WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that this article contains the names and images of people who are now deceased.
It is hard to imagine two cultures so different in values, language and customs as that of the Wakka Wakka Aboriginal people near Brisbane, Queensland, and the white pastoralists of the mid 1800s. To the semi‑nomadic, hunting-and-gathering Wakka Wakka, land was not an exploitable commodity and was not privately owned, but rather was the very foundation of a belief system. Wakka Wakka survival depended on knowledge of Country, seasons, and flora and fauna, which had served the people for tens of thousands of years. The Wakka Wakka, like all Aboriginal language groups, had clearly defined territories with fixed and known boundaries beyond which members had a sense of trespass. Aboriginal communities resisted white occupation in their territories through guerrilla warfare.
In 1847, a number of men from the Logan District, including Clement and Paul Lawless, John Humphreys, Henry Herbert, and James Reid, explored the Burnett District for grazing land. By 1848, Reid had claimed Ideraway Run, including much of the land to the north and west of what was to become the town of Gayndah. David Perrier and William Walsh had claimed Degilbo Run, and
