Commissioner Simpson Multuggera | 18 over 100 | |
The Battle of One Tree Hill was the best known of a series of conflicts that took place between European settlers and aboriginal inhabitants of the Darling Downs in the 1840s.
In September 1843 aboriginal leader Multuggera led an ambush of squatters taking supplies across from Moreton Bay, at One Tree Hill (now known as Tabletop Mountain), near Toowoomba.
The squatters organised a revenge party and the aborigines retreated up the mountain. They escaped into the Lockyer Valley but were later tracked down and killed by the military.
A monument recording the battle was established in 2005. An indigenous land use agreement has been signed over the site.
In 2010 the National Library of Australia acquired a sketch by local Thomas John Domville Taylor for $120,000 which is believed to be an eyewitness account of the aftermath of the battle. This made it one of less than ten visual eyewitness accounts of attacks by European settlers on indigenous people.