[11] The law system practised by Indigenous Australians was not necessarily understood or recognised in any official respect by settlers (language barriers made communication extremely difficult), and the English-speaking colony abided by its own legal doctrine.

There are indications that smallpox epidemics may have impacted heavily on some Aboriginal communities, with depopulation in large sections of what is now Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland up to 50% or more, even before the move inland from Sydney of squatters and their livestock.

Aboriginal people did not have distinct ideas of war and peace, and traditional warfare was common, taking place between groups on an ongoing basis, with great rivalries being maintained over extended periods of time.

[22] In 1840, the American-Canadian ethnologist Horatio Hale identified four types of Australian Aboriginal traditional warfare; formal battles, ritual trials, raids for women, and revenge attacks.

These tactics were offset by counter-measures such as regularly changing campsites, being prepared to extinguish camp-fires at short notice, and posting parties of warriors to cover the escape of raiders.

Fighting broke out when the settlements expanded, however, disrupting traditional Indigenous food-gathering activities, and subsequently followed the pattern of European invasion in Australia for the next 150 years.

[36] On occasions large groups attacked Europeans in open terrain and a conventional battle ensued, during which the Aboriginal residents would attempt to use superior numbers to their advantage.

This could sometimes be effective, with reports of them advancing in crescent formation in an attempt to outflank and surround their opponents, waiting out the first volley of shots and then hurling their spears whilst settlers reloaded.

These weapons, when used on open ground and combined with the superior mobility provided by horses to surround and engage groups of Indigenous Australians, often proved successful.

[40] The Caledon Bay crisis of 1932–34 saw one of the last incidents of violent interaction on the "frontier" of indigenous and non-indigenous Australia, which began when the spearing of Japanese poachers who had been molesting Yolngu women was followed by the killing of a policeman.

As the crisis unfolded, national opinion swung behind the Aboriginal people involved, and the first appeal on behalf of an Indigenous Australian, Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda, was launched to the High Court of Australia in Tuckiar v The King.

[44] Elsewhere around this time, activists like Sir Douglas Nicholls were commencing their campaigns for Aboriginal rights within the established Australian political system and the age of frontier conflict closed.

These attacks led Governor Philip Gidley King to issue an order in 1801 which authorised settlers to shoot Indigenous Australians on sight in Parramatta, Georges River and Prospect areas.

In response, Governor Brisbane proclaimed martial law on 14 August 1824 to end "the Slaughter of Black Women and Children, and unoffending White Men".

[51] This includes a commendation by Governor Brisbane of the deployment of the troops under Major Morisset: I felt it necessary to augment the Detachment at Bathurst to 75 men who were divided into various small parties, each headed by a Magistrate who proceeded in different directions in towards the interior of the Country ...

In an operation which became known as the "Black Line" ten percent of the colony's male civilian population were mobilised and marched across the settled districts in company with police and soldiers in an attempt to clear Indigenous Australians from the area.

The Pinjarra massacre, the best known single event, occurred on 28 October 1833 when a party of British colonisers led by Governor Stirling attacked an Indigenous campsite on the banks of the Murray River.

[48] The Noongar nation, forced from traditional hunting grounds and denied access to sacred sites, turned to stealing settlers' crops and killing livestock to survive.

[59][60] A manhunt for Layman's killer went on for several weeks, involving much bloodshed as Captain John Molloy, the Bussell brothers, and troops murdered unknown numbers of Aboriginal residents in what has become known as the Wonnerup massacre.

[62] Sporadic conflict continued in northern Western Australia until the 1920s, with a Royal Commission held in 1926 finding that at least eleven Indigenous Australians had been murdered in the Forrest River massacre by a police expedition in retaliation for the death of a European.

[63] South Australia was settled in 1836 with no convicts and a unique plan for settlers to purchase land in advance of their arrival, which was intended to ensure a balance of landowners and farm workers in the colony.

He said in part: It is also, at this time especially, my duty to apprize the Colonists of my resolution, to take every lawful means of extending the same protection to the native population as to the rest of His Majesty's Subjects, and of my firm determination to punish with exemplary severity, all acts of violence or injustice which may in any manner be practiced or attempted against the natives, who are to be considered as much under the Safeguard of the law as the Colonists themselves, and equally entitled to the privileges of British Subjects.

[64]Governor Gawler declared in 1840 that Aboriginal people "have exercised distinct, defined, and absolute right or proprietary and hereditary possession ... from time immemorial".

[69] The experience of the Port Lincoln settlement on the Eyre Peninsula was repeated in the South East of the state and in the north as settlers encroached on the Aboriginal population.

A clash at Benalla in 1838 known as the Battle of Broken River of which at least seven white settlers were killed, marked the beginning of the frontier conflict in the colony which lasted for fifteen years.

In 1842, white settlers from the Port Fairy area wrote a letter to the Charles Latrobe requesting the government improve security from "outrages committed by natives" and listing many incidents of conflict and economic warfare.

An excerpt of the letter printed on 10 June: We, the undersigned, settlers, and inhabitants of the district of Port Fairy, beg respectfully to represent to your Honor the great and increasing want of security to life and property which exists here at present, in consequence of the absence of any protection against the natives.

Their number, their ferocity, and their cunning render them peculiarly formidable, and the outrages of which they are daily and nightly guilty, and which they accomplish generally with impunity and success, may, we fear, lead to a still more distressing state of things, unless some measures, prompt and effective, be immediately taken to prevent matters coming to that unhappy crisis.

This point is emphasised in a 2011 study by Ørsted-Jensen, which by use of two different sources calculated that colonial Queensland must have accounted for upwards of one-third and close to forty percent of the Indigenous population of the pre-contact Australian continent.

[85] The largest reasonably well-documented massacres in southeast Queensland were the Kilcoy and Whiteside poisonings, each of which was said to have taken up to 70 Aboriginal lives by use of a gift of flour laced with strychnine.