Eighty kilometers north-east of the mining city of Mount Isa in Northern Queensland is an area known as Battle Mountain, and it was here that in September 1884 one of the last battles of the hundred year war took place.
The battle was the culmination of almost ten years of guerrilla struggle by the Kalkadoon people against the Europeans who were moving north with their stock, possessions and superior firepower, decimating the heritage and the culture of the Kalkadoon tribe as they advanced. The struggle had been fought so successfully that a paramilitary force was assembled to try to break the fierce resistance of the Kalkadoons once and for all. This battle is documented in the annals of Australian history as the most dogged and bloody of all.
The battle itself was a prelude to another fought just thirty-one years later by the sons of the same troops, who, under orders, charged up the cliffs of Gallipoli with much the same results as those of the Kalkadoons who, just as inexplicable suicidal, charged down the mountain into the mouths of smoking guns that they had so long avoided.
