The Australian Wars

Rachel Perkins is a filmmaker with a career spanning documentaries, television drama and movies. Her Australian Aboriginal heritage (Arrernte/Kalkadoon) has inspired much of her work including The Australian Wars documentary series, which she wrote and directed and which was commissioned by SBS and produced by Blackfella Films. Other notable documentary work includes First Australians and Blood Brothers. Her fiction work includes the TV dramas Total Control, Mystery Road and Redfern Now and the movies Jasper Jones, Mabo, Bran Nue Dae, One Night the Moon and Radiance. She spends her time between her traditional country of Mparntwe/ Alice Springs and Sydney.

Stephen Gapps is a historian working to bring the Australian Frontier Wars into broader public recognition. In 2011 Stephen won a NSW Premier’s History Award for his book Cabrogal to Fairfield City: A history of a multicultural community. His 2018 title The Sydney Wars: Conflict in the early colony, 1788-1817 won the 2019 Les Carlyon Literary Prize. In 2021 Stephen published Gudyarra: The First Wiradyuri War of Resistance-the Bathurst War 1822- 1824 and in 2025, Uprising: War in the Colony of New South Wales 1838-1844. Stephen is a Senior Associate at Artefact Heritage and Environment and Adjunct Lecturer at Charles Sturt University.

Mina Murray is a Wiradyuri scholar, educator and historian. Her research focuses on reclaiming the history of armed Indigenous resistance by synthesising archival research and conventional, historical practice with the knowledge and philosophy of her people. Mina has worked with the ABC, SBS, AFL, the Australian War Memorial and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across the continent. For Dhuluny, the 200th anniversary of the declaration of martial law in Bathurst, Mina collaborated with Wiradyuri Elders, local Aboriginal organisations and AIATSIS to produce a suite of curriculum materials and teachers’ resources for the commemoration.

Henry Reynolds is a historian who wrote an MA thesis on nineteenth- century colonial politics. He taught in Tasmania and the UK before accepting a lecturing position in Townsville University College (now James Cook University). He lived in North Queensland for over 30 years, teaching Australian history and politics, where he became deeply involved in race politics with local Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders, which greatly influenced his teaching and research. Henry has written over 20 books-many of them prize winners including: The Other Side of the Frontier, The Law of the Land, Forgotten War and Truth-Telling.

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