Updates and Changes

Since it began the Colonial Frontier Massacre website has been a work in progress with ongoing research resulting in changes to the information on the website. Beginning with frontier massacre sites of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and of Colonists in Eastern Australia to 1872, (Stage 1), sites in Central (South Australia and the Northern Territory) and Western Australia have since been added (Stage 2 and Stage 3). The current release, Stage 4, is the final stage of the project.

From the launch of Stage 1 in July 2017 people around Australia have assisted the project by using the contact form to provide more evidence, clues, information and corrections. This has proved an important way to involve the community in the truth telling process. After checking by the research team, the comments have contributed to our ongoing review of data and resulted in the addition, removal, changes and corrections to the naming, location and details of some sites, as we come to understand this history better - a history that in many cases was purposefully hidden for many decades and which is important to all Australians. The full extent of frontier massacres and the research required was not anticipated. As we are a small team working part time and as volunteers, checking and making corrections can take a long time. We thank everyone who has helped.

While some frontier massacres are well documented and understood, many remain obscure. To ensure that all the information on the site is sufficiently reliable, the inclusion of a site is based on criteria described in the Introduction. Each site includes an indication of the degree of confidence the historians working on that site have in the available evidence, indicated by one to three asterisks. Because this is an important and much debated area, we have always shown the sources used for each site, and provided links to online sources wherever possible, so that anyone can access and judge the evidence for themselves.

There are some sites we cannot include because we do not yet have enough supporting information about them. We suspect there were more frontier massacres that we may never find out about.

Significant changes in each stage of the project are as follows:

Stage 1: 5 July 2017

Colonial Frontier Massacres in Eastern Australia, 1788-1872

172 frontier massacre sites listed.

Only sites in Eastern Australia: New South Wales, Queensland, Van Diemen’s Land (TAS), Port Phillip District (VIC) to 1872 were included.

Some corrections were made after the release.

Stage 2: 27 July 2018

Colonial Frontier Massacres in Central and Eastern Australia, 1788-1930

250 frontier massacre sites.

Frontier massacre sites in South Australia and the Northern Territory were added, along with more sites in Eastern Australia up to 1930.

The Guardian Australia published an augmented version of the data in The Killing Times on 4/3/2019.

Stage 3: 18 November 2019

Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788-1930

311 frontier massacre sites.

Frontier massacre sites in Western Australia were added along with more sites in South Australia, the Northern Territory and eastern Australia. Frontier massacre sites across the whole of Australia up to 1930 were shown. The Guardian Australia updated The Killing Times on 18/11/2019.

Stage 3.1: Errata

Some urgent changes were made as 'errata' to Stage 3, ahead of the regular review of data and release of Stage 4.

Sites removed from the previous release:

These sites were removed for a variety of reasons, such as:

Sites added since the release of Stage 3:

Significant changes since the release of Stage 3:

Changes to names of sites:

Changes to details:

Updated narratives and sources to sites in the Port Phillip District (PPD), Victoria:

Stage 3.1 Bibliography

Reorganised and updated Bibliography

Stage 4.0

416 Massacres sites.

Stage 4.0 is the final intended version of the project. While future research is likely to reveal more information about frontier massacres in Australia, at the time of release there were no other frontier massacres of which the researchers were aware and met the criteria for inclusion on the map.

Stage 4.0 also includes some corrections and improvements to information on sites already on the map.

While stage 4.0 is intended as the final version, it is possible that some adjustments may follow, resulting in a stage 4.1.

Stage 4.0 Bibliography

The structure of the bibliography for Stage 4 has undergone some minor changes to make it easier for non-academics to navigate.

The map project uses the Harvard (UON) bibliographic style, except where some archives use specific styles.

Unpublished Sources lists:

Published Sources comprises sub-headings

Stage 5

438 massacre sites.

Ongoing changes have been made since 2022, including a review of every site. These changes are extensive and detailed, and too many to list. The changes have included adding sites, removing sites, combining sites, adjusting estimates of people killed, improved location of sites, more detailed narratives, additional sources and other details.