Historical Frontier Violence Project Map

Interactive visualisation of collected data

Last updated: 12 May 2025

"In Aboriginal relationships, when conflict occurred, ceremonial processes were used to bring the contending parties together, to find ways in which people could live with each other under lore."
Judy Atkinson (Trauma Trails, 2002, p27)

  • Content warning

    This page contains information about historical violence in Australia and its legacy today. If this information causes distress please reach out for help and contact support services.

    For immediate help contact:

    For other crisis help lines, see Health Direct.

    For information about healing community, see:

This map shows data collected as part of the ARC project to study the links between historical frontier violence, it's drivers and outcomes today. Not all information can be included on the map, and more data and information will be provided as work on the Historical Frontier Violence project continues.

The aims of this map are to:

  • Provide a visual tool that relates historical events to current-day community measures to improve our understanding of the relationships between the past and the present.
  • Encourage truth-telling and healing by acknowledging the legacy of history, understanding that what we do is a result of what happened, not who we are.
  • Share aggregated and de-identified data with local communities to facilitate the use of local data by people locally.

Best viewing experience
This website is best experienced on Google Chrome running on a desktop computer.
Map customisation options

Click drop down menus to expand.

  • Historical frontier violence

    These data are based on observations of frontier massacres from historical records.

  • Current-day characteristics

    Data from the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice Referendum.

  • Institutions

    These are institutions of removal and control, not all institutions.

  • Geographical characteristics

    These characteristics include geographical factors of the land that were drivers for settlement and characteristics of colonists from Historical Censuses.

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Site data legend
Massacre sites
Mission sites
Reserve sites
Station sites


  • How to use this visualisation

    Step 1. Choose what data to show on the map from the buttons on the left. These buttons are classified by different themes and can be accessed by using the drop down menus. Note that some of these display data at the area level while others display the location of sites. The areas shown are Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2) regions defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The data in these areas represent a statistical aggregation of the data within this area.

    Step 2. On the map click on sites or areas for more detailed information. Use the + and - button or your mouse's scroll wheel to zoom in and out of the map.

    Step 3. Only one area layer of data can be shown at a given time. Click buttons to view multiple sites layers of data.

    Step 4. Clicking on any button twice will switch off the appearance of the data layer on the map.

Additional information

About the Historical Frontier Violence project

The Historical Frontier Violence project is guided by an Indigenous-led Steering Committee, and includes Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers. This project was funded by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council Discovery Project scheme (ARC DP220101336). The Historical Frontier Violence project follows on from the Colonial Frontier Massacres project, led by Chief Investigator Professor Lyndall Ryan and funded via the ARC Discovery Project scheme (ARC DP140100399).

This visualisation was created by the Melbourne Institute Data & Analytics team with support from project team and Steering Committee.

How to cite this visualisation

To cite this page and visualisation tool please use the following form:

Moschion, J., Polidano, C., Evans, M., Atkinson, J., Ryan, L., Hunter, B., Markham, F., Zhan, C., Pascoe, B., Kalera, Y., Samarage, C.R., Francisco, A. and Chen, A. (2024). Historical Frontier Violence Project Map (Version 1.0) [data visualisation]. Historical Frontier Violence project, University of Queensland, the University of Melbourne [data publisher], the University of Newcastle and the Australian National University [data producers]. Accessed [insert date of access]. URL: https://hfv-map.melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/.

Sources

Please see the project's bibliography page to view references and data sources.