War of Southern Queensland

The War of Southern Queensland was a conflict fought between a coalition of Aboriginal tribes in South East Queensland, the "United Tribes", and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, from around 1843 to 1855. Following the Kilcoy massacre in 1842, a great meeting was held in the Bunya Scrub of tribes from across South East Queensland north to the Wide Bay-Burnett and Bundaberg regions, fuelled by decades of mistrust and misunderstanding with the British, they united into a loose confederation and issued a ‘declaration’ to destroy the settlements on their lands.

War of Southern Queensland
Location Eastern Australia (Present day Southern Queensland) Result British victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Colony of New South Wales	United Tribes Logan District Moreton Bay Islands Burnett River Wide Bay District Bundaberg Mount Perry Gympie Bribie Island Fraser Island Gayndah ’Mount Brisbane’ (D’Aguilar Ranges) (Mountain Tribes) Kilcoy/Esk Brisbane/Enoggera
Commanders and leaders
Queen Victoria Sir George Gipps (1843–1846) Sir Charles Augustus FitzRoy (1846–1855)	Multuggerah  † Dundalli  (POW)
Casualties and losses
Total Casualties: ~174 minimum, (‘800 maximum’)	1000 (minimum)

Most of the Wide Bay-Burnett was abandoned during this period, and the settlements on the ranges were under heavy attack by the Mountain Tribes led by Multuggerah. The worst of the conflict was largely confined to these parts of the country, but the main settlement of Brisbane also suffered from raids that pillaged houses and farms. The war marked a reversal in traditional Indigenous battle tactics, moving away from pitched battles early in the conflict to more ‘hit and run’ attacks and aspects of guerrilla warfare.

Following over a decade of sustained conflict along with suffering from severe population loss, resistance against the British largely collapsed in the south. Conflict continued well into the 1860s as the frontier moved further north. The general date for the end of the southern war is attributed to the hanging of Dundalli in 1855, and the subsequent arrival of the Native Police which caused the remaining Aboriginal raiders in Brisbane to flee the town.[1]

Declaration of War

The Aboriginal tribes of South East Queensland every year would gather at the Great Bunya Scrub (Baroon Pocket near Maleny) to feast on Bunya nuts. The occasion was formally used as a festival, to exchange news amongst the tribes. However, following the Kilcoy massacre many of the tribes were aggravated, with many wanting vengeance for the great number that were killed at Kilcoy. At this meeting and spurred on by elders such as Dundalli, the tribes vowed to take revenge on the British wherever they were within their lands. Two witnesses to this were Petrie and Russell who risked their lives to bring news of the 'war declaration' to Brisbane, after having been captured by an inter-tribal group and only freed through severe negotiation. This was followed by a letter sent by German missionaries to the Governor of the war declaration.[2][3] Several sources support the notion of 1843 as the year of a 'declaration'. Pugh's Almanac in 1869 noted that date as 'when the blacks were now beginning to be very troublesome'.[4] And travel writer, Nehemiah Bartley gave defined years for the war in his book, 'Australian Pioneers and Reminiscences' (1896). Citing 1843 and 1855 as the start and end dates, with the 1855 likely referencing the execution of Dundalli.

'Many a pretty bush station, where ladies in muslin and silks now dwell, and walk and ride as they please, has its humble mound neatly fenced, where sleeps the stockman or shepherd untimely slain by boomerang, spear or tomahawk, between '43 and '55'—Nehemiah Bartley,1896 p.167

Decline of the Moreton Bay Clans

The missionaries Christopher Eipper and J.C.S. Handt both prepared annual reports on the state of the Moreton Bay Aborigines. Handt noted the considerable decline of Aboriginal numbers.

“One of the principal causes of their decrease is the diseases to which they are subject, and particularly that which providence has ordained to be the scourge of excess and debauchery and from which even the children are not exempted [venereal disease]. Some of them have died of consumption and dropsy. Another principal cause in their decrease is the prostitution of their wives to Europeans. This base intercourse not only retards the procreation of their own race; but it almost always tends to the destruction of the offspring ... for they generally kill the half-caste children as soon as they are born. The number of Children is consequently very small ….” —J.C.S. Handt (Late 1841) [5]

In 1846 the Anglican Rev. John Gregor of Brisbane claimed a deathrate of one-sixth of the local black population in a period of three years, from what he termed 'licentious intercourse of their females with Europeans' - and further deaths locally of 50 Europeans and at least 300 hundred Aborigines during incessant 'collisions of aggression, defence and retaliation' in the Moreton Bay District.[6]

Notes

1. Kerkhove, Ray (10 February 2015). "Tribal Alliances with Broader Agendas? Aboriginal Resistance in southern Queensland's "Black War"". Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. UTS ePress. 6 (3): 38–62. doi:10.5130/ccs.v6i3.4218.
2. "The Bunya Mountains". The Queenslander. Queensland, Australia. 21 May 1892. p. 987. Retrieved 5 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
3. Schmidt, Karl W E, 1843, Report of an Expedition to the Bunya Mountains in Search of a Suitable Site for a Mission Station, p.5,Acc 3522/71 in Box 7072, John Oxley Library (Brisbane)
4. "THE HISTORY OF THE MORETON BAY SETTLEMENT". The Brisbane Courier. XXIV (3, 812). Queensland, Australia. 23 December 1869. p. 6. Retrieved 5 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
5. Eipper, Christopher (1841). Statement of the origins, condition and prospect of the German mission to the Aborigines at Moreton Bay.
6. Replies to a Circular Letter Addressed to the Clergy of all Denominations on the Condition of the Aborigines. 1846.