Our Brisbane History

The Boer War 1899 -1902

Although it is popularly assumed that World Was I was the first engagement in which troops from Australia fought overseas, this is not so. Before 1914 troops from the Australian colonies had fought in the Maori War, Sudan War, Boer War and Boxer Rebellion.

The Boer War began in October 1899. It was a conflict between British Imperial Forces and the settlers of Dutch origin from the Transvaal and the Orange Free State in South Africa. The conflict was precipitated by British determination to gain access for their citizens to the new-found mineral wealth in these republics. The Boers had already been driven out of Cape Province and Natal. They were determined to resist this new threat to their autonomy.

The Boers had no standing army and conducted a guerilla-type war. Citizen soldiers engaged the Imperial Forces in a series of skirmishes rather than conventional battles.

In response, the Imperial Forces carried out a brutal scorched earth campaign In which farms were burned systematically, communities were destroyed and  the inhabitants dispatched to concentration camps. Of the 120,000 Boers sent to camps 32,000 died. These were mostly women and children. Thirty thousand Boer fighters were killed.

Five hundred and eighteen Australian troops died during the war. Of these 251 were killed and 267 died of illness. Sixty-two Queenslanders died in the war, in which the toll from disease was even higher than that of battle.

Prior to Federation, each of the colonies had maintained its own armed forces. The Queensland Premier, James Dickson, acting with indecent haste, offered troops for the conflict three months before the formal declaration of hostilities. Queensland sent nine contingents to the Boer War made up of 165 officers, 2,385 other ranks with 3,000 horses. By the time the war ended in 1902, Federation had occurred and troops initially dispatched by Queensland were then under Commonwealth control.