
Subsequently, a single spear was thrown towards the British party, which "happily hurt nobody". This caused the two Dharawal men to run to their huts and seize their spears and shields. Cook then ordered "a musket to be fired with small-shot" and the elder of the two was hit in a leg. Two Dharawal men made threatening gestures and a stone was thrown to underline that the British were not welcome to land at that spot. On 29 April Cook and a small landing party fired on a group of Dharawal people who sought to prevent the British from landing at the foot of their camp at Botany Bay, described by Cook as "a small village". In 1770 a British expedition under the command of then-Lieutenant James Cook made the first voyage by Europeans along the Australian east coast. "Night Attack by Blacks", monotone painting by Livingston Hopkins Indeed, while battles and massacres occurred in a number of locations across Australia, they were particularly bloody in Queensland, owing to its comparatively larger pre-contact Indigenous population. However, recent scholarship on the frontier wars in what is now the state of Queensland indicates that Indigenous fatalities may have been significantly higher. The first fighting took place several months after the landing of the First Fleet in January 1788, and the last clashes occurred in the early 20th century, as late as 1934.Ī minimum of 40,000 Indigenous Australians and between 2,000 and 2,500 settlers died in the wars. Thousands of warriors and resistance fighters, divided among over 150 different nations, clans, groupsĪustralian frontier wars is a term applied by some historians to violent conflicts between Indigenous Australians (including both Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders) and non-Indigenous settlers during the British colonisation of Australia.Disruption of traditional culture, assimilation of many Indigenous people.Indigenous population decline due to killings, starvation, forced migration and epidemics introduced by British.


British/Australian control over Australia established, Indigenous Australians dispossessed.Australia, including Tasmania and other surrounding islands
