In the Name of the Law

Mounted Constable William Willshire commanded a corps of Native Police in Central Australia during the 1880s, a time when conflict on that pastoral frontier was at its height. Notorious for the violence of his patrols, he was eventually tried in 1891 for the murder of two Aboriginal men, and was posted to an even more remote frontier in the Top End. During his time in the Territory, Willshire wrote of his experiences in several extraordinary memoirs. In these he represents himself as an explorer in the service of his country, as an anthropologist gathering knowledge about Aboriginal Australia, and as an exemplary Australian bushman, at a time when the bushman legend was in its genesis and the nation was yet to be. Most of all, he appears as the representative of the law, working to make the country safe for the 'brave pioneers who push out the frontier'. Part murder mystery and part courtroom drama, his story illuminates unfolding issues of race and nationalism in colonial Australia on the eve of Federation.