Newspaper evidence of colonial frontier massacres in Australia

Abstract

Australian newspapers on Trove provide important evidence of massacre on the Australian colonial frontier. Stage 3 of the digital map of frontier massacre sites across colonial Australia, 1788–1930, includes evidence from more than sixty Australian newspapers on Trove. Of the 312 massacre sites on the map, sources for 235 of them, that is more than two thirds, are provided by newspapers. To demonstrate how the research team has deployed newspapers on Trove, this article interrogates two case studies of frontier massacre, one from the Black War in Tasmania in the 1820s and the other from north-eastern Victoria in the 1840s. The article finds an important connection between truth telling about frontier massacre and newspaper evidence on Trove. Newspapers rather than official reports often appear more likely to provide the evidence of massacre on the Australian colonial frontier.