ISBN |
9781760801038 |
1760801038 |
Author |
Bradley, Michael (author.) |
Title |
Coniston / Michael Bradley. |
Publisher and/or associated date/s |
Crawley, Western Australia : UWA Publishing, 2019. |
©2019. |
Description |
ix, 266 pages : 2 maps ; 24 cm. |
Note |
This book contains language, words and descriptions that may be considered offensive or distressing. The author notes that in this book he has "quoted directly from many contemporary sources, including diaries, letters, newspapers, books and government records. The way that many Australians during the relevant period spoke about Aboriginal people, the language they used to describe them and their attitudes to them, are frequently shocking in their brutality, contempt and naked racism. I have not sanitised or censored any of it because I believe it is important, as part of rediscovering and comprehending this episode in our history, that we understand what was considered acceptable, indeed uncontroversial, in Australian society at the time..."--Author's note. |
Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 258-264) |
Summary |
'Mowed them down wholesale!' With these words, a judge summed up the last great punitive massacre of Aboriginal people in Australia. Coniston, Central Australia, 1928: the murder of an itinerant prospector at this isolated station by local Warlpiri triggered a series of police-led expeditions that ranged over vast areas for two months, as the hunting parties shot down victims by the dozen. The official death toll, declared by the whitewash federal inquiry as being all in self-defence, was 31. The real number was certainly multiples of that. Coniston has never before been fully researched and recorded; with this book that absence in Australia's history is now filled. As the last great mass killing in our country's genocidal past but an event largely unremembered, it reminds us that, without truth, there can be no reconciliation. |
Subjects |
Warlpiri people (C15) (NT SF52-04) |
Race relations - Violent - Massacres, murders, poisonings etc |
Massacres -- Northern Territory -- Coniston Station |
Massacres -- Australia -- History |
Aboriginal Australians, Treatment of -- Northern Territory |
Aboriginal Australians, Treatment of -- History |
Yurrkarrn / Coniston (South Central NT SF53-09) |
Yurrkuru / Brookes Soak (South Central NT SF53-09) |
Northern Territory -- History -- 1922-1945 |
Coniston Station (N.T.) -- History -- 20th century |
Australia -- Race relations |
Call number |
2020.037 |