AustLit

'This book provides the serious historical researcher with some important clues pertaining to several incidences in the affairs of the government-appointed Queensland Native Police that reveal a politically expedient cover-up. In May 1861 a Select Committee on the Native Police Force was appointed to enquire into the Force and the conditions of the Aborigines generally. In his book Up Rode the Troopers, BilI Rosser compares the Minutes of Evidence taken from these proceedings with an oral history account of a descendant of the tribal group, known locally as the Telemon Mob, which suffered from the callous brutality of the Native Police Force under the command of Lieutenant Frederick Wheeler. In this literary investigation into the cold-blooded murder of three Telemon elders, Rosser lifts the rug and exposes the dirty and dark deeds that have been conveniently swept under the carpet of colonial squattocracy. Rosser succeeds in revealing that the enquiry into the affairs of the Native Police was an exercise in political expedience and served to rationalise the systematic exploitation of Australian Aborigines in the newly formed State of Queensland, and to pave the way for the oppressive Queensland Aborigines' Protection Acts.'  (Introduction)