Phillip Bay in what is now Victoria, Australia.
The Northern Territory Police Force is the police body that has legal jurisdiction over the Northern Territory of Australia. This police service has 1,537 police members made up of 79 senior sergeants, 228 sergeants, 839 constables, 208 auxiliaries, and 73 Aboriginal Community Police Officers. The rest of the positions are members of commissioned rank and inoperative positions. It also has a civilian staff working across the NT Police, Fire and Emergency Services.
The Yolngu or Yolŋu are an aggregation of Aboriginal Australian people inhabiting north-eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. Yolngu means "person" in the Yolŋu languages. The terms Murngin, Wulamba, Yalnumata, Murrgin and Yulangor were formerly used by some anthropologists for the Yolngu.
The Myall Creek massacre was the killing of at least twenty-eight unarmed Indigenous Australians by twelve colonists on 10 June 1838 at the Myall Creek near the Gwydir River, in northern New South Wales. After two trials, seven of the twelve colonists were found guilty of murder and hanged, a verdict which sparked extreme controversy within New South Wales settler society. One—the leader and free settler John Fleming—evaded arrest and was never tried. Four were never retried following the not guilty verdict of the first trial.
The Caledon Bay crisis, refers to a series of killings at Caledon Bay in the Northern Territory of Australia during 1932–34, referred to in the press of the day as Caledon Bay murder(s). Five Japanese trepang fishers were killed by Aboriginal Australians of the Yolngu people. A police officer investigating the deaths, Albert McColl, was subsequently killed. Shortly afterwards, two white men went missing on Woodah Island. With some of the white community alarmed by these events, a punitive expedition was proposed by Northern Territory Police to "teach the blacks a lesson".
The Dharawal people, also spelt Tharawal and other variants, are an Aboriginal Australian people, identified by the Dharawal language. Traditionally, they lived as hunter–fisher–gatherers in family groups or clans with ties of kinship, scattered along the coastal area of what is now the Sydney basin in New South Wales.
Matthew Moorhouse was an English pioneer in Australia, pastoralist, politician, and Protector of Aborigines in South Australia. He was in charge of the armed party that murdered 30-40 Maraura people, which may have included women and children, now known as the Rufus River massacre.
Australian native police units, consisting of Aboriginal troopers under the command (usually) of at least one white officer, existed in various forms in all Australian mainland colonies during the nineteenth and, in some cases, into the twentieth centuries. The Native Mounted Police utilised horses as their transportation mode in the days before motor cars, and patrolled huge geographic areas. The introduction of a Police presence helped provide law & order to areas which were already struggling with crime issues. From established base camps they patrolled vast areas to investigate law breaches, including alleged murders. Often armed with rifles, carbines and swords, they sometimes also escorted surveying groups, pastoralists and prospectors through country considered to be dangerous.
The Flying Foam Massacre was a massacre of Aboriginal people around Flying Foam Passage on Murujuga in Western Australia by colonial settlers. Comprising a series of atrocities between February and May 1868, the massacre was in retaliation to the killing of a police officer, a police assistant, and a local workman. Collectively the atrocities resulted in the deaths of an unknown number of Jaburara people, but with estimates ranging from 15 to 150 dead men, women and children.
The Australian frontier wars were the violent conflicts between Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous settlers during the colonisation of Australia. The first conflict took place several months after the landing of the First Fleet in January 1788, and the last frontier conflicts occurred into the early 20th century, with some occurring as late as 1934. An estimated minimum of 100,000 Indigenous Australians and between 2,000 and 2,500 settlers died in the conflicts. Conflicts occurred in a number of locations across Australia.
George Augustus Frederick Elphinstone Dalrymple was a colonist, explorer, public servant and politician, member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland. He founded the towns of Bowen and Cardwell, and pioneered the opening up of the Herbert, Burdekin, Johnstone and Daintree River regions to British colonisation.
Maria was a brigantine built in Dublin, Ireland, and launched in 1823 as a passenger ship. On 28 June 1840, she wrecked on the Margaret Brock Reef, near Cape Jaffa in the Colony of South Australia, somewhere south-west of the current site of the town of Kingston SE, South Australia. The wreck has never been located.
Mineng, also spelled Minang or Menang or Mirnong, are an indigenous Noongar people of southern Western Australia.
The Waterloo Bay massacre, also known as the Elliston massacre, was a clash between European settlers and Aboriginal Australians that took place on the cliffs of Waterloo Bay near Elliston, South Australia, in late May 1849. Part of the Australian frontier wars, the most recent scholarship indicates that it is likely that it resulted in the deaths of tens or scores of Aboriginal people. The events leading up to the fatal clash included the killings of three European settlers by Aboriginal people, the killing of one Aboriginal person, and the death by poisoning of five others by European settlers. The limited archival records indicate that three Aboriginal people were killed or died of wounds from the clash and five were captured, although accounts of the killing of up to 260 Aboriginal people at the cliffs have circulated since at least 1880.
William Henry Willshire was an Australian police officer who worked in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia. He was the first police officer to be charged for murder in Australian history, after killing a group of Aboriginal people at Tempe Downs Station.
The Eumeralla Wars were the violent encounters over the possession of land between British colonists and Gunditjmara Aboriginal people in what is now called the Western District area of south west Victoria.
Robert Arthur Johnstone was an officer in the Native Police paramilitary force which operated in the British imperial colony of Queensland. He was stationed at various locations in central and northern Queensland between 1867 and 1880 conducting regular punitive expeditions against clans of Indigenous Australians who resisted colonisation. He also participated in several surveying expeditions in Far North Queensland, including those under the leadership of George Elphinstone Dalrymple, providing well-armed protection for the expeditionary memers. As a result of being at the frontier of British colonial expansion in this region of Australia, a number of geographical and zoological entities are named after him, such as the Johnstone River and the freshwater crocodile. After resigning from the Native Police in 1880, Johnstone was a police magistrate in various locations around Queensland before he retired from government service in 1891. In his years of duty for the Native Police, Johnstone led many investigations, punitive expeditions and "dispersals". Whilst the activities of the Native Police were consistent with both Government policy and popular expectation, thousands of Aboriginal people were killed or displaced from their traditional lands by the Native Police.
William Edington Armit was a soldier, sailor, Native Police officer in the British colony of Queensland, explorer, naturalist and colonial administrator in British New Guinea. Armit is regarded as one of the most violent officers of the paramilitary Native Police force.
