The War of Southern Queensland was a conflict fought between a coalition of Aboriginal tribes in South East Queensland, the "United Tribes", and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, from around 1843 to 1855. Following the Kilcoy massacre in 1842, a great meeting was held in the Bunya Scrub of tribes from across South East Queensland north to the Wide Bay-Burnett and Bundaberg regions, fuelled by decades of mistrust and misunderstanding with the British, they united into a loose confederation and issued a "declaration" to destroy the settlements on their lands.
Most of the Wide Bay-Burnett was abandoned during this period, and the settlements on the ranges were under heavy attack by the Mountain Tribes led by Multuggerah. The worst of the conflict was largely confined to these parts of the country, but the main settlement of Brisbane also suffered from raids that pillaged houses and farms. The war marked a reversal in traditional Indigenous battle tactics, moving away from pitched battles early in the conflict to more "hit and run" attacks and aspects of guerrilla warfare.
Following over a decade of sustained conflict along with suffering from severe population loss, resistance against the British largely collapsed in the south. Conflict continued well into the 1860s as the frontier moved further north. The general date for the end of the southern war is attributed to the hanging of Dundalli in 1855, and the subsequent arrival of the Native Police which caused the remaining Aboriginal raiders in Brisbane to flee the town.[1]
Declaration of war
The Aboriginal tribes of South East Queensland every year would gather at the Great Bunya Scrub (Baroon Pocket near Maleny) to feast on Bunya nuts.[2] The occasion was formally used as a festival, to exchange news amongst the tribes. However, following the Kilcoy massacre many of the tribes were aggravated, with many wanting vengeance for the great number that were killed at Kilcoy. At this meeting and spurred on by elders such as Dundalli, the tribes vowed to take revenge on the British wherever they were within their lands. Two witnesses to this were Petrie and Russell who risked their lives to bring news of the "war declaration" to Brisbane, after having been captured by an inter-tribal group and only freed through severe negotiation. This was followed by a letter sent by German missionaries to the Governor of the war declaration.[3]Pugh's Almanac in 1869 noted 1843 as "when the blacks were now beginning to be very troublesome".[4] And travel writer, Nehemiah Bartley gave defined years for the war in his book, Australian Pioneers and Reminiscences (1896). Citing 1843 and 1855 as the start and end dates, with the 1855 likely referencing the execution of Dundalli.
Many a pretty bush station, where ladies in muslin and silks now dwell, and walk and ride as they please, has its humble mound neatly fenced, where sleeps the stockman or shepherd untimely slain by boomerang, spear or tomahawk, between '43 and '55
—Nehemiah Bartley, Australian Pioneers and Reminiscences (1896), p.167
Decline of the Moreton Bay clans
The missionaries Christopher Eipper and J.C.S. Handt both prepared annual reports on the state of the Moreton Bay Aborigines. Handt noted the considerable decline of Aboriginal numbers.
One of the principal causes of their decrease is the diseases to which they are subject, and particularly that which providence has ordained to be the scourge of excess and debauchery and from which even the children are not exempted [venereal disease]. Some of them have died of consumption and dropsy. Another principal cause in their decrease is the prostitution of their wives to Europeans. This base intercourse not only retards the procreation of their own race; but it almost always tends to the destruction of the offspring ... for they generally kill the half-caste children as soon as they are born. The number of Children is consequently very small ….
In 1846 the Anglican Rev. John Gregor of Brisbane claimed a deathrate of one-sixth of the local black population in a period of three years, from what he termed "licentious intercourse of their females with Europeans" – and further deaths locally of 50 Europeans and at least 300 hundred Aborigines during incessant "collisions of aggression, defence and retaliation" in the Moreton Bay District.[6]
↑ Schmidt, Karl W E, 1843, Report of an Expedition to the Bunya Mountains in Search of a Suitable Site for a Mission Station, p.5,Acc 3522/71 in Box 7072, John Oxley Library (Brisbane)
Stradbroke Island, also known as Minjerribah, was a large sand island that formed much of the eastern side of Moreton Bay near Brisbane, Queensland until the late 19th century. Today the island is split into two islands: North Stradbroke Island and South Stradbroke Island, separated by the Jumpinpin Channel.
Foster Fyans was an Irish military officer, penal colony administrator and public servant. He was acting commandant of the second convict settlement at Norfolk Island, the commandant of the Moreton Bay penal settlement at Brisbane, the first police magistrate at Geelong, and commissioner of crown lands for the Portland Bay pastoral district in the Port Phillip District of New South Wales. He is the great-great-grandfather of actor Sam Neill.
Kilcoy is a rural town and locality in the Somerset Region, Queensland, Australia. In the 2021 census, the locality of Kilcoy had a population of 1,996 people.
Thomas Petrie was an Australian explorer, gold prospector, logger, and grazier. He was a Queensland pioneer.
The Somerset Region is a local government area located in the West Moreton region of South East Queensland, Australia, western part of Brisbane and centred on the town of Esk. It was created in 2008 from a merger of the Shire of Esk and the Shire of Kilcoy. It is commonly known as the Brisbane Valley, due to the Brisbane River which courses through the region, although significant parts of the region lie outside the hydrological Brisbane Valley itself.
Christoph Eipper was a pioneering missionary and Presbyterian minister in Australia.
Reverend Carl Wilhelm Schmidt, also known as Karl Schmidt, was a German missionary, and an ordained minister of the Prussian United Church. Schmidt's missionary work took him to Queensland and Samoa, where he founded a number of Lutheran institutions and settlements.
The Turrbal are an Aboriginal Australian people from the region of Brisbane, Queensland. The name primarily refers to the dialect they speak. The traditional homelands of the Turrbal stretch from the North Pine River, south to the Logan River, and inland as far as Moggill, a range which includes the city of Brisbane. Mianjin is also the Turrbal word for the central Brisbane area. There is debate over whether the Turrbal should be considered a subgroup of the Jagera people.
The Zion Hill Mission was a Christian mission founded in the area now known as Nundah, Queensland by German Lutheran missionaries. The mission is notable as being the first free European settlement in what is now the state of Queensland. Despite limited success at converting the local Aboriginal Australians to Christianity, many of the missionaries later became pioneers and farmers in the district, shaping the social fabric of the North Brisbane area for decades to come.
The Battle of One Tree Hill was one of a series of conflicts that took place between European settlers and a group of men of the Jagera and other Aboriginal groups in the Darling Downs area in the colony of Queensland in the 1840s, as part of the Australian frontier wars. It was one in which the settlers were routed by a group of local Aboriginal men under the warrior Multuggerah, a rare event both in its form, as pitched battles between the two groups, and in its outcome.
The Djindubari, also written Jindoobarrie or Joondubarri, are or were an Aboriginal Australian people of southern Queensland, whose traditional lands were located on Bribie Island. They are thought to be a horde or clan of the Undanbi.
The Dalla, also known as Jinibara, are an indigenous Australian people of southern Queensland whose tribal lands lay close to Brisbane.
Dundalli was an Aboriginal lawman who figured prominently in accounts of conflict between European settlers and indigenous aboriginal peoples in the area of Brisbane in South East Queensland. Traditionally described as a murderer, savage and terrorist, he is now thought variously to have been a guerilla leader or to have coordinated a decade-long resistance to white colonization the area. He was hanged publicly in Brisbane in 1855 by order of the Sheriff of New South Wales.
The Undanbi are an Aboriginal Australian people of southern Queensland. Alternative or clan names include Inabara, Djindubari and Ningy Ningy.
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.
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.
Nemehiah Bartley was an Australian merchant primarily active in the Colony of Queensland. He arrived in Australia from England at the age of 19, and also lived for periods in Tasmania, Victoria, and New South Wales. His diaries and published books of his reminiscences provide detailed observations on colonial life in Australia and its personalities.
Multuggerah was an Aboriginal Australian leader and resistance fighter of the Ugarapul nation from the Lockyer Valley in Queensland. He was an important warrior and negotiator, bringing numerous Aboriginal clans together in an armed resistance against the 99th (Lanarkshire) Regiment of Foot, squatters and the squatters' servants and other workers in the 1840s.
John Fahy, also known as Gilburri, was an escaped Irish convict who lived with the Wakka people of the South Burnett in Queensland, Australia.
Yilbung, also known as Millbong Jemmy, was an Indigenous Australian of the Turrbal people who was a major figure in resisting British colonisation during the 1840s around what is now the city of Brisbane.
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