Killing for Country: A family story

A gripping reckoning with the bloody history of Australia’s frontier wars

David Marr was shocked to discover forebears who served with the brutal Native Police in the bloodiest years on the frontier. Killing for Country is the result – a soul-searching Australian history.

This is a richly detailed saga of politics and power in the colonial world – of land seized, fortunes made and lost, and the violence let loose as squatters and their allies fought for possession of the country – a war still unresolved in today’s Australia.

‘If we want the truth, here it is as told by David Marr. He believed that he knew about Australia’s racism and violence. Then he went in search of his great-grandmother’s history. He found Sub-Inspector Reginald Uhr, “a professional killer of Aborigines,” and his brother D’arcy, also in “the massacre business.” This led him “step by step, into the history of the Native Police.” This force, along with the settlers and white police, murdered my ancestors over a fifty-year period in the Dawson Valley and the rangelands and plains of central Queensland, where the war left no one untouched. This book is more than a personal reckoning with Marr’s forebears and their crimes. It is an account of an Australian war fought here in our own country, with names, dates, crimes, body counts and the ghastly, remorseless views of the “settlers.”  Thank you, David.’
—Marcia Langton

Killing for Country by David Marr
RRP: $39.99
ISBN: 9781760642730

Out 3 October from Black Inc.

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