Bathurst War

By August 1824, the violence had escalated to the point that Governor Brisbane declared martial law.

It is known as the Bathurst War.

The numbers are vague and likely understated, but the death toll usually given is around 100 Wiradjuri and around 20 colonists.

Do the events in Bathurst in 1824 meet the definition of a war? In 1963, the University of Michigan established the Correlates of War Project, which assembles raw data so the causes of war can be scientifically studied.

It is the gold standard and the Correlates of War Project defines war as a sustained combat resulting in at least 1,000 battle deaths within a 12-month period.

The events in Bathurst in 1824 fall well short of that threshold.

Yet, having read many of the contemporary documents, plus Dr Stephen Gapps' excellent book Gudyara, The First Wiradjuri War of Resistance, The Bathurst War, 1822-1824, the region certainly did feel like a reasonably intense guerrilla war zone for several months.

Colonial officials at the time were not reluctant to call it a war, so we'll stick with convention and do the same.

Rachel, I'd like to kick it off by gaining an understanding of the scope of the Frontier Wars, because they weren't isolated.

When you consider the Hawkesbury-Nepean Wars in New South Wales in the 1790s and 18- up to 1816, the Black War in Tasmania, the Bathurst War of 1824, and the Queensland conflicts, what actually was the scope, if we can get an understanding of that?

Well, we'll never know the number of lives.

We know that the number of non-Indigenous people who were killed-