Stephen Gapps on his new book 'Uprising: War in the colony of New South Wales, 1838–1844

Good Reading Podcast

The First Wiradyuri War of Resistance ended in 1824 with a series of massacres conducted by settlers in the Bathurst region. From the 1830s, colonists began occupying more and more Aboriginal land across western New South Wales and stocking it with sheep and cattle. By 1838, a dramatic fightback began across the entire frontier of the colony. What has been called the Second Wiradyuri War of Resistance, from 1839 to 1841, was, in fact, part of a vast arc of conflict from present-day northern Victoria through to southeast Queensland. At the time, it was seen by many contemporaries as a concerted and coordinated ‘uprising’. In Uprising, Stephen Gapps reveals the incredible story of this extensive frontier resistance warfare for the first time – a series of wars that were conducted along a huge area of the Murray-Darling river system, across many First Nations’ lands, in a concerted defence of River Country. In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Stephen Gapps about why we are yet to fully recognise that the colonisation of Australia was achieved through frontier wars, how wool was one of the prime economic drivers for the invasion, the extensive networks of communication that existed for First Nations across the colony of New South Wales and why memorials to this war should form part of our national remembrance.