War of Southern Queensland

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War of Southern Queensland
Location Eastern Australia (Present day Southern Queensland) Result British victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Colony of New South Wales	United Tribes Logan District Moreton Bay Islands Burnett River Wide Bay District Bundaberg Mount Perry Gympie Bribie Island Fraser Island Gayndah ’Mount Brisbane’ (D’Aguilar Ranges) (Mountain Tribes) Kilcoy/Esk Brisbane/Enoggera
Commanders and leaders
Queen Victoria Sir George Gipps (1843–1846) Sir Charles Augustus FitzRoy (1846–1855)	Multuggerah  † Dundalli  (POW)
Casualties and losses
Total Casualties: ~174 minimum, (‘800 maximum’)	1000 (minimum)

The War of Southern Queensland was a conflict fought between a coalition of Aboriginal tribes in South East Queensland, the "United Tribes", and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, from around 1843 to 1855. Following the Kilcoy massacre in 1842, a great meeting was held in the Bunya Scrub of tribes from across South East Queensland north to the Wide Bay-Burnett and Bundaberg regions, fuelled by decades of mistrust and misunderstanding with the British, they united into a loose confederation and issued a "declaration" to destroy the settlements on their lands.

Most of the Wide Bay-Burnett was abandoned during this period, and the settlements on the ranges were under heavy attack by the Mountain Tribes led by Multuggerah. The worst of the conflict was largely confined to these parts of the country, but the main settlement of Brisbane also suffered from raids that pillaged houses and farms. The war marked a reversal in traditional Indigenous battle tactics, moving away from pitched battles early in the conflict to more "hit and run" attacks and aspects of guerrilla warfare.

Following over a decade of sustained conflict along with suffering from severe population loss, resistance against the British largely collapsed in the south. Conflict continued well into the 1860s as the frontier moved further north. The general date for the end of the southern war is attributed to the hanging of Dundalli in 1855, and the subsequent arrival of the Native Police which caused the remaining Aboriginal raiders in Brisbane to flee the town.^[1]