“Each poor poisoned wretch”: Distributing death by poison on Queensland’s colonial frontier

05/15/2022.Reading time 29 minutes.

By Lynley Wallis We have written before about why finding evidence for frontier massacres in the archaeological record is extremely difficult. There are several reasons why this is the case, not least because most causes of death are soft tissue injuries that leave little trace upon skeletal remains. This is especially the case for victims […]

Left for Dead

04/19/2022.Reading time 13 minutes.

By Heather Burke The discrepancy between lived reality and the version of it reported in the newspapers is nowhere more apparent than when trying to find evidence of frontier conflict events. Although attacks on White people were frequently reported—often in tones of stentorian outrage— attacks on Aboriginal people rarely were. Despite the bodies of Aboriginal […]

Murdering Molvo Part II: Beyond History Written by the Victors

08/13/2020.Reading time 20 minutes.

By Iain Davidson, Heather Burke and Lynley Wallis In a previous post we described a series of events that occurred in western Queensland (Qld) in 1879, involving the killings of four Europeans by Aboriginal people, and the reprisal massacres carried out by the NMP and local settlers that followed. The story we told was reconstructed […]

Murdering Molvo Part I: The Events at Wonomo Waterhole

07/13/2020.Reading time 46 minutes.

By Iain Davidson, Heather Burke, Lance Sullivan and Lynley Wallis The nature of historical knowledge is complex, involving oral history, archaeology and (less often than is generally supposed) written documents, many of which begin with some sort of oral telling. Here we outline the historical knowledge of a particular series of events in northwest Queensland […]

“I suppose I have had more experience amongst blacks than any other man of my age in this colony”[1]: Wentworth D’Arcy Uhr Part I

03/04/2019.Reading time 19 minutes.

By Frank Uhr My name is Frank Uhr, and I am a 70-something historian living in Brisbane, following and thoroughly enjoying the adventures of the Archaeology on the Frontier team as they help open the veil on men who served in the Qld Native Mounted Police (NMP). You see, my great grandfather Wentworth D’Arcy Uhr (Figure […]

The Many Meanings of ‘X’

10/26/2018.Reading time 20 minutes.

By Tony Pagels The annotation ‘XXX’ can have numerous meanings. For centuries illiterate people have used an ‘X’ in place of a signature on contracts and agreements, or to make their mark. This was a regular occurrence in depositions given by illiterate workers to Native Mounted Police (NMP) officers, as well as by many of […]

When Bureaucracies Kill

10/12/2018.Reading time 23 minutes.

By Heather Burke Cecil Fulford Hill was 21 years old when he was speared by Aboriginal people near Rannes station in central Qld in 1865. Along with Henry Kaye (1881), George Dyas (1881) and Marcus Beresford (1883), Hill was one of only four NMP officers to be killed while on patrol, although many more were […]