1860 - 1938 The Government Should Shut Its Eyes When the land wars moved north to Queensland the Aborigines resisted and after two infamous aboriginal attacks, vigilante bands and the Native Police set out to clear the land of blacks. An estimated ten thousand Aborigines were shot dead and the colonial government turned a blind eye. Towards the end of the century governments across Australia began what they believed was a mopping up operation. Officials adopted a new fad - Social Darwinism and assumed Aborigines would die out as a natural consequence of competition with the white race. The next fifty years saw various attempts to fulfill the prophesy. Blacks would be imprisoned on reserves, have their children taken from them, be encouraged to "breed" themselves out. But even as massacres continued in the remote outback, Aborigines started to organise politically and would inform white Australia that they had no intention of dying away.