Next year it will be 200 years since what is known as the Bathurst Wars between Wiradyuri people and colonists begun, and award-winning author Dr Stephen Gapps has identified the area around Kings Plains as being of major importance to both sides of the conflict.
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Dr Gapps is the NSW History Council president and has released his latest book titled 'Gudyarra, The First Wiradyuri War of Resistance.'
During his research for the book Dr Gapps discovered that there had been a number of skirmishes in and around the Kings Plains district.
"There were a number of attacks and raids at Judge Advocate Wylde's Diyawong station and Thomas Palmer's station in Kings Plains," he said.
"They were located at the huts and the outstation buildings and I don't think that there has been any investigation, at the micro level, of any surviving maps to locate where they exactly were.
The story has been neglected, but it hasn't been lost.
- Dr Stephen Gapps
"If we did know then you could potentially do some archaeology on those places. You never know what you might find. Musket balls, belt buckles, who knows?"
The history of Bathurst and the region is often focussed on the European achievements and the activities of the bushrangers.
However little is known about the war and Dr Gapps wants it to become a part of the broader story.
"It needs to be part of the story about European arrival in the Bathurst Plains rather than a kind of footnote to the explorers like Evans and Governor Macquarie," he said.
One of the biggest surprises for Dr Gapps when he began his research was the amount of information in archives that hadn't been written up.
"The story has been neglected, but it hasn't been lost," he said.
"I was surprised at the amount of information that wasn't written up in history books about the area but was in the archives. These were the stories of settlers and aboriginal people as well."
It was in Kings Plains that Dr Gapps discovered that the Wiradyuri declared war, or Gudyarra, on the Europeans.
"Why hasn't this been talked about before? In effect they declare war on the Europeans and that first threat to tumble down all the white men occurs in Kings Plains," he said.
The question for Dr Gapps is why the escalation from small conflicts over women, stock and food to planned and coordinated attacks.
"In 1823 there was a complete break between aboriginal people and the pastoralists who they had been working with and working for," he said.
"They just leave and never go into Bathurst anymore and the only message that the colonists were getting is that the aboriginal people were going to kill all the white men."
Dr Gapps thinks that a surge of stock numbers and colonists entering the Bathurst Plains at the time, and their desire to protect the stock by shooting at the Wiradyuri people, could have been the cause.
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"By 1824 Windradyne and several other warrior leaders were coordinating concerted attacks on the Europeans and their stock."
Dr Gapps' book Gudyarra, The First Wiradyuri War of Resistance. can be purchased at https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/gudyarra-118494/