In December 1878, a settler called Molvo and three of his stockmen were killed near Cloncurry, at the Wonomo watering hole[4] on Suleiman Creek[5] as they camped with their herd.

[7][5] Over the following years, the Kalkatungu gained a reputation among graziers for tactical wiliness both in resisting police and settler forays against them, and in harvesting cattle found on their lands.

It is said that Seymour had given Kennedy a blank cheque to war down the tribe and to have dispatched the aristocratic Marcus de la Poer Beresford, a nephew of the Marquess of Waterford, as new head of the Cloncurry native police unit to that end.

[6] On 24 January 1883, Beresford camped with four of his troopers at Fullarton River [de] in the McKinlay Range, while tracking down the Kalkadoon killers of a man called Britcher.

According to an anonymous person writing for the Queensland Figaro, nonetheless, sometime towards the end of 1883, the native police "wilfully murdered eight blackfellows and several gins" in the area.

Urquhart was galvanised into action in August on hearing from a native boy, Jackie, who came in and reported that his employer James White Powell of Calton Hills, some 60 miles west of Cloncurry, at Mistake Creek, had been speared to death by local Kalkadoon and Maithakari people.

[12] In September, a Chinese shepherd from H.Hopkins's Granada Station[14] on the Dugald River [de] was speared to death in the foothills of the Argylla Ranges, and it was rumoured he had been eaten by "cannibals".

Soon afterwards, an estimated 600 Kalkatungu warriors gathered on a rocky outlook to fend off the parties of well-armed settlers, the local constabulary and heavily armed and mounted native troopers.

The site of Battle Mountain was chosen as it provided an excellent tactical advantage presented by the location, overlooking the plain below, the Kalkadoons had laid in large stocks of spears and boomerangs in advance for just such a siege.