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The Australian Wars 

The truth about the bloody battles fought to establish the nation

by Rachel Perkins, Stephen Gapps, Mina Murray and Henry Reynolds (eds)

Published by Allen & Unwin

RRP $39.99 in hardback

ISBN 9781761474392

It is estimated up to 100,000 people died in the frontier wars that raged across Australia for more than 150 years. This is equivalent to the combined total of all Australians killed in foreign battles to date. But there are few memorials marking these first, domestic wars.

An impressive list of writers has been assembled to contribute to this landmark book, including Henry Reynolds, Stephen Gapps, Marcia Langton and David Marr to name just a few.

For filmmaker Rachel Perkins, the project was a very personal one. Her great-grandmother was a survivor of a massacre.

Indigenous as well as white writers tell the stories of the battles across the three crucial time periods between 1788 and 1930, and all the states and territories.

But it is more than a record of the past.

This book also raises the very questions that are being debated today.

How should the frontier wars be recognised?

Has the ‘great Australian silence’ about our country’s violent establishment finally been breached?

With the rejection of The Voice referendum, public sentiment still presents a major stumbling block to recognition of Australia’s troubled beginnings.

This history is still alive in those descendants who carry the stories of their ancestors. 

The Australian Wars brings what for too long has been considered the historical past into the present so that we might know the truth of the origins of this nation. 

‘The Australian Wars is a compelling call to truth-telling and national reckoning,’ writes former Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt.

The reality is, however, that a broader public needs to understand the need for truth-telling in the first place. Books such as ‘The Australian Wars’ can play an important role in bringing the truth to the light.

VERDICT: An important book on a subject that needs to be more widely understood.