'In March 1839 the Governor of New South Wales, Sir George Gipps, sent surveyor Robert Dixon and assistant surveyors James Warner and Granville William Chetwynd Stapylton to Moreton Bay to conduct trigonometrical surveys of the district in preparation for land sales. This innocuous project was the precursor to a chain of events that became a grim tale of murder and the first executions of Aboriginal people in Queensland.' (Publication abstract)