Following violent conflict on the colonial frontier (including the Bathurst region), New South Wales established a mounted force that became a key instrument of frontier policing and suppression of Aboriginal resistance.
In the Port Phillip District (later Victoria), an Aboriginal “Native Police Corps” under European supervision began a short-lived first deployment at Nerre Nerre Warren, reflecting imperial experiments in using Indigenous troopers for colonial policing.
Leadership turmoil and disputes contributed to the collapse of the initial Port Phillip Native Police Corps, which lasted about ten weeks before effectively lapsing.
A renewed attempt to run the Native Police Corps in the Port Phillip District operated from Jolimont for several months, illustrating ongoing colonial interest in Aboriginal paramilitary policing.
New South Wales created the Border Police—mounted convict troopers funded by a levy on squatters—to police expanding pastoral frontiers and manage conflicts including those involving Aboriginal people.
The Jolimont-based attempt ended in early 1839, with funding and administrative instability repeatedly undermining the Port Phillip model prior to its later re-establishment.
Henry E. P. Dana established a more durable Native Police Corps in the Port Phillip District, recruiting Aboriginal men and deploying them in frontier patrols that often prioritised coercion over arrest.
New South Wales set up a Native Police force of Aboriginal troopers under European officers, intended to reduce frontier “collisions” but in practice used to quell Aboriginal resistance, especially in what is now southern Queensland.
Frederick Walker was appointed Commandant of the newly established NSW Native Police, formalising a paramilitary model of frontier policing that expanded into northern districts during the 1850s.
After Dana’s death in November 1852, Victoria’s Native Police Corps rapidly disintegrated and was disbanded early the next year, ending the most sustained Victorian version of the model.
Edric Norfolk Vaux Morisset assumed command of the Native Police, leading the force during intensified conflict in Queensland’s central districts and overseeing expanded punitive operations.
After the killing of settlers at Hornet Bank station, Native Police and settler parties conducted extensive retaliatory expeditions in central Queensland that caused heavy Aboriginal casualties and became a major escalatory episode in frontier policing.
Queen Victoria signed letters patent enabling separation of Queensland from New South Wales; this political change shaped how frontier policing—including the Native Police—would soon be administered under a new colonial government.
Queensland’s new colonial administration publicly issued its early official notices, including the separation proclamation in the first Queensland Government Gazette—an institutional foundation for subsequent policing and “native police” governance.
With Queensland’s creation as a separate colony, administrative control for the Native Police moved from New South Wales to Queensland authorities, reducing external oversight and embedding the force in Queensland’s frontier expansion.
Queensland’s parliament conducted a formal inquiry into the Native Police Force and broader conditions facing Aboriginal people; despite evidence of violence and abuses, the system largely continued in practice.
The Cullin-la-ringo attack (killing 19 settlers) was followed by highly lethal punitive expeditions involving police/native police and civilian posses, often cited as among the deadliest reprisal phases in Queensland frontier conflict.
Native Police forces and colonial frontier policing (1830–1870)
