David Marr’s Killing for Country: A Family Story
David Marr was shocked to uncover that his own ancestors had served in the notoriously violent Native Police during the bloodiest years of Australia’s frontier wars. Killing for Country is the result of that reckoning—a meticulously researched and soul-searching account of colonial violence and complicity.
Killing for Country is a richly detailed story of politics, land theft, and power in 19th-century Australia, where fortunes were made and Indigenous lives were destroyed in the name of progress.
This is not just history—it’s the story of a war that has never truly ended. Marr makes it clear: Australia can’t look away any longer. It’s time to tell the truth.
It’s time to tell the truth
“Killing for Country: A Family Story” by David Marr is a deeply personal and rigorously researched historical investigation into the violence of Australia’s colonial frontier—and his own family’s role in it.
Marr, one of Australia’s most respected journalists and biographers, explores the devastating legacy of frontier wars through the lens of his ancestors, who were part of the Native Police in Queensland.
“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
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“Killing for Country: A Family Story” Summary
At its heart, Killing for Country is an unflinching account of how Marr’s great-great-grandfather and his brother took part in sanctioned massacres of Aboriginal people during the 19th-century expansion of European settlement. These men served in the Native Police, a paramilitary force made up of Aboriginal troopers led by white officers, tasked with “dispersing” Indigenous resistance—often a euphemism for killing.
Marr meticulously traces official records, letters, and diaries, exposing how the colonial system systematically erased or justified acts of brutality. He does not shy away from naming the murders for what they were: part of an organised campaign of ethnic cleansing that enabled the establishment of the Australian pastoral economy.
The book also interrogates the broader silence and forgetting that has shaped Australian history and national identity. Marr reflects on how respectable families—including his own—were built on this foundation of violence, and how the truth of colonisation has long been buried beneath myths of peaceful settlement.
One powerful quote from Killing for Country: A Family Story by David Marr that speaks directly to the theme of truth-telling is: “We have to know. We have to bring the truth to light. The country we are is the country taken by force.”
This line captures the moral urgency that drives the book. Marr is not simply recounting history; he is confronting the ongoing consequences of that history, arguing that reckoning with the truth is essential for Australia to move forward.
Themes in David Marr’s Killing for Country
Colonial violence and complicity
Killing for Country reveals how violence was not an accidental by-product of colonisation, but a deliberate and sustained campaign to take land and suppress resistance. Marr shows that settlers, government officials, and business interests were all complicit—turning a blind eye or directly enabling the killings that secured their wealth and dominance.
Silence and erasure in official history
The book exposes how Australia’s national story has long avoided the realities of the frontier wars. Official records were vague or deliberately misleading, while family histories and school curricula skipped over the bloodshed. Marr’s investigation helps break that silence, shining a light on what was hidden or sanitised.
Moral responsibility across generations
Marr does not argue for inherited guilt but insists on the importance of inherited truth. We are not to blame for the past, but we are responsible for how we respond to it. Acknowledging ancestral involvement in injustice is a necessary act of integrity—and a step toward healing.
The role of the Native Police in frontier warfare
The Native Police, composed of Aboriginal troopers under white command, were central to the violence that cleared the land for settlers. Marr details how this force was used strategically to kill, intimidate, and displace communities across Queensland, enabling rapid colonial expansion through terror.
The enduring trauma for First Nations communities
The legacy of frontier violence is not confined to the past. Generations of dispossession, grief, and injustice continue to affect First Nations families and communities today. Marr honours their survival and resilience, and reminds readers that without justice, the wounds of colonisation remain open.
Every Australian should read Killing for Country by David Marr. It’s more than just a history lesson—it’s an invitation to begin your own process of truth-telling. Marr doesn’t ask readers to feel guilt for what their ancestors may have done, but to acknowledge and accept that modern Australia was built on stolen land, and on the graves of First Nations people.
The past cannot be changed, but it can be faced—with honesty and humility. We live on unceded Aboriginal land, and until we accept that truth, reconciliation remains out of reach.
One of the most powerful educational groups helping Australians navigate this journey is Sovereign Union. Their page is a vital resource for learning about First Nations sovereignty, resistance, and survival.
Rather than distancing himself from the horror, Marr confronts it directly, asking hard questions about historical responsibility. Killing for Country is both a national reckoning and a personal act of truth-telling, one that adds vital evidence to the call for truth in the path to reconciliation.
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Researching your own family’s history
Many Australians are only just beginning to realise that the story of the Frontier Wars is not just national history—it’s family history. As David Marr shows in Killing for Country, the violence that established modern Australia was widespread, organised, and often hidden in plain sight.
With digitised archives now more accessible than ever, readers can begin tracing their own ancestry to see whether their forebears were involved in frontier conflicts—as settlers, soldiers, squatters, or members of the Native Police.
Start with your family tree. Look into land records, military service records, or the names of towns and stations associated with your ancestors. If your family was in Queensland, especially in the 19th century, there’s a chance they intersected with the Native Police or benefitted from their actions.
Trove, the National Archives of Australia, and state libraries hold invaluable records—some painful, some evasive, but increasingly searchable. Be prepared for silences. As Marr discovered, violence was often underreported or described with euphemisms like “dispersal” or “trouble with the blacks.”
If you do find a history of violence, it’s important to approach it with honesty, not shame. This is not about blaming descendants for the actions of their ancestors—it’s about taking responsibility for how we carry and respond to that legacy.
Acknowledging the truth does not dishonour your family—it honours the truth and the lives that were lost. Talk about it. Share what you learn. Support First Nations voices and campaigns for truth-telling, land rights, and justice. Let the discomfort drive you toward solidarity and change.
As Marr puts it, “We have to know.” Australia’s future depends on the courage of its people to face the past—not with defensiveness, but with the willingness to listen, to learn, and to tell the truth.
Other books which explore this topic are Geoffrey Blomfield’s groundbreaking Baal Belbora: the end of the Dancing and Henry Reynold’s major important work The Other Side of the Frontier.
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