Black War 1804-1830

European soldiers and settlers on Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) harassed the native aborigines and seized valuable hunting lands belonging to them. When whites attacked and killed some aborigines on a hunting party in 1804, a protracted "bush war" broke out that greatly reduced the aborigine population during the next generation. Bushrangers, rural outlaws, robbed and killed both the whites and the aborigines during the period, causing additional terror and bloodshed. In 1830, the island's governor, Sir George Arthur (1784-1854), managed to capture and hang many of the bushrangers but failed to corral the aborigines with his "Black Line," a cordon of thousands of settlers sent into the bush to drive the aborigines out (only a boy and a woman were flushed out). The fighting, however, ended, and by 1835 the remaining aborigines had been persuaded to resettle on Flinders Island nearby.

References

Dictionary of Wars, 58-9.

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