Colonial settlers frequently clashed with Indigenous people (on continental Australia) during and after the wave of mass immigration of Europeans into the continent, which began in the late 18th century and lasted until the early 20th. Throughout this period, settlers attacked and displaced Indigenous Australians, resulting in significant numbers of Indigenous deaths. These attacks are considered to be a direct and indirect (through displacement and hunger) cause of the decline of the Indigenous population, during an ongoing colonising process of mass immigration and land clearing for agricultural and mining purposes. There are over 400 known massacres of Indigenous people on the continent. A project headed by historian Lyndall Ryan from the University of Newcastle and funded by the Australian Research Council has been researching and mapping the sites of these massacres. A massacre is defined as "the deliberate and unlawful killing of six or more undefended people in one operation", and an interactive map has been developed. , the number of documented massacres of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by colonists recorded as having taken place in the period between 1788 and 1930 was 417 (10,372 individuals), while there were 13 massacres of colonists by Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people in the same period (160 individuals). There are also at least 26 recorded instances of mass poisonings of Aboriginal Australians. The following list tallies some of the massacres (as defined above) of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by colonial authorities and settlers (or their descendants), most of which took place during the mass-immigration period.

1790s – 1890s

New South Wales

1790s

1800s

1810s

1820s

1830s

1840s

1850s

Tasmania

(formerly Van Diemen's Land)

1800s

1820s

Victoria

Records in the early days in Port Phillip were sparse and unclear, and the level of resistance to the European settlers and other aspects of Aboriginal culture before this is a source of continuing investigation. It is estimated that massacres by white settlers resulted in the death of approximately 11% of the Aboriginal population between 1836 and 1851.

1830s

1840s

Western Australia

1830s

1840s

1850s

1860s

1870s

1880s

1890s

South Australia

1840s

1850s

1880s

Queensland

1840s

1850s

1860s

1870s

1880s

Northern Territory

1820s

(then part of New South Wales)

1870s

(then part of South Australia)

1880s

1890s

Massacres after federation (1901)

Western Australia

Kimberley region – The Killing Times – 1890–1920: The massacres listed below have been depicted in modern Australian Aboriginal art from the Warmun/Turkey Creek community who were members of the tribes affected. Oral histories of the massacres were passed down and artists such as Rover Thomas have depicted the massacres.

1910s

1920s

Queensland

1910s

Northern Territory

1910s

1920s

Footnotes

Cited works