This resource accompanies the SBS documentary The Australian Wars (produced by Blackfella Films) about the Frontier Wars â Australiaâs longest war fought on home soil between 1790 and the 1940s.
Classroom-ready clips from the series launching each week as the three episodes air on SBS and NITV, and covering important issues raised in the selected clips;
Year 9: Understanding the movement of people, the short- and long-term effects of colonisation;
Year 10: Exploring text and resources from the documentary and analysing historical interpretations of these documents;
Years 11 & 12: Explore British Imperialism and the Industrial Revolution and examine impacts then and now;
Reflection questions to encourage deep thinking;
Classroom activities to enrich learning;
Expert guidance on cultural protocols; and
Further resources to build more in-depth lesson plans.
We recommend you pre-screen the full-length episode before using in class. Head to SBS On Demand for personal viewing. For classroom viewing of whole episodes, please visit ClickView, or your schoolâs resource centre (for example Wingaru, Informit etc).
Content warning: The documentary is classified M, and the clips selected in this resource are classified PG. The clips are intended to be previewed by teachers before sharing with students.
SBS would like to advise this teaching resource may contain the images, voices and names of deceased persons, which may be distressing to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Professor and Director, Monash Indigenous Studies Centre
The ‘Mounted Police and Blacks’ lithograph depicts the massacre of the Gamilaraay people by British troops at Waterloo Creek, southwest of Moree, New South Wales, in December 1837 and January 1838.
In February, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese told Parliament that an Australian government had yet to acknowledge the nationâs true history. The section about the nationwide killing of Indigenous people by European invaders was usually missing.
âWe have all failed,â Albanese said. âTruth must fill the holes of our national memory.â
The Aboriginal people who died at the hands of the settlers should be recognised, he said. âThey, too, died for their loved ones. They, too, died for their Country. We must remember them, just as we remember those who fought more recent conflicts.â
Albanese also confirmed his support for the Makarrata Commission, part of the Uluru Statement of the Heart, released in May 2017 by the First Nations National Constitutional Convention.
A Makarrata Commission would tell the truth about how Australia was colonised, including the massacres of Indigenous people that took place all over the continent.
A month after Albaneseâs speech, the Victorian government announced it would hold the nationâs first truth and justice commission â to tell a more complete story of the stateâs colonisation, as part of its historic treaty process.
Monash Indigenous studies historian Professor Lynette Russell AM welcomed Albaneseâs statement and the Victorian initiative.
âThe myth of the peaceful settlement of Australia is something we need to undo, because we talk about reconciliation in Australia, but for the most part, we like to do it without truth,â she says.
âThe War Memorial represents wars between nation states, and essentially wars between equals. In lots of ways, the frontier wars are anything but a war between equals.â
Australian history classes rarely include accounts of a violent frontier, and few monuments exist that tell the story of the Indigenous people who lost their lives in a conflict sometimes called âthe frontier warsâ.
Although work is being done to uncover the stories of Aboriginal resistance and to document Indigenous massacres, these accounts havenât yet entered mainstream understanding, or bipartisan acceptance.
âWe need to improve the historical literacy of Australians,â Professor Russell says. âIt was not a mythic, peaceful settlement. It was an invasion. It had deep ramifications for Aboriginal people, their ongoing dispossession and alienation. If we want to undo some of that, or we want to move forward as a sophisticated, reconciled nation, then weâve got some growing up to do.â
Plaques such as this, commemorating the Red Rock (Bloodrock) massacre by colonists of the Gumbaynngir people in New South Wales, are rare.
Some historians, including Henry Reynolds, have called for the story of the frontier wars to be incorporated into the Australian War Memorial. But Professor Russell isnât sure the memorial is the best place to tell the story.
âI think itâs a really great debate, and itâs one a mature nation could have, and it could be really fruitful,â she says. âBut it has to be done against the background of what, I think, is an obscene amount of money [$500 million] being spent on the War Memorial.â
Reynoldsâ research estimated that up to 3000 Europeans and at least 20,000 Aboriginal Australians lost their lives in the frontier conflicts.
More recently, Raymond Evans, of the University of Queensland, has estimated that in this âlargely unpublicised guerrilla warâ, 66,680 Indigenous people lost their lives in 6000 attacks by settlers and native police in Queensland alone. Queensland was the most densely populated part of Australia pre-settlement, and the âepicentre of the struggleâ, he says.
He and colleague Robert Orsted Jensen arrived at this figure using methodology described here. If their estimate is correct, it would mean that the number of people who lost their lives in Queensland was more than the number of Australians who died in WWI (62,300). Evans puts the ratio of Aboriginal to settler deaths at 44:1.
âThe War Memorial represents wars between nation states, and essentially wars between equals,â Professor Russell says. âIn lots of ways, the frontier wars are anything but a war between equals.â
The one-sidedness of the conflict has been painstakingly recorded by historians at the University of Newcastle, led by Lyndall Ryan, who have made a map and searchable archive, Colonial Frontier Massacres of Australia, 1788 to 1930.
This research, which continues to expand, estimates 8391 Indigenous lives were lost in the massacres it has been able to verify, and 312 Europeans. Their sources included parliamentary papers, private journals and letters, newspaper articles, anthropological reports and Indigenous records â both oral and visual.
According to the archive, massacres were often planned events that took place in secret without witnesses. A code of silence in the immediate aftermath makes detection difficult â although survivors sometimes spoke out years later, when they believed the danger had passed.
âShould we redefine what weâre talking about, when we talk about the colonial period, as a period of war?â Professor Russell asks.
âMaybe itâs a different type of war, an undeclared war. People see their lands invaded. They see people come, stay, and take from them. Dispossession and dislocation â all follow on from that. Then it segues into the removal of children ⌠then you remove culture and language.
âIn a way, it almost dignifies them to put them in the War Memorial as though, somehow, this is equal to attempting to land on the beaches at Gallipoli.â
Not a war in the Western sense
Although Indigenous people sometimes protected their borders, had rivalries with other tribes, or conducted raiding parties, they didnât wage war in the Western sense. âThey were doing something different,â Professor Russell says.
âPeople often say, âThe Maori people fought back, and Aboriginal people didnât.â Thatâs absolutely not true. We know Aboriginal people fought back.
â[But] If you read, particularly, some of the work on the frontier wars, you do start to get this idea of Aboriginal people creating skirmishes, plotting, and planning in the ways we expect Western war to proceed. They are battle-ready, and theyâre working out the best strategies for this.
âNow, they might have been doing that, but my fear is, because youâve already got in your mind the view of the noble soldier, you then ascribe that to Aboriginal people, who are retaliating against the invasion in their land on their terms, not the European terms. That makes it really quite tricky to then turn around and say, âOh, look, itâs war as we recognise it.ââ
There’s debate about the appropriateness of the story of the frontier wars being incorporated into the Australian War Memorial.
During the Eumeralla Wars â a protracted conflict between the Gunditjmara people in whatâs now known as Victoriaâs Western District, British colonists and police, the Aboriginal resistance was regularly reported in the press, Professor Russell says.
Indigenous people âfought back in various ways. They fought back overtly. They actually, literally, attacked settlersâ huts. Particularly, if youâre a shepherd on the outskirts of a station, then you could be in a lot of trouble, but they had to be very careful in how they managed their retaliation âŚ
âThereâs also covert retaliation â retaliation that the settlers might not have even seen, including the use of sorcery and magic, to influence people.â
The siege mentality
In the mid-19th century, colonists recognised that âthey were under siegeâ, she says. âIt was commonly spoken of. It was also common for settlers to talk about the validity of Aboriginal people trying to protect the land ⌠Trying to chase off the invaders. It was part of the general writing. People wrote it in their diaries. They wrote it in letters to the newspaper. They would say things like, âWho can blame them. Weâve taken this from them.ââ
But by the turn of the century, this conversation about Aboriginal resistance all but vanished from public view, she says.
âI think itâs tied into the dying-race paradigm, where, suddenly, everybody thinks Aboriginal people are dying out. It smooths the pillow of the dying race ⌠humanitarianism comes to the forefront.
âAboriginal people are needing protection. Theyâre needing to be looked after, but thereâs also an anticipation they will go away â as in, theyâll disappear. They will be absorbed into the wider population. Theyâll become white, or theyâll die out.â
In reality, Indigenous people were herded onto protectorates, deprived of their liberty, punished for talking in their own language, and their children were taken away. âItâs out of sight, out of mind,â Professor Russell says.
She hopes that during the Victorian truth and justice commission âthese stories of dispossession, and violence, and all the rest, can be captured, kept, and held in posterity. People in the future will know what happened here. To me, that’s the most important thing we really need.â
Posted Tue 1 Aug 2023 at 11:06amTuesday 1 Aug 2023 at 11:06am, updated Thu 3 Aug 2023 at 10:14amThursday 3 Aug 2023 at 10:14am
The former childcare worker has been charged with 1,623 child abuse offences.
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A former childcare worker has been charged with 1,623 child abuse offences against 91 children, police have revealed.
Key points:
The AFP says the offences occurred at childcare centres in Brisbane, Sydney and overseas
Police will allege all offences were against pre-pubescent girls
The AFP is “highly confident” all 87 Australian children involved have been identified
A Gold Coast man, 45, has been charged with 136 counts of rape and 110 counts of sexual intercourse with a child under 10.
An investigation involving the Australian Federal Police (AFP) as well as Queensland and New South Wales police led to the arrest of the man for offences committed in Brisbane, Sydney and overseas between 2007 and 2022.
He has been in custody in Queensland since August 2022 when the AFP arrested and charged him with two counts of making child exploitation material and one count of using a carriage service for child abuse material.
AFP Assistant Commissioner Justine Gough said the man recorded all offences on his phone and cameras and authorities are “highly confident” all children recorded in Australia have been identified.
“The process of identification took time, skill and determination,” she said.
The AFP is “highly confident” all 87 Australian children involved have been identified. (ABC News: Liz Pickering)
Assistant Commissioner Gough said a search warrant was executed at a Brisbane childcare centre on August 20 last year and the man was arrested the next day.
Police seized devices at the man’s Gold Coast home that contained a large amount of child abuse material.
Assistant Commissioner Gough said the details of investigation Operation Tenterfield would be “deeply distressing” for the community.
“I am cognisant investigations like these can be re-traumatising for survivors of sexual abuse and loved ones,” she said.
The AFP alleges the abuse occurred at 10 childcare centres in Brisbane between 2007 and 2013 and also between 2018 to 2022, at an overseas location between 2013 and 2014, and at one centre in Sydney between 2014 and 2017.
Assistant Commissioner Gough said the AFP alleges that all the children offended against were pre-pubescent girls.
“We allege the 45-year-old man from the Gold Coast recorded all his alleged offending on his phone and cameras. The AFP is highly confident that all 87 Australian children who were recorded in the alleged child abuse material have been identified.
“The Australian children recorded in the alleged child abuse material have been informed of the investigation. Some of the individuals identified in the alleged child abuse material are now aged 18 years and have been informed.”
AFP Assistant Commissioner Justine Gough described the results of the investigation as “chilling news”.
The AFP is working with an overseas law enforcement jurisdiction to determine the identity of four children who were allegedly offended against at an overseas location, Assistant Commissioner Gough said.
Within hours of the man’s initial arrest last year, further alleged child abuse material was identified on the man’s electronic devices, she said.
Children identified from thousands of images
The operation focused in part on identifying the children in the alleged child abuse material.
“In September 2022, the AFP coordinated a joint agency task force with the Queensland Police Service at the AFP led Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation to review nearly 4,000 images and videos the man had allegedly created,” she said.
“The man worked at other childcare centres but the AFP is highly confident the man did not allegedly offend at those centres.
“Law enforcement has been working very closely with all the relevant childcare centres for the past year, and we thank them for their cooperation.”
Assistant Commissioner Gough said up to 35 members had been involved in Operation Tenterfield since August 2022. She said the operation was “complex” and required “highly skilled victim identification specialists”.
The operation commenced after the Queensland Police Service located alleged child abuse images and videos on the dark web in 2014.
Queensland police posted them on an international victim identification database seeking assistance from the global victim identification community.
‘Chilling news’
Assistant Commissioner Gough described the alleged offending over 15 years as “chilling news”.
She said the AFP and other agencies examined about 4,000 images, but they contained few distinguishable clues for investigators to follow.
“But in August 2022, the AFP was able to trace objects identified in the background of the alleged images and videos posted on the dark web between 2013 and 2014, to a Brisbane childcare centre,” Assistant Commissioner Gough said.
“Following inquiries with the childcare centre, the AFP executed a search warrant on the 20th of August 2022 in Brisbane, and arrested the man in Brisbane’s south-western suburbs about 1am on the 21st of August.
“He was charged with making and distributing child abuse material that was allegedly posted on the dark web.”
The AFP then searched the man’s Gold Coast home and seized electronic devices allegedly containing child abuse material created by the man.
“Given there was so many alleged images and videos of children that were recorded over 15 years ⌠on the alleged offenders devices, the process of identification took time, skill and determination.
“There is not much solace I can give parents and children who have been identified under Operation Tenterfield, but I can tell you we never gave up and we never will when it comes to protecting children.”
NSW Police will seek the alleged offender’s extradition to NSW in relation to 180 charges of child sexual abuse against 23 children.
NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Michael Fitzgerald said those charges carried life imprisonment.
“Once this man faces the AFP charges here in Queensland, we will be seeking his extradition back to New South Wales.”
The man’s case is scheduled for a mention in Brisbane Magistrates Court on August 21.
Chanel Contos speaks with TODAY after her petition to change consent education in schools went viral.
WARNING: Distressing
Thousands of students from across every part of Australia have spoken out about a chilling culture of normalised rape and sexual assault â as pressure grows for systemic change.
Since being overwhelmed by the response to her petition â calling for earlier and more holistic sexual education lessons â Sydneysider Chanel Contos has received more than 4000 testimonies from students in South Australia, Western Australia, Victoria, Queensland, the ACT and NSW.
Overnight, she launched a website where the disturbing accounts are beginning to be made public for the first time.
There are already more than 1500 testimonies on the website â and many of them bear eerie similarities to the vile stories that emerged from Sydney schoolsshortly after the petition first went live.
In many of the freshly-uploaded accounts, students say they were raped while unconscious at parties or woke up to being touched by someone inappropriately.
MELBOURNE SCHOOLS MENTIONED
Many of the new testimonies come from Melbourne schools, where students say there is a similar culture to the chauvinistic club-like mentality reported in some Sydney all-boys schools in the initial testimonies.
One former student at Carey Grammar School said she was 16 and at a party when she smoked her first joint and passed out on a bed.
âI thought Iâd be safe as the host went to my school,â she said, recounting the incident in 2012. âInstead he came in and got into bed with me.â
She said the boy then started digitally penetrating her, and wouldnât stop even though she repeatedly asked him to.
She said a friend of the boy entered the room and âjoined inâ â before spreading rumours around the school about the victimâs body.
âWhen I told my ex boyfriend a few years later he told me I asked for it and shouldnât have laid down,â she said. âThereâs so much wrong to this story.â
In another testimony, a former Firbank Grammar School student said she and her mates were invited to a âmassive party of about 500 peopleâ when she was in year 9.
âIt was one of my first experiences drinking a lot and I was vomiting at the back of the party and going in and out of consciousness,â she said. âI donât remember anything but the next day I found an Instagram picture of me passed out next to my vomit with a guy I donât know with his hands up my dress.â
She said the St Kevinâs College studentâs friends took pictures and posted them online.
âI reported the photo every day for a long time before it was removed and it still terrifies me that lots of people I donât know have that photo,â she said. âI also donât know what else was done to me that night because I donât remember.â
âRAPE CULTUREâ BEING EXPOSED
The disturbing accounts are just some of hundreds that have been uploaded overnight, and Ms Contos told news.com.au that thousands more will be uploaded soon.
âIâm really excited that this is reaching different states because once these stories start coming out in other parts of the country, I think we will see the same response weâve seen in NSW,â she said.
âThe more people that come forward, the more it will help the cause and it will expose the rape culture in our society.â
Former Kambala student Chanel Contos started an anonymous online petition to improve sex and consent education in schools across Australia. Picture: Supplied
Private Sydney schools in particular were mentioned time and time again in the initial testimonies, and Ms Contos said she was already seeing positive signs that schools and MPs in the city were taking the petition seriously.
She is meeting with several headmasters in the schools mentioned tomorrow as well as Liberal MP for Wentworth Dave Sharma â who has thrown his support behind the campaign.
âAs the response to this petition makes clear, weâve all got to do better in educating our children, at home and in our schools,â Mr Sharma said.
PARENTS PULL STUDENTS OUT OF PRIVATE SCHOOLS
As the pressure grows for systemic change, itâs clear some parents arenât willing to wait.
Some of those who sent their boys to Sydney private schools mentioned in the petition have spoken out, and some have reportedly sent their children to other schools.
One father of a year 9 student at Kings School in Parramatta told the Sun-Heraldelite schools cultivated a culture of entitlement and privilege, which he said leads to a lack of âsensitivityâ towards others.
âThey teach these kids theyâre the best, theyâre the chosen ones, theyâre going to run Australia, theyâre going to conquer the world,â he said.
The parent said he chose the private school for his son to give him a better chance, but worried he and his wife would struggle to teach the child to be empathetic towards others.
News.com.au has contacted the school for comment.
Member for Wentworth Dave Sharma is meeting with Ms Contos tomorrow. Picture: John Appleyard
MELBOURNE SCHOOLS RESPOND
Meanwhile, Melbourne schools mentioned in the new testimonies have expressed their concern.
The body representing some of Melbourneâs most prestigious Catholic schools â including St Kevinâs College, Parade College, St Maryâs College, St Josephâs College and St Bernardâs College â said the petition had pushed them to take action and signalled they would work with parents to address the issue.
âThe powerful testimonies provided by the many young women in the online petition are disturbing and are an indictment on societal decency,â said Edmund Rice Education Australia executive director Dr Craig Wattam.
âAll of us â schools, families, and the broader community â must carefully consider and revisit issues pertaining to sex education.
âMore specifically, sexual consent education is required for both young men and women and we need to be providing this education in early adolescence.â
News.com.au has also reached out to Carey Grammar School for comment.
Image caption, Police in Sydney arrest a man suspected of possessing child abuse material
Australian police have arrested 44 men across the nation on suspicion of possessing and producing child abuse material.
Sixteen children had been “removed from harm” in the process, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said.
The arrests followed a year-long investigation into images and videos that were shared online.
Arrests of the suspects – all aged between 19 and 57 – were made in every Australian state.
Police laid a total of 350 charges, all related to possessing or producing child exploitation material.
The men had allegedly used a cloud storage platform to share the abuse. The AFP described some evidence as among “the most abhorrent produced”.
Commissioner Reece Kershaw said identifying and rescuing victims was a “race against time” in such cases.
“Pixel by pixel, our investigators painstakingly look for clues and never give up,” he said.
Image caption, An arrest in Adelaide
Hundreds of police and other specialists worked on the operation across Australia’s states and territories.
The arrests numbered 11 in Victoria, 11 in Queensland, nine in South Australia, eight in New South Wales, seven in Western Australia, five in Tasmania and one in the Australian Capital Territory.
The suspects worked in industries including construction, transport, law enforcement and hospitality.
Image caption, Police raided houses and seized electronics
“Children are not commodities and the AFP and its partner agencies work around-the-clock to identify and prosecute offenders,” Mr Kershaw said.
The AFP said it had rescued 134 children from child exploitation this year, including 67 who were not in Australia.
A senior teacher at one of Sydneyâs most prestigious schools used his work laptop to access a stash of âdepravedâ child abuse images.
Cody Michael Reynolds, 37, will spend the next 18 months behind bars after being sentenced at Downing Centre Court on Tuesday, more than a year after he was stood down from a prestigious role at Moriah College in Sydneyâs eastern suburbs, where parents pay about $35,000 a year.
Police arrested Reynolds following a raid of his inner city home in March 2022. Officers uncovered a cache of child abuse material on multiple devices and online storage service Megalcoud, including at least 1000 child abuse images and 50 videos.
Investigators uncovered a further 111 images and six videos on Reynoldsâ iPhone in a folder hidden on the phoneâs camera roll as well as nine images and two videos on his work-assigned laptop.
Cody Michael Reynolds, the former head of English at Moriah College, arrives for sentencing on child abuse material charges. Picture: Simon Bullard
Judge Phillip Mahoney told the court the material was âdepravedâ and showed mostly pre-pubescent males and females aged between 9-16 masturbating or performing sex acts, including with adults.
âThe material included sadistic material where children are engaged in sexual activity under gunpoint,â Justice Mahoney said. âIn another, a four year old was forced to put his hand on the penis of an older boy.â
The court was told Reynolds used multiple aliases to share child abuse material with users through a concealed WhatsApp application, including an explicit conversation with a user called Xavier about âplaying with young boysâ.
âThe offender transferred videos to a like-minded user encouraging their own gratification,â Justice Mahoney said.
âHe deliberately used a sophisticated method, including end-to-end inscription, to minimise detection.â
Cody Reynolds formerly served as head of English at Moriah College.
Reynolds pleaded guilty late last year to using a carriage service to transmit, publish, or promote child abuse material and using a carriage service to possess or control child abuse material.
At the time of his arrest, Reynolds was head of English at Moriah College, a coeducational Modern Jewish Orthodox private school, but was stood down by the elite school within 24-hours of his arrest at his Surry Hills home.
During sentencing, the court was told how Reynold went from being a high-flying teacher presenting his academic studies in Australia and overseas to consuming child abuse material.
âReynolds would avoid going home to his partner and would instead sit in the storeroom of his apartment building drinking and viewing the child abuse material,â Justice Mahoney told the court.
âHe used it to cope with negative emotions (…) rather than develop healthy coping mechanisms.â
Justice Mahoney said Reynolds had âdone everythingâ to seek out rehabilitation after being charged,
Cody Reynolds used his work laptop to access a stash of âdepravedâ child abuse images. Picture: Damian Shaw
The 37-year-old was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder at 21 and later with PTSD following his arrest.
Reynolds âacknowledged in hindsightâ the emotional harm that the offending had caused to children depicted in the videos.
The court was also told Reynolds had not met the criteria for a pedophilic disorder and co-operated with police following his arrest.
He was joined in court by his family, who had relocated to Sydney to support him.
Reynolds was sentenced to a total prison term of two years and 10 months.
But Justice Mahoney ordered that he be eligible for release from November 2024.
After that time, he will be required to pay $1000 and continue with rehabilitation treatment.