Reading the Rockhampton Letter Book

10/20/2021.Reading time 15 minutes.

We’ve complained before about the general lack of records detailing the day-to-day realities of NMP life. This is most apparent in the lack of surviving Patrol Diaries and Camp Diaries from the Force’s 80 year existence. When at the Queensland State Archives recently, however, we came across a catalogue reference to a “Letterbook – police”, […]

Why Nineteenth Century Frontier Violence is Relevant Today: the Continuing Legacy

07/29/2020.Reading time 12 minutes.

By Lynley Wallis, Heather Burke and Bryce Barker From studies on the Armenian genocide to the Jewish holocaust and North American frontier conflict and dispossession (e.g. Ehlers et al. 2013; Harris 2020; Mangassarian 2016) it is now recognised that collective and individual trauma can have a long-term effect on successive generations of people. The most […]

Some Statistics from the Frontier Conflict and the Native Mounted Police in Qld Database

06/19/2020.Reading time 11 minutes.

When we launched our online database as a public research resource in December 2019 we hoped that people would make use of it to understand more about frontier conflict in Queensland and especially the role of the Native Mounted Police (NMP). Two hundred and forty-seven people have logged on to our database since then, […]

Violent Etymologies

09/28/2019.Reading time 14 minutes.

By Heather Burke A map is a frail thing, although the politics that underlie its construction and naming practices are not. In 2017 Queensland removed several racist place names from the map, prompting debate over whether memorials to Robert Towns and John Mackay—the namesakes of both Townsville and Mackay—should tell their history more fully, given […]

“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 […]

Building an Online Database about the Native Mounted Police

12/08/2018.Reading time 21 minutes.

By Lynley Wallis As 2018 draws to a close (though we do have one more Christmas themed blog post to come…) we thought it was time to let you know about another initiative of our Native Mounted Police (NMP) project: an online database that we are hoping (or planning … we’re not sure which is […]

Treachery or a Matter of Survival? The Attempted Murder of Sub-Inspector Brabazon Stafford

07/20/2018.Reading time 21 minutes.

By Heather Burke .. six of the Native troopers at the Laura [have] done their level best to disperse Sub-inspector Stafford and his camp-keeper … the occurrence shows vividly the dangers to which Native Police officers are exposed from their own men, who when they break the bounds of discipline become so many wild beasts […]

“All Mere Youths” When Taken Away: Recruiting Aboriginal Boys and Men to the NMP Part III

05/25/2018.Reading time 12 minutes.

By Lynley Wallis and Heather Burke We have previously written about the processes of recruiting Aboriginal men to the NMP (Recruiting Part 1 and Willing Volunteers?). However, we didn’t have room there to consider another element of the trooper experience: the interpersonal relationships that existed, both amongst the troopers, and between them and the officers […]

Willing Volunteers? Recruiting Aboriginal Boys and Men to the NMP Part II

05/13/2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

By Lynley Wallis, Heather Burke, Bryce Barker and Noelene Cole In an earlier post we considered some of the mechanisms through which Aboriginal boys and men may have been enticed, or forced, to join the NMP. In this post, we consider what is perhaps the most perplexing type of “recruitment” of these men: that of […]

From the Horse’s Mouth: Horses and the NMP

04/26/2018.Reading time 27 minutes.

By Lynley Wallis and Heather Burke Today we don’t think twice about travelling vast distances by car at great speed, so it’s hard to imagine what life was like before the invention of the internal combustion engine. The First Fleet that arrived in southeast Australia in 1788 included horses, and by the time colonists began […]