*Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that deceased people are represented throughout this publication.*

‘In May 1824, what can only be described as a period of all-out, total gudyarra (‘war’ in the Wiradyuri language) had begun west of the Blue Mountains. Relations between Wiradyuri people and the colonists in the country around Bathurst had completely broken down, and the number of raids and killings occurring across isolated stock stations in the district had intensified.’

In Gudyarra: The First Wiradyuri War of Resistance - The Bathurst War, 1822-1824, Stephen Gapps – award-winning author of The Sydney Wars – unearths what led to this furious and bloody war, beginning with the occupation of Wiradyuri lands by Europeans following Governor Macquarie’s push to expand the colony west over the Blue Mountains to generate wealth from sheep and cattle.

Gudyarra traces the co-ordinated resistance warfare by the Wiradyuri under the leadership of Windradyne, and others such as Blucher and Jingler, that occurred in a vast area across the central west of New South Wales. Detailing the drastic counterattacks by the colonists and the punitive expeditions led by armed parties of colonists and convicts that often ended in massacres of Wiradyuri women and children, Gapps provides an important new historical account of the fierce Wiradyuri resistance.

Shortlisted - 2022 Les Carlyon Literary Prize.

Details: Non-fiction, published 2021.

Format: Soft cover, 288 pages.

Dimensions: 23.4 cm (h) x 15.3 cm (w) x 1.9 cm (d) / 449 grams.