By 1888, after 100 years of colonisation, it is estimated that 95% of the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander population had 'disappeared'. Along with starvation, disease, dispossession and grief, a further contributing factor to this decline was murder. Massacres occurred sequentially as the line of first contact forged its way across a country that had been occupied, cared for, and loved for over 50,000 years by about 250 separate Aboriginal nations. The concomitant brutality subsumed in the colonial narrative of zeal, purpose and prosperity meant that massacres were shrouded...