'The opening of south-east Queensland to ‘free settlement’ by the British colonial authorities in 1841 signalled the end of the convict era and the rapid establishment of the pastoral industry. An immediate consequence of the decision was the escalation of violence between the Indigenous traditional owners of the land and the new arrivals.
The Battle of One Tree Hill by Brisbane historians Ray Kerkhove and Frank Uhr provides a detailed account of Queensland’s first theatre of frontier conflict. Fought across the Lockyer and Brisbane river valleys for much of the 1840s, a coalition of Indigenous groups enacted a determined campaign of resistance against the European colonisers who took their lands and violated their laws and traditions.'
(Introduction)