Colonialism

Richard Fotheringham The Australian
06 October 2010

The discovery of a memoir by Steele Rudd's father sheds light on the murderous collision between settlers and Aborigines on the Darling Downs

European settlement in Australia was bloody brutal. The idea that on small or imagined provocation you had to kill Aborigines indiscriminately was tacitly acknowledged throughout the immigrant rural communities: "how else could the land be made safe for settlers and their families?"

Here is a book review that reveals a few historical records of southern Queensland's frontier wars. An uncomfortable silence still hangs over the most controversial issue in Australian colonial history.