Frontier History in Colonial Early Victoria
The Silent War in Victoria: Colonisation, Massacres, and Displacement into Missions
The colonisation of Victoria in the nineteenth century was marked by widespread violence, dispossession, and forced control of First Peoples. Often termed the “Silent War,” this frontier conflict was rarely acknowledged in official histories, yet it involved massacres, poisonings, punitive raids, and legal exclusion that enabled the rapid seizure of Country for sheep grazing and farming (Reynolds, 1987; Broome, 2005). By the 1850s, many communities had been displaced from ancestral estates and constrained on missions and reserves. This article outlines the conflict’s dynamics, documents key massacres, and traces the policy machinery that drove First Peoples into controlled settlements—while highlighting the endurance and resistance of Victorian Nations.
Country and Peoples: Wadawurrung and the Kulin Nations
European incursions from 1835 onward spread across the Kulin Nations—Wadawurrung, Wurundjeri (Woiwurrung), Boonwurrung, Taungurung, Dja Dja Wurrung—as well as Gunditjmara to the west and Gunai/Kurnai to the east.
Wadawurrung Country stretches from the You Yangs through Geelong/Bellarine to Ballarat, a mosaic of basalt plains, river flats, and coastal estuaries managed through seasonal movement, cultural burning, and yam-daisy (murnong) cultivation (Clark, 1990; Gammage, 2011; Pascoe, 2014).
Kulin law upheld ancestral custodianship; Country was not alienable property. Exchanges with newcomers were read as reciprocity and permission to visit, not permanent sale—an early fault-line that fed conflict (Barwick, 1984; Presland, 1994).
Sheep and cattle brought soil compaction, the destruction of murnong fields, polluted waterholes, and blocked eel runs, rapidly undermining food security and ceremonial life (Broome, 2005; Pascoe, 2014).
The Silent War: A Hidden Frontier Conflict
Origins of Conflict
From the first squatters’ runs in the Port Phillip District (post-1835), settlers occupied fertile river corridors and plains without treaty. First Peoples defended Country; settlers and paramilitary forces responded with reprisals (Reynolds, 1987; Boyce, 2011).
The Nature of the Violence
The struggle is called silent because it was rarely prosecuted or publicly acknowledged. Evidence from oral histories, settler journals, Protectorate papers, and later research reveals recurrent patterns:
Night attacks on camps and ceremonial gatherings;
Punitive raids following stock-taking or frontier clashes;
Poisonings via adulterated flour;
Judicial impunity, since Aboriginal witnesses were often inadmissible and settlers seldom convicted (Broome, 2005; Clark, 1995; Clark, 1998).
Cumulatively, thousands of First Peoples were killed in Victoria between the 1830s–1850s, with Nations reduced to a fraction of pre-contact numbers (Broome, 2005).
Case Studies by Country
Wadawurrung (Wathaurong)
Mt Cottrell Massacre (1836): In reprisal for a shepherd’s death, armed settlers killed at least 10 Wadawurrung people on the Werribee–Exford plains—among the earliest mass killings near Melbourne (Broome, 2005; Clark, 1995).
Bellarine/Barwon: Protectorate records note repeated shootings and expulsions as runs expanded; murnong fields around Barrabool Hills were devastated by sheep within a few seasons (Clark, 1998; Pascoe, 2014).
Wurundjeri & Boonwurrung (Kulin heartlands)
Following Batman’s 1835 incursion, punitive patrols and mounted police actions pushed families off the Yarra, Merri Creek, and Western Port corridors; outbreaks of disease compounded losses (Boyce, 2011; Clark, 1998).
Survivors later regrouped at Coranderrk (from 1863) under leaders William Barak and Simon Wonga, asserting rights to land and autonomy (Barwick, 1998).
Dja Dja Wurrung & Taungurung (Central/Upper Goulburn)
Assistant Protectors Parker and Dredge documented shootings along the Loddon and Campaspe and the destruction of yam-daisy economies; gold-rush influx after 1851 intensified removals (Clark, 1998; Broome, 2005).
Gunditjmara, Jardwadjali & Djab Wurrung (Western District)
Convincing Ground (c.1833–34) near Portland: dispute over a stranded whale escalated into a massacre of Gunditjmara people (Clark, 1995; Critchett, 1990).
Fighting Hills / Fighting Waterholes (1840) on the Wannon: Whyte brothers’ party killed 30–40 Jardwadjali people (Clark, 1995).
Lubra Creek (1841): up to 50 women and children killed in reprisals (Critchett, 1990).
Gunai/Kurnai (Gippsland)
Squatter Angus McMillan and others led multiple massacres in the 1840s, including Warrigal Creek and Butchers Creek; estimates reach several hundreds killed (Fels, 1988).
Clark (1995) catalogues 170+ massacre/violence sites in western Victoria alone, indicating a systemic frontier war.
From Open Violence to Bureaucratic Control: Displacement into Missions
Protectorate to Missions
Under humanitarian pressure, Britain created the Port Phillip Protectorate (1839–1849) with George Augustus Robinson and four assistants (Thomas, Parker, Dredge, Sievwright). Intended to safeguard lives and mediate conflict, it failed amid settler hostility, underfunding, and the sheer force of dispossession (Broome, 2005; Clark, 1998).
From the 1850s, policy shifted to containment and assimilation on church/state sites:
Framlingham (1861) and Lake Condah (1867) on Gunditjmara Country;
Coranderrk (1863) near Healesville for Wurundjeri/Taungurung families;
Ebenezer (1859) on Wergaia Country.
Mission life brought residence controls, ration dependence, language suppression, unpaid labour, and surveillance (Broome, 2005; Barwick, 1998).
The Legal Machinery
Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines (1860) oversaw reserves and rations.
Aborigines Protection Act 1869 authorised control over residence, employment, marriage, and children—foundational to the Stolen Generations.
“Half-Caste Act” 1886 expelled many people of mixed descent from reserves, fracturing families and accelerating decline at places like Coranderrk (Barwick, 1998).
Survival and Resistance
Despite violence and regulation, Nations endured. William Barak and Simon Wonga petitioned parliament for land and rights; Gunditjmara communities maintained fishing and ceremony at Tae Rak (Lake Condah); Wadawurrung families continued connection along Moorabool–Barwon corridors (Barwick, 1998; Broome, 2005). Oral histories, songlines, and renewed cultural burning kept Country knowledge alive (Gammage, 2011; Pascoe, 2014).
Global Analogies
Victoria’s Silent War and mission system paralleled wider settler-colonial patterns: U.S. frontier wars and reservations, Aotearoa/New Zealand land wars and raupatu (confiscations), and South African frontier conflicts and reserves—each pairing military dispossession with administrative assimilation (comparative frames in Reynolds, 1987).
Conclusion
The Silent War was not an absence of conflict but a deliberately muted one—fought through raids, poisonings, punitive patrols, and then through laws that restricted movement, family, and culture. From Wadawurrung plains to Gunditjmara lava flows and Gunai/Kurnai river systems, Country bears the scars. Yet the Nations survived. Contemporary truth-telling—through the Yoorrook Justice Commission, Registered Aboriginal Parties, and community scholarship—continues to name sites, remember Ancestors, and restore law to Country. Recognition of this history is essential to understanding Victoria today and to advancing treaty and justice.
Reference
Barwick, D. (1998). Rebellion at Coranderrk. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Barwick, D. (1984). Mapping the Past: Kulin society and territory. Aboriginal History, 8(1), 100–131.
Boyce, J. (2011). 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia. Melbourne: Black Inc.
Broome, R. (2005). Aboriginal Victorians: A History Since 1800. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Clark, I. D. (1990). Aboriginal Languages and Clans: An Historical Atlas of Western and Central Victoria, 1800–1900. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Clark, I. D. (1995). Scars in the Landscape: A Register of Massacre Sites in Western Victoria 1803–1859. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Clark, I. D. (1998). The Journals of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate. Melbourne: Heritage Matters.
Critchett, J. (1990). A Distant Field of Murder: Western District Frontiers, 1834–1848. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Fels, M. (1988). Good Men and True: The Aboriginal Police of the Port Phillip District 1837–1853. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Gammage, B. (2011). The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Pascoe, B. (2014). Dark Emu: Black Seeds, Agriculture or Accident? Broome: Magabala Books.
Presland, G. (1994). Aboriginal Melbourne: The Lost Land of the Kulin People. Melbourne: Harriland Press.
Reynolds, H. (1987). The Law of the Land. Ringwood: Penguin.
Written, Researched and Directed by James Vegter (22 October 2025)
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