Book Launch – Uprising by Dr Stephen Gapps

Next date: Thursday, 17 April 2025 | 06:00 PM

Join Dr Stephen Gapps, award-winning author of The Sydney Wars and Gudyarra as he launches his new book about frontier resistance warfare, Uprising.

Beyond the ‘Bathurst War’

The First Wiradyuri War of Resistance ended in 1824 with a series of massacres conducted by settlers in the Bathurst region. From the 1830s, colonists began occupying more and more Aboriginal land across western New South Wales and stocking it with sheep and cattle. By 1838, a dramatic fightback began across the entire frontier of the colony. What has been called the Second Wiradyuri War of Resistance, from 1839 to 1841, was, in fact, part of a vast arc of conflict from present-day northern Victoria through to southeast Queensland. At the time, it was seen by many contemporaries as a concerted and coordinated ‘uprising’.

In Uprising, Stephen Gapps reveals the incredible story of this extensive frontier resistance warfare for the first time – a series of wars that were conducted along a huge area of the Murray-Darling river system, across many First Nations’ lands, in a concerted defence of River Country.

Dr Stephen Gapps is a public historian working to bring Frontier War histories into broader recognition as Australia’s First Wars. In 2011, he was awarded the NSW Premier’s History Award for regional and community history. Stephen’s The Sydney Wars: Conflict in the early colony 1788–1817 was the inaugural winner of the Les Carlyon Award for the writing of military history (2020). He is also the author of Gudyarra: The first Wiradyuri war of resistance – The Bathurst War, 1822–1824 (2021), and is an editor of The Australian Wars, the book of the award-winning documentary series, forthcoming.

Bookings are essential. Phone the library on 6333 6281 to secure a seat. 

Copies of Uprising and other books by Stephen Gapps will be available to purchase.

 

 

When

Location

Bathurst Library, 70-78 Keppel Street, 2795, View Map