Orange City Library: Dr Stephen Gapps -The Australian Wars

The truth about the bloody battles fought to establish the nation

Meet Dr Stephen Gapps at Orange City Library on Friday 10 April at 10.30am when he talks about his latest book The Australian Wars, hosted by Orange Together, and supported by Collins Booksellers.

For the first time, The Australian Wars brings what for too long has been considered the historical past into connection with its reverberations in the present.

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.

The Australian Wars was conceived by Rachel Perkins following her award-winning documentary series produced by Blackfella Films for SBS and edited along with Stephen Gapps, Mina Murray and Henry Reynolds. 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.

Black and white writers tell the stories of these battles across three crucial time periods, and all the states and territories. It notes the lands that were unconquered, as well as the role of disease, weapons and tactics, and the story of women on the frontier.

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.

Copies of The Australian Wars by Dr Stephen Gapps will be available for sales and signings on the day supported by Collins Booksellers.