page_title: Australian native police
section_title: Initial deployment
hierarchical_section_title: Australian native police / New South Wales and Queensland / Initial deployment
caption_attribution_description: English: illustration from 19 century book
context_page_description: Australian native police units, consisting of Aboriginal troopers under the command usually of a single white officer, existed in various forms in all Australian mainland colonies during the nineteenth and, in some cases, into the twentieth centuries. The Native Police were utilised as a cost-effective and brutal paramilitary instrument in the expansion and protection of the British colonial frontier in Australia. Mounted Aboriginal troopers of the Native Police, armed with rifles, carbines and swords, escorted surveying groups, pastoralists and prospectors into frontier areas. They would usually then establish base camps and patrol these areas to enforce warrants, conduct punitive missions against resisting local Aboriginal groups, and fulfil various other duties.
  The Aboriginal men within the Native Police were routinely recruited from areas that were very distant from the frontier places in which they were deployed. As the troopers were Aboriginal, this benefited the colonists by minimising both the wages of the police and the potential for Aboriginal revenge attacks against white people.
context_section_description: This force was consolidated and trained by Walker at Deniliquin before traveling to the Darling River where the first Aboriginal attack occurred 100 miles below Fort Bourke at a place called Moanna, resulting in at least 5 natives being killed by the troopers. In 1849 he mobilised his force north beyond the MacIntyre River to conduct missions to police the out-stations. Once arriving on the Macintyre River on 10 May 1849, the force checked the aggressions of the local Aboriginal people, and when trying to capture six Aboriginal men charged with murder, there were "some lives lost". They were then deployed to the Condamine River where the "Fitzroy Downs blacks" were routed and another group were "compelled to fly" from the area. One of these skirmishes was described as a dawn raid on an Aboriginal encampment where around 100 native people were killed and two Native Police troopers were fatally injured.
  Walker found most of the squatters in the region thought the Native Police existed to shoot down the natives so they would not have to. Walker advocated a method of "bringing in" the Aboriginal people, allowing them onto pastoral stations, where they could obtain a lawful means of a livelihood. Those who stayed away were consequently regarded as potential enemies and were at high risk of being targeted in punitive missions. Walker's measure of success was the resulting increase in land values. These first actions of the Native Police reduced to great effect Aboriginal resistance against squatters in the Macintyre and Condamine regions.
caption: Frederick Walker
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