You can view this map on the AIATSIS website:

The classificatory kinship system is covered in many works of Australian anthropology such as in the classic Ronald M and Catherine H Berndt, The World of the First Australians, 5th edn (Canberra, Aboriginal Studies Press, 1999) 

There are many examples of Aboriginal people receiving Europeans on their country as returned spirits of dead relatives in primary and secondary literature.  By recognising them in this way, Aboriginal people assigned the visitors a place in the kinship system.  For just one example of how a settler exploited this privilege see Henry Reynolds, With the White People (Ringwood Vic., Penguin, 1990) 98-99.  Other examples may be found in Libby Connors, Warrior: A legendary leader’s dramatic life and violent death on the colonial frontier (Crows Nest NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2015) 36-38. 

It has been estimated that 50% of the Eora died of smallpox but it may have been higher.  Bain Attwood, ‘Law, History and Power: The British Treatment of Aboriginal Rights in Land in New South Wales’ (2014) 42 1 Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History  184. 

See also 

Judy Campbell, Invisible Invaders: Smallpox and other Diseases in Aboriginal Australia, 1780-1880 (Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 2002).

Conquest vs Cession? 

It is best to read Professor Bain Attwood’s article in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History here to see how one historian has argued that the vulnerability of small-scale settlement affected the power balance between Indigenous peoples’ and colonisers resulting in very different outcomes.

Bain Attwood, ‘Law, History and Power: The British Treatment of Aboriginal Rights in Land in New South Wales’ (2014) 42 1 The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 171-92  

 R v Ballard (1828) NSW Sel Cas (Dowling) 2

There were at least 3 military lines devised by Governor Arthur between 1830 and 1832.  Historically Australians referred to them as the Black Line.  They were military operations designed to remove all Aboriginal people, by either killing or capture, from the lands settlers wanted.  

Historians differ in their appraisal of the effectiveness of these military cordons but generally agree on their brutal intent.  For recent re-assessments see

Lyndall Ryan, 'The Black Line in Van Diemen's Land: Success or failure?' (2013) 37 1 Journal of Australian Studies 3-18.  

Nick Clements, '”Army of sufferers”: the experience of Tasmania’s Black Line' (2013) 37 1 Journal of Australian Studies 19-33.  

Eleanor Cave, '”Journal during the expedition against the blacks”: Robert Lawrence’s experience on the Black Line' (2013) 37 1 Journal of Australian Studies 34-47. 

For analysis of Colonial Office views on the significance of licences and leases for pastoral lands in each of the Australian colonies see

Henry Reynolds and Jamie Dalziel, ‘Aborigines and Pastoral Leases – Imperial and colonial policy 1826-1855’ (1996) UNSW Law Journal 315-77.

The massacre is the subject of many research publications.  For historical accounts from the perspective of the Attorney-General who prosecuted see 

John N Molony, An Architect of Freedom: John Hubert Plunkett in New South Wales 1832-1869 (Canberra, ANU Press, 1973);  

Tony Earls, Plunkett’s Legacy (North Melbourne, Australian Scholarly, 2009)  87-112; 

M. Tedeschi, Murder at Myall Creek (Sydney, Simon & Schuster, 2016).  

For a popular account that focuses on the role of Police Magistrate Denny Day see 

Terry Smyth, Denny Day: The Life and Times of Australia’s greatest Lawman (North Sydney, Penguin, 2016).  

For an overview and historical context see 

Jane Lydon & Lyndall Ryan (eds) Remembering the Myall Creek Massacre (Sydney, New South, 2018) 15-99. 

On its heritage listing and relation to other international massacre sites see

Jane Lydon & Lyndall Ryan (eds) Remembering the Myall Creek Massacre (Sydney, New South, 2018)10; see also 111-129 on remembering this massacre and 130-60 on memorialising similar events internationally.  

House of Commons, Report of the Parliamentary Committee on Aboriginal Tribes (British Settlements) (Aborigines Protection Society, 1837) 

An electronic copy of this report is available at Analysis & Policy Observatory, Public Policy Observatory, apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/1837-02/apo-nid61306.pdf

The early foundations of the native police are covered in 

Marie Fels, Good men and true: The Aboriginal police of the Port Phillip district 1837-53 (Carlton Vic, MUP, 1988).   

On its introduction to northern New South Wales and Queensland in 1848 see

L E Skinner, Police of the pastoral frontier: Native police 1849 -59 (St Lucia Qld, UQP, 1975)  

Libby Connors, ‘Distant and Disinterested: Oversight of Northern Policing as Colonial Office Policy in the 1840s and 1850s’ ANZLH E-Journal, Refereed Paper No (3), 2012, pp. 78-95.  

Its history in Queensland from 1859 is covered in 

Jonathan Richards, The Secret War: A true history of Queensland’s native police (St Lucia Qld, UQP, 2008). 

A remarkable work is Bill Rosser’s recording of the Aboriginal oral history of the force’s murderous dispersals in 

Bill Rosser, Up rode the troopers: The black police in Queensland (St Lucia Qld, UQP, 1990). 

For more information on John Willis see 

Janine Rizetti’s Blog ‘The Resident Judge of Port Phillip’: residentjudge.com/about/;

also 

Janine Rizzetti, ‘Judging boundaries: Judge Willis, local politics and imperial justice’ (2009) 40 3 Australian Historical Studies 362-75.  

There is also a full length biographical study of Willis – 

Max Bonnell, I like a clamour: John Walpole Willis, colonial judge, reconsidered (Sydney, Federation Press, 2017). 

The literature on the trade is extensive.  The approach of historians has shifted over the past 50 years from emphasising it as a form of slavery; then as Islander-centred oral histories were constructed from survivors and their descendants, more nuanced histories focused on the advantages that had drawn some Indigenous peoples to participate; this approach also emphasised the cruel practice of Australia when it unilaterally declared the trade illegal and forcibly deported Islanders between 1906 and 1908.  More recently Indigenous authors have ventured into the field and returned the focus to the horrors of the system and slavery.  This variation can be explained by whether historians have been more concerned about the denial of entry by Pacific peoples to Australia under Australia’s immigration laws and Australia’s callous deportations of non-white settlers in 1908, or more concerned about labour exploitation.  

Further reading:

A Queensland history that emphasised its exploitative structure and intent is 

Kay Saunders, Workers in bondage (St Lucia, UQP, 1981) which was re-issued as an e-book in 2013. 

For an Islander-centred account based on interviews with descendants in Queensland, the Solomons and Vanuatu see 

Clive Moore, Kanaka: A history of Melanesian Mackay, Port Moresby: Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies, 1985.

For an Indigenous interpretation see 

Tracey Banivanua-Mar, Violence and Colonial Dialogue: The Australian-Pacific Indentured Labor Trade, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 2007. 

Nukapu Island is part of the Santa Cruz island group of the Solomon Islands. 

Bishop Patteson met with the Governor of Queensland to state his opposition to the trade and as part of efforts to persuade the Queensland Government to end it.  On his meetings with Queensland’s Governor Bowen see 

Martha Rutledge, 'Patteson, John Coleridge (1827–1871)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, adb.anu.edu.au/biography/patteson-john-coleridge-4376/text7121.

If you would like more background information to assist with the Pause for Thought exercise here are some helpful digital sources:

Regina Ganter, ‘Pearling’ (2010) Queensland Historical Atlas.  

Western Australian Museum: Pearling

Broome Historical Society and Museum

Clive Moore, listed above, gives figures for deportation and figures for those who were exempted after a royal commission into the deportations in 1906.  The Australian Human Rights Commission also includes figures, a helpful time line and a useful list of the discriminatory legislation the South Sea Islander community endured in the twentieth century.  See

Here also are some useful scholarly sources on colonisation in the region:

Alan Powell, Northern voyagers: Australia's monsoon coast in maritime history (North Melbourne, Vic., Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010)

Julia Martines & Adrian Vickers, Pearl frontier: Indonesian labor and indigenous encounters in Australia's northern trading network (Honolulu, University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2015) 

Penelope Hetherington, Settlers, servants and slaves: Aboriginal and European children in nineteenth-century Western Australia (Nedlands, WA, University of Western Australia Press, 2002) 

Regina Ganter, The pearl-shellers of Torres Strait: resource use, development and decline 1860s-1960s (Carlton, Vic, Melbourne University Press, 1994) 

Regina Ganter, Julia Martinez & Gary Lee, Mixed relations: Asian-Aboriginal contact in North Australia (Crawley, W.A., University of Western Australia Press, c2006) 

Nancy Shoemaker, Pursuing respect in the Cannibal Isles: Americans in nineteenth-century Fiji (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2019) 

Claudia Knapman, White Women in Fiji 1835-1930: The Ruin of Empire? e-edition (St Lucia, UQP, 2014) 

Stuart Banner, Possessing the Pacific: Land, Settlers and Indigenous People from Australia to Alaska (Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 2007)

Robert Nicole, Disturbing history: resistance in early colonial Fiji (Honolulu, University of Hawaiʻi Press, c2011)

Letters Patent 1872

Queensland Coast Islands Act 1879 (Qld)

Colonial Boundaries Act 1895 (UK)

Treaty between Australia and the Independent State of Papua New Guinea concerning sovereignty and maritime boundaries in the area between the two countries, including the area known as Torres Strait, and related matters, 18 December 1978 *