List of massacres of Indigenous Australians

1790s – 1890s

New South Wales

1790s

• September 1794. British settlers in the Hawkesbury River area killed seven Bediagal people in reprisal for the theft of clothing and provisions. Some of the surviving children of this raid were taken by the settlers and detained as farm labourers. One boy, who was considered a spy, was later dragged through a fire, thrown into the river and shot dead.
• May 1795. Conflict in the Hawkesbury region continued and following the alleged killing of two settlers, Lieutenant Governor William Paterson ordered two officers and 66 soldiers to "destroy as many as they could meet with... in the hope of striking terror, to erect gibbets in different places, whereon the bodies of all they might kill were to be hung". Seven or eight Bediagal people were killed. A crippled man, some children and five women were taken to Sydney as prisoners. One of the women and her baby had serious gunshot wounds. The child died not long after, as did the newborn baby of the pregnant woman.
• September 1795. In the lower parts of Hawkesbury, British settlers conducted an armed expedition against local Aboriginal Australians, killing five and taking a number of prisoners, again including a badly wounded child.
• March 1797. After Aboriginal Australians killed two British settlers, a large punitive expedition was organised which surprised and dispersed a native camp of about 100 people, killing an unknown number. The armed group then returned to Parramatta to rest. Pemulwuy, a noted Aboriginal resistance leader of the early frontier, followed them into the town, demanding vengeance for the dispersal. A skirmish then occurred between Pemulwuy's group and a collection of British soldiers and settlers. One of the settlers was injured, but at least five Aboriginal Australians were shot dead with many more wounded, including Pemulwuy.
• March 1799. Henry Hacking was ordered by Governor John Hunter to investigate claims of British sailors being trapped by Aboriginal Australians at the mouth of the Hunter River to the north of the colony. Hacking encountered a group of Awabakal people on the south side of the river who informed him that the sailors had left earlier on foot, endeavouring to walk back to Sydney. Hacking did not believe them and became agitated, shooting dead four Awabakal men. The sailors later arrived in Sydney having walked the distance to return.

  1800s

• March 1806. A group of Yuin people, resident to what the British named Twofold Bay, attempted to forcibly remove a gang of eleven sealers encamped on their land. After spears had been thrown, the sealers opened fire on them with muskets, killing nine, with the remainder fleeing. The bodies were hung overnight from nearby trees, in an attempt to intimidate the other Yuin.

  1810s

• 1816. Appin Massacre. New South Wales Governor Macquarie sent soldiers against the Gundungurra and Dharawal people on their lands along the Cataract River just south of Sydney, in reprisal for violent conflicts with white settlers in the adjoining Nepean and Cowpastures districts. On 17 April, at around, the group of soldiers arrived at a camp of Dharawal people, killing at least 16 indigenes by shooting. Many others, including women and children, were driven to fall from the cliffs of the gorge to their deaths below.
• 1818. Minnamurra River massacre. Local settlers attacked and killed at least six members of the Wodiwodi people camped on the banks of the Minnamurra River on the pretext that they were retrieving two muskets lent to a group of Aboriginal people living on the river.

  1820s

• 1824. Bathurst massacre. Following the killing of seven Europeans by Aboriginal people around Bathurst, New South Wales, and a battle between three stockmen and a warband over stolen cattle which left 16 Aboriginal Australians dead, Governor Brisbane declared martial law to restore order and was able to report a cessation of hostilities in which 'not one outrage was committed under it, neither was a life sacrificed or even Blood spilt'. Part of the tribe trekked down to Parramatta to attend the Governor's annual Reconciliation Day.
• 1826. Around 20 Birpai men, women and children at Blackmans Point. There is no single written account, but the diary of Henry Lewis Wilson, who oversaw convicts in the area, relates that after two convicts sent to work at Blackmans Point were killed by Indigenous men, a party of soldiers "got round the blacks and shot a great many of them, captured a lot of women and used them for a immoral purpose and then shot them. The offending soldiers were sent to Sydney to be tried, but managed to escape punishment.". Historian Lyndall Ryan, after studying other evidence, thinks that the Blackmans Point event referred to by Wilson involved around 20 people, but other massacres in the area may have caused the deaths of up to 300 people.
• 1827. 12 Gringai Aboriginal Australians were shot dead for killing in reprisal a convict who had shot one of their camp dogs dead.
• 1827. A group of 17 colonists led by Benjamin Singleton shot dead 6 Gamilaraay men near what is now Willow Tree on the Liverpool Plains.

  1830s

• 18 December 1832. Joseph Berryman, overseer at Sydney Stephen's Murramarang land acquisition near Bawley Point, shot dead four Aboriginal Australians in retaliation for the spearing of some cattle. Of those shot, two were an elderly couple and another was a pregnant woman.
• 1835. Settlers from the Williams Valley are said in a late report to have surrounded a Gringai camp and forced them all over a cliff at Mount McKenzie near Gloucester Tops. The group of Aboriginal people were massacred in retaliation for the killing of five convict shepherds. A group of local residents, assisted by settlers from Port Stephens, set out to find the Aboriginal people responsible. They found a group of Aboriginal men, women and children camped on the edge of a cliff near the Gloucester River. It was reported that the Aboriginal people leapt to their deaths after being surrounded by settlers. However oral evidence suggests they were shot and thrown over the cliff edge by the settlers. The Mount McKenzie Aboriginal Place was gazetted in 2002 in recognition of the special significance of this site to the local Aboriginal community. A surviving band of the same group was hunted down and killed at the Bowman River. Unburied, their bones could be seen there for years.
• 11 July 1835. The expedition team of Thomas Mitchell, during their journey to the Darling River, fatally shot two Aboriginal Australians after fight over a kettle. Additional shots were fired at the fleeing tribe as they swam across the creek. Mitchell said that the shooting occurred "without much or any effect".
• 27 May 1836. Mount Dispersion massacre. Major Thomas Mitchell felt threatened by a group of around 150 Aboriginal people and divided his expedition team into two groups with about eight men in each group. The first group drove the Aboriginal people into the Murray River, forcing them with gunfire to enter the water to attempt escape. The second group of armed men then reunited with the first and commenced firing at the Aboriginal Australians as they swam across the river. For around five minutes, 16 men fired approximately eighty rounds of ammunition at the fleeing Aboriginal Australians. A government inquiry was organised into the incident after Mitchell published his account of it, but little of consequence resulted. Mitchell subsequently named the area where the shootings occurred Mount Dispersion.
• 26 January 1838. The Waterloo Creek massacre, also known as the Australia Day massacre. A New South Wales Mounted Police detachment, despatched by acting Lieutenant Governor of New South Wales Colonel Kenneth Snodgrass, attacked an encampment of Kamilaroi people at a place called Waterloo Creek in remote bushland. Official reports spoke of between 8 and 50 killed. The missionary Lancelot Threlkeld set the number at 120 as part of his campaign to garner support for his Mission. Threlkeld later claimed Major Nunn boasted they had killed 200 to 300 black Australians, a statement endorsed by historian Roger Milliss. Other estimates range from 40 to 70.
• 1838. Myall Creek massacre – 10 June: 28 people killed at Myall Creek near Bingara, New South Wales. This was the first and only Aboriginal massacre for which settlers were successfully prosecuted. Eleven men were charged with murder but were initially acquitted by a jury. On the orders of the Governor, a new trial was held using the same evidence and seven of the eleven men were found guilty of the murder of one Aboriginal child and hanged. In his book Blood on the Wattle, journalist Bruce Elder says that the successful prosecutions resulted in pacts of silence becoming a common practice to avoid sufficient evidence becoming available for future prosecutions. Another effect, as one contemporary Sydney newspaper reported, was that poisoning Aboriginal people became more common as "a safer practice". Many massacres were to go unpunished due to these practices, as what is variously called a "conspiracy", "pact" or "code of silence" fell over the killings of Aboriginal people.
• 1838. In about the middle of the year at Gwydir River. A "war of extirpation", according to local magistrate Edward Denny Day, was waged all along the Gwydir River in mid-1838. "Aborigines in the district were repeatedly pursued by parties of mounted and armed stockmen, assembled for the purpose, and that great numbers of them had been killed at various spots".
• 28 November 1838. Charles Eyles, William Allen and James Dunn shot dead nine Gamilaraay people just east of present-day Moree. They attempted to burn and bury the remains but these were found a couple of months later. All three men had warrants out for their arrest but the Attorney-General, John Hubert Plunkett, elected not to take the case to trial, ending any possibility of prosecution.
• 1838. In July 1838 men from the Bowman, Ebden and Yaldwyn stations in search of stolen sheep shot and killed 14 Aboriginal people at a campsite near the confluence of the Murrumbidgee and Murray Rivers in New South Wales.