Harold Blair was an Australian tenor and Aboriginal activist. He has been called the "last great Australian tenor of the concert hall era".
Collarenebri is a town in north western New South Wales, Australia. The town is in the Walgett Shire Local Government Area and is situated on the Barwon River approximately 75 kilometres (47 mi) northeast of Walgett and south west of Mungindi on the Gwydir Highway. It is 16 km (9.9 mi) from Pokataroo which was the nearest railway town prior to closure of the rail service there. The town is 150 metres (490 ft) above sea level. Collarenebri is one of three towns ending in 'BRI' in Northern New South Wales.
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 one body found later). 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".
Frederick Walker was a British public servant of the Colony of New South Wales, property manager, Commandant of the Native Police, squatter and explorer, today best known as the first Commandant of the Native Police Force that operated in the colonies of New South Wales and Queensland. He was appointed commandant of this force by the NSW government in 1848 and was dismissed in 1854. During this time period the Native Police were active from the Murrumbidgee/Murray River areas through the Darling River districts and into what is now the far North Coast of NSW and southern and central Queensland. Despite this large area, most operations under Walker's command occurred on the northern side of the Macintyre River. Detachments of up to 12 troopers worked on the Clarence and Macleay Rivers in NSW until the early 1860s and patrols still extended as far south as Bourke until at least 1868. After his dismissal from the Native Police, Walker became involved in the pastoral industry as a squatter, as well as organising a private native police force and leading a number of expeditions into Northern Queensland.
Toomelah is an Aboriginal Australian community in the far north of inland New South Wales, Australia.
Australian native police were specialised mounted military units consisting of detachments of Aboriginal troopers under the command of White officers appointed by colonial governments. These units existed in various forms in colonial Australia during the nineteenth and, in some cases, into the twentieth centuries. From temporary base camps and barracks, Native Police were primarily used to patrol the often vast geographical areas along the colonial frontier in order to conduct indiscriminate raids and punitive expeditions against Aboriginal people. The Native Police proved to be a brutally destructive instrument in the disintegration and dispossession of Indigenous Australians. Armed with rifles, carbines and swords, they were also deployed to escort surveying groups, gold convoys and groups of pastoralists and prospectors.
The Richmond River massacres were a series of murders of groups of Indigenous Australians and European Australians in the region around the Richmond River in north-eastern New South Wales in the mid-nineteenth century.
The Hornet Bank massacre was the killing of eleven British settlers, which included eight members of the Fraser family, by a group of mostly Yiman Indigenous Australians. The massacre occurred at about one or two o'clock in the morning of 27 October 1857 at Hornet Bank station on the upper Dawson River near Eurombah in central Queensland, Australia. It has been moderately estimated that 150 Aboriginal people succumbed in subsequent punitive expeditions conducted by Native Police, private settler militias, and by William Fraser in or around Eurombah district. Indiscriminate shootings of "over 300" Aboriginal men, women, and children, however, were reportedly conducted by private punitive expedition some 400 kilometres eastward at various stations in the Wide Bay district alone. The result was the near-extermination of the entire Yiman tribe and language group by 1858; this claim was disputed, however, and descendants of this group have recently been recognised by the High Court of Australia to be the original custodians of the land surrounding the town of Taroom.
The Moonie River (Mooni River) is a river in Shire of Balonne, Queensland and Walgett Shire, New South Wales, both in Australia. It is a perennial river of the Barwon catchment within the Murray–Darling basin.
William Lee, also variously known as William Smith and William Pantoney until 1816, was an Australian pastoralist and politician. He was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly between 1856 and 1860. Lee was a foremost pioneer of British colonisation in New South Wales, being amongst the first white men to take land in the Bathurst, Capertee, Bylong, Bogan and Lachlan River regions.
Whiteside is a suburb in the City of Moreton Bay, Queensland, Australia. In the 2021 census, Whiteside had a population of 810 people.
The Rufus River Massacre was a massacre of at least 30–40 Aboriginal people that took place in 1841 along the Rufus River, in the Central Murray River region of New South Wales. The massacre was conducted by a large group of South Australian Police, who were sent to the region by the Governor of South Australia, George Grey, after Indigenous warriors carried out a series of effective raids against settler overland drives. The police were augmented by armed volunteers and a separate party of overlanders who were already battling with Aboriginal people in the Rufus River area. The colony's Protector of Aborigines, Matthew Moorhouse, accompanied the punitive expedition. He was unsuccessful in his efforts to mediate a solution before the massacre occurred.
Slavery in Australia has existed in various forms from colonisation in 1788 to the present day. European settlement relied heavily on convicts, sent to Australia as punishment for crimes and forced into labour and often leased to private individuals. Many Aboriginal and African Australians were also forced into various forms of slavery and unfree labour from colonisation. Some Indigenous Australians performed unpaid labour until the 1970s.
The Border Police of New South Wales was a frontier policing body introduced by the colonial government of New South Wales with the passing of the Crown Lands Unauthorised Occupation Act 1839.
John O'Connell Bligh was a Native Police officer in the British colonies of New South Wales and Queensland. He achieved the rank of Commandant of this colonial paramilitary force from 1861 to 1864. Bligh is probably best known for an incident in Maryborough, where he shot a number of Aboriginal Australians along the main street and into the adjoining Mary River. After retiring from the Native Police, Bligh became a police magistrate in the towns of Gayndah and Gympie.
Edric Norfolk Vaux Morisset was a high-ranking officer in both the paramilitary and civilian police forces of the New South Wales and Queensland colonies of the British Empire. He was Commandant of the paramilitary Native Police from 1857 to 1861 and concurrently became the first Inspector General of Police in Queensland in 1860. Morisset afterwards was appointed Superintendent of Police at Bathurst and then later on at Maitland. From 1883 until his death in 1887, Morisset was Superintendent of the Southern Districts and Deputy Inspector General of Police in New South Wales.
John Murray was a Scottish officer in the Australian native police in the British colonies of New South Wales and Queensland. He was an integral part of this paramilitary force for nearly twenty years, supporting European colonisation in south-eastern, central and northern Queensland. He also had an important role in recruiting troopers for the Native Police from the Riverina District in New South Wales.
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.
Thomas Coutts was an Australian colonist who emigrated from Scotland during the 19th century, establishing various enterprises including whaling and pastoral farming businesses. He is best known for perpetrating a mass poisoning of Aboriginal Australians on a property near the Clarence River in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales, which killed at least 23 people. Although Coutts was arrested for this crime, the judicial authorities never put the case to trial and he was released after the payment of bail. Coutts afterwards became a prosperous and respected colonial figure. The town of Coutts Crossing is named after him.
