Conspiracy of Silence Queensland's Frontier Killing Times

The Queensland frontier was more violent than any other Australian colony. Starting with the penal settlement of Moreton Bay in 1824, as white pastoralists moved into new parts of country, violence invariably followed. Over 50,000 Aboriginals were killed on the Queensland frontier, a quarter of the original population. Europeans were killed too, but not in anything like the same numbers. The numbers are truly horrifying, but why isn't this common knowledge? The cover-up began from the start: the authorities in Sydney and Brisbane didn't want to know, the Native Police did their deadly work without hindrance, and the pastoralists had every reason to keep it to themselves. Even today, what we know about the killing times is swept aside again and again in favour of the pioneer myth. Conspiracy of Silence is the first systematic account of frontier violence in Queensland. Following in the tracks of the pastoralists as they moved into new lands across the state in the 19th century, Timothy Bottoms identifies the sites and the dates of the massacres, poisonings, and other incidents, including many that no one has documented in print before. Drawing on extensive research and oral history, he explores the colonial mindset and explains how the brutal dispossession of Aboriginal landowners continued over decades.

Timothy Bottoms is a Cairns-based historian and author of Djabugay Country and A History of Cairns.