AustLit

'If any characteristic has distinguished the police in Australia from their original models in England or Ireland, it has been their continually changing role in the government of Aborigines.

In the 1830s and 40s, in the absence of any real law enforcement body, uncontained conflict between settlers and Aborigines in what was to become southern Queensland resulted in a spiral of violence that was at times gratuitous. Some whites killed blacks out-of-hand. For their part, Aborigines retaliated when and how they could. One settler, for example, told how in a little over two years fifteen of his shepherds had been murdered and whole herds of his animals had been butchered simply for the fat their kidneys contained.' (Extract)