05/18/2020.Reading time 13 minutes.
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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10/27/2019.Reading time 25 minutes.
By Lynley Wallis In a previous post, Alyssa Madden discussed the relationship between telegraph stations and the Native Mounted Police (NMP) across colonial Queensland. Seven years after the first telegraph office in the Southern Hemisphere was opened in Melbourne in 1854 (Gerrand 2014), the line from Brisbane to Ipswich was operational, and was connected to NSW […]
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07/26/2019.Reading time 30 minutes.
By Lynley Wallis The publication of a map showing frontier massacre sites across Australia by eminent historian Professor Lyndall Ryan has generated enormous public interest in the past 12 months (Figure 1). The map represents a wonderful resource with substantive research behind it. However, users should be aware that the “massacre locations” shown on it (and most […]
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02/18/2019.Reading time 19 minutes.
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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01/07/2019.Reading time 14 minutes.
By Uschi Artym *Actually, it’s a tale of 3600 artefacts, or thereabouts, and counting! I’m happy to report that, after 18 long months, the cataloguing of artefacts from the Boulia Native Mounted Police (NMP) site is almost complete. While the process has been lengthy — and at times tedious — cataloguing is arguably one of […]
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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 […]
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08/23/2018.Reading time 14 minutes.
By Lynley Wallis and Heather Burke Given the work with which they were routinely engaged, it is hard to reconcile the idea of a Native Mounted Police camp replete with happy children scampering through the bush, bursting with laughter. But in many cases this must have been a relatively common occurrence since, as we noted […]
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06/21/2018.Reading time 16 minutes.
By Tony Pagels The role of the Native Mounted Police (NMP) was to control and disperse Aboriginal opposition to ensure European settlement was a success in Queensland (Qld). This was achieved by the Force having the best available weapons and employing military-type tactics. But when a firearm was discharged 140 years ago how can we […]
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12/19/2017.Reading time 5 minutes.
By Leanne Bateman For centuries regalia manufacturers have adopted elaborate designs for belt buckles, some of which were often imbued with symbolic meaning. One such design is the symbolic depiction of a serpent on belt clasps. Over the centuries this design has proven to be very popular, and is considered to typically represent the dual […]
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09/12/2017.Reading time 13 minutes.
By Uschi Artym Why are there so many buttons? And what were all the metal tags used for? (see Figure 1.) These were just two of the many questions asked by Flinders University students and archaeologists between 3-9 July 2017, who were at the time taking part in an ‘Indigenous Archaeology Field School’ in western Queensland. Located approximately […]
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