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Former prime minister Tony Abbott says Australia’s frontier conflicts should be taught and commemorated, but believes the full story of the wars belongs in a museum rather than the Australian War Memorial.
His comments come as the Australian War Memorial prepares to build a dedicated Frontier Wars gallery as part of a major overhaul of its pre-1914 exhibitions. The battles between British forces and Aboriginal resisters to the imperial takeover of land are expected to be allocated about 200 square metres.
Abbott, a former member of the War Memorial’s board, said Australians should “learn as much as we can and continue to research the frontier conflict and let us, as it were, popularise it in all sorts of ways”.
He made the contribution in a discussion with Indigenous filmmaker Rachel Perkins and historian Henry Reynolds for the Memorial’s Through Their Eyes podcast.
“My own view is that this work would be better done at the Australian National Museum rather than at the Australian War Memorial,” he said.
Abbott acknowledged British regular soldiers had been involved in punitive missions against Aboriginal people but rejected equating the frontier conflicts with the South African War, the World Wars or Vietnam.
“To describe that as warfare in the same way … to think of the Australian involvement in the same terms, I just think is not quite right,” he said.
“I think there should be an acknowledgement of it here at the War Memorial, but I don’t think this is the place to dwell on it.”
Researchers from the University of Newcastle estimate that more than 10,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were killed in more than 400 massacres by military regiments, police forces and settlers’ militia from 1788 to 1928. Others have estimated more than twice the number of dead.
Perkins argued the distinction overlooked the nature of the struggle from an Indigenous perspective.
“It may not appear as war in the same way as it has been quantified at Vietnam and all those other theatres of war that you described,” she said.
“It is the nature of the things that it was fought over, not the way it was fought … that make it for us warfare because it was fought over our lives, our livelihood, our culture, and our land.
“It was about life itself,” Perkins said.
Reynolds, whose work helped bring frontier conflict into mainstream Australian history, pointed to George Arthur, the governor of Tasmania during the Black War, who mentioned “war” about 20 times in official correspondence.
“For a soldier who had seen war, what was happening in Tasmania was war,” Reynolds said.
Abbott replied: “This was in a sense of tragedy. The question is, was it an atrocity? I don’t think we can reasonably say it was.”
Reynolds nevertheless backed Abbott’s proposal for a separate institution dedicated to the history.
“I wouldn’t be concerned if it was a separate institution, probably run by the Institute of Aboriginal Affairs, properly funded and establish a separate museum of frontier conflict,” he said.
He proposed funding land councils to establish memorials in different parts of Australia, alongside a major national institution.
The debate is also deeply personal for Gomeroi man, veteran and War Memorial curator Garth O’Connell, whose family history places him on both sides of the frontier conflict.
One ancestor, Peter James Cutmore, survived a massacre at Slaughterhouse Creek, also known as Waterloo Creek, as a child after the rest of his ancestral clan was killed. Another was an Irish soldier who came to Australia after serving in the British Army and later joined the NSW Mounted Police.
“So I’m from both sides of this bloody part of Australia’s early history,” O’Connell said.
He said frontier conflict belonged in the War Memorial alongside Gallipoli, the Western Front, Vietnam and Afghanistan.
“This could be … there’s really good opportunities for our country to bond better and become more resilient and stronger and be a better country.”
War Memorial council chair Kim Beazley said the Frontier Wars had been a standard part of the teaching of Australian history for some time.
“The time has come for us here at the Australian War Memorial to give what is already in the galleries a stronger interpretive presentation of our beginnings, and this conference will provide us with important guidance,” Beazley said.
The Memorial will hold its two-day Imperialism and Resistance: Australia’s First Wars conference in September, bringing together historians, authors and curators to debate the conflicts and Australia’s earliest overseas military commitments to the British Empire.
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Rob Harris is the national correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age based in Canberra. He is a former Europe correspondent.Connect via email.From our partners
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