During the British colonisation of Australia, land ownership was forcefully transferred from the various Indigenous populations to the colonists. Several military and paramilitary organisations such as the British Army, Native Police, Border Police and New South Wales Mounted Police were utilised by the British to eliminate any Aboriginal resistance to this acquisition of land. However, it was often the responsibility of the pioneering colonists themselves to take the initiative in enforcing land ownership transferral. Usually this was done violently through the use of firearms to intimidate or kill the native people. Some colonists though, chose an alternative approach, using poison concealed in consumables as a method of extirpating the original custodians of the land. The tainted consumables were either knowingly given out to groups of native people, or purposely left in accessible places where they were taken away and eaten collectively by the local clans. As a result, incidents of mass deaths of Aboriginal Australians due to these deliberate mass poisonings occurred throughout the continent.