This blog is about research relating to frontier conflict and especially the Native Mounted Police in Queensland
By Heather Burke In dealing with all savages you must make yourself feared. GeorgE Pearce Serocold (25 December 12857) Frontier conflict in colonies such as Australia was less military and more irregular than the popular conception of warfare, characterised by quick, highly-focused, short-term attacks, non-professional combatants, and a range of changing and temporary alliances between […]
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By Heather Burke A soundscape is made up of the natural and human-made sounds that help to define an environment or a place. Although we tend to consider some sounds as “noise” — usually those things we find undesirable within our own cultural frame of reference, including other people’s preferred forms of music — all […]
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By Nic Grguric The stranger turned round and revealed a rather prepossessing face, and I noticed a row of glittering buttons, which at once proclaimed the native police officer (Queenslander, 25 January 1879, p.109). A considerable assemblage of uniform buttons were recovered from the archaeological fieldwork carried out at six Native Mounted Police (NMP) sites […]
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By Noelene Cole, Lynley Wallis, Heather Burke, Bryce Barker and Rinyirru Aboriginal Corporation A day after setting up camp near the dray track which connected Cooktown to the Palmer Goldfield in south-east Cape York Peninsula, Sub-Inspector O’Connor and 24 troopers of the Native Mounted Police (NMP) were attacked by ‘daring and war-like’ Aboriginal land owners […]
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By Lynley Wallis Most people are well aware (at least in some general manner) of the momentous impact that the arrival of Europeans had on Aboriginal peoples and their ways of life in Australia. What is sometimes less acknowledged are the innovative ways that Aboriginal peoples adapted to the availability of new resources such as […]
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By Tony Pagels This blog tells the story of a weapon purchased in 1867 specifically for the Native Mounted Police (NMP): the Westley Richards breech-loading, double-barrelled, 20 bore, Lefaucheux-action, pinfire carbine (Figure 1). This weapon possessed a number of advantages over the percussion single- and double-barrel, muzzle-loading carbines the NMP were using at the time. […]
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By Uschi Artym ‘Disgraceful’, ‘comfortable’ and ‘respectable’—these were some of the words used to describe the Diamantina, Jundah and Boulia Native Mounted Police (NMP) camps by contemporary visitors. Scant historical documentation remains on just how NMP camps were laid out and what they looked like, so wondering about what constituted a ‘comfortable’ camp, or distinguished […]
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By Kelsey Lowe Making a floor out of earth (or ‘dirt’) is one of the quickest ways of creating a surface to live on and was a common type of flooring in the earliest buildings in Australia. An earth floor doesn’t require any special or costly resources, could be made by anyone without any special […]
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By Alyssa Madden Policing and communications were both crucial in enabling the mostly European settlers to establish themselves in the ‘Sunshine State’ in the nineteenth century. The Qld Native Mounted Police (NMP) were tasked with protecting settlers from Aboriginal resistance, while the early telegraph system linked both the remote detachments with senior officers stationed elsewhere, […]
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By Leanne Bateman Food rations were an important lifeline for the occupants of Native Mounted Police (NMP) camps, but it was often a tenuous lifeline at best. The cost of rations was a problem for the government, who had to constantly justify the existence of the NMP force to the taxpayer, who frequently complained that […]
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