What will it take for the Australian War Memorial to fully recognise the reality of Australia’s Frontier Wars (the Australian Wars)?

It’s not as if the evidence for what happened in what is Australia’s longest and most deadly war isn’t overwhelming. Ironically the latest book – The Australian Wars edited by Rachel Perkins, Stephen Gapps, Mina Murray and Henry Reynolds was recently launched at the AWM following another promotion at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre.

Indeed, the AWM promo for the book launch said: “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. This is the first book to tell the story of the continental sweep of massacres, guerilla warfare, resistance and the contests of firearms and traditional Aboriginal weaponry as Indigenous nations resisted colonial occupation of their lands, territory by territory. At stake was the sovereignty of an entire country. 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.”

Well, it is a brilliant, compelling, comprehensive narration of the long and deadly Australian Wars but much previous research underpins its conclusions and narrative. But it is now, without doubt, the defining single volume text on the subject and one that makes it impossible to deny the reality of these wars and their impacts.

It is a companion piece to Rachel Perkins compelling TV series and in her introduction to the book she writes: “This book is a very personal project. My great grandmother was a survivor of a massacre. Fleeing from the violence, Nellie Araka took shelter with an Irish miner and subsequently had two children with him.”

She also recounts her school trip to the Australian War Memorial and how she came to recognise the gaps in the story of our wars.

The book is divided into three parts covering the periods 1788 to 1830, 1830 to 1860 and 1860 to 1930. For anyone surprised by the 1930 date massacres led by many names familiar to us today  – were occurring in Western Australia where the last recorded mass killing was the 1926 Forrest River Massacre in East Kimberlys.

The first section recounts the post- European arrival years including the smallpox outbreak and the Sydney Wars as the settlement expanded. It includes a masterly overview of where it all began by Henry Reynolds. It also demonstrates that it was war in the section written by Ray Kerkhove on resistance warfare, organisation, tactics and weaponry. In one of those historical what ifs, one wonders how successful the First Fleeters and later invaders would have been if their ‘enemy’ had not been fatally wounded by the smallpox epidemic.

It also details the Tasmanian Wars and there is a section on Aboriginal Women in the Australian Wars by Marcia Langton.

The second section looks at the consolidation of the conquest in NSW, Victoria and South Australia with details by Stephen Gapps of the many battles and massacres. Reading the section, as a veteran and an officer, it is impossible not to recognise the tactical sense of the Indigenous warriors; and their use of guerilla tactics to combat a foe armed with rifles.

Part three looks at Queensland, the Kimberley, Northern Territory and Torres Strait Islands. It is prefaced by an overview written by Henry Reynolds on a ‘Brutal War of Races’. It also includes a contribution from David Marr on the Native Police which follows up his recent book. June Oscar leads a discussion whether a war of extermination was being waged in the Kimberley.

Thomas Mayo contributes a discussion about the Torres Strait Islands. Not untouched by the wars but on the periphery. It is a reminder that Far North Queensland is not just Katter country but also contains the biggest proportion of Indigenous people of all the Australian States.

The area was also the second contact point from the invaders – the first being what is now called Botany Bay and we now know that, other than a few spears thrown at the invaders, there was also a sophisticated communication system which warned people further north that something was up.

Interestingly in the Far North current Indigenous centres are still producing art depicting contacts including series of depictions of Cook’s ship repairs after running into the Great Barrier Reef.

The book concludes with an essay by Nina Murray – a Wiradyuri scholar, educator and historian. She writes: “In the past, present and future of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will always remain inextricably linked to this continent.  We were here when the colonies were formed, we are still here now and we will be here at the end. We have a 65,000 years record that proves survival is our strong suit. The choice remains for the decision makers at the Australian War Memorial: will you help lead the Australian public towards a future where we collectively accept the truth of this nation’s history, or will those sandstone walls become your prison?”

There is hope. The First Nations curator Garth O’Connell has said: “I’m descended from both sides of the Frontier Wars. There is a lithograph in the collection that depicts my father’s family being shot and massacred at Waterloo Creek on 26 January 1838 … For decades it was displayed without a caption, and that was our truth, hidden in plain sight. But in my time here, it has totally changed. The Memorial has gradually embraced it and is absorbing this knowledge and forming it up over time. Our public want to see this sort of truth telling, they want the real Australian story.”

Now we just have to convince the Council.