CONFLICT
The expansion of British settlements, including the establishment of colonies in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), Adelaide, Moreton Bay (Brisbane) and Port Phillip (Melbourne), resulted in competition over land and resources, and quickly lead to violence.
Historical records document numerous occasions on which Indigenous people were hunted and brutally murdered (see map below). Massacres of Indigenous people often took the form of mass shootings or driving groups of people off cliffs. There are also numerous accounts of colonists offering Indigenous people food laced with arsenic and other poisons
In general, at the beginning, the British colonisers were welcomed, or at least not opposed by Aboriginal people. With time, however, when the impact of the British settlement increased, there were more and more conflicts between the white settlers and Aboriginal people, which often resulted in massacre.
In the Northern Territory until as late as the 1930s, Europeans travellers were sometimes speared to death.In retaliation, some European settlers shot Aboriginal people. The most severe series of killings in the Northern Territory occurred at Caledon Bay, which became a turning point in the relationship between Aboriginal people and the white settlers.
The image to the left shows the known massacres during European Colonisation towards the Indigenous people of Australia. Click the link below to learn more about each massacre:
http://www.australianstogether.org.au/map?topicSelect=violence-and-massacres&eraSelect=colonisation&stateSelect=ALL
http://www.australianstogether.org.au/map?topicSelect=violence-and-massacres&eraSelect=colonisation&stateSelect=ALL
Sources:http://www.australianstogether.org.au/stories/detail/colonisation, http://www.skwirk.com/p-c_s-17_u-504_t-1361_c-5239/qld/sose/colonisation-resources-power-and-exploration/british-colonisation-of-australia/consequences-of-british-colonisation-for-aboriginal-people