Reading Notes: Bruce Elder, Blood on the Wattle (1988)

A journalist’s account of documented massacres and mistreatment of Aboriginal Australians since 1788.

Bruce Elder first published Blood on the Wattle: Massacres and Maltreatment of Aboriginal Australians since 1788 in 1988, the bicentenary of British settlement, and later revised it. Written for general readers, it gathers accounts of massacres region by region, including Myall Creek (1838), where seven settlers were hanged for murder, one of the few times the killing of Aboriginal people was punished.

What to expect

• A narrative, state-by-state structure that is easy to navigate.
• Extensive quotations from colonial sources.
• Chapters on later mistreatment, including the removal of children.

Some historians have questioned particular accounts in popular massacre histories, and the University of Newcastle’s colonial frontier massacres project now maps documented events with published standards of evidence. Read Elder alongside that work.

The book is in copyright; these are Reader notes to guide your reading.

Part of the Boston Made Reader’s special collection Courage, Conscience & Service. Written for the Reader and free to read here.