The Eumeralla Wars were the violent encounters over the possession of land between British colonists and Gunditjmara Aboriginal people in what is now called the Western District area of south west Victoria. The wars are named after the region around the Eumeralla River between Port Fairy and Portland where some of the worst conflict was located. They were part of the wider Australian frontier wars. The conflict lasted from the mid 1830s up until the 1860s with the most intense period being between 1834 and 1844. The Aboriginal people mostly employed guerrilla tactics and economic warfare against the livestock and property of the British colonists, occasionally killing a shepherd or settler. The colonists utilised a wider range of strategies, such as killings of individuals and massacres of larger groups of Indigenous people, including women and children, by armed groups of whalers, settlers, station workers, and members of the Border Police and the Native Police Corps. They also used more lawful means such as judicial executions and the rounding up of the local Aboriginal people and placement of them on temporary reserves. Casualties from the conflict are estimated to be in the thousands with up to 6,500 Aboriginal deaths (based on an estimated pre-contact population of 7,000 declining to just 442), and an approximate 80 deaths of settlers. The remains of some of the people involved in the conflict are at the Deen Maar Indigenous Protected Area. The Convincing Ground Massacre (1833-34) Coastal Gunditjmara people first came into regular contact with British colonisers in the early 1830s when whalers such as William Dutton, John Griffiths and the Henty brothers started to establish whaling stations at Portland Bay. The Convincing Ground Massacre (1833 or 1834) was a dispute between whalers and the Kilcarer gundidj clan over the ownership of a beached whale that occurred near to the whaling settlement of Portland Bay. The conflict turned violent, and the whalers shot dead an unknown number of people, possibly 60. The massacre was recorded in the diary of Edward Henty, first permanent settler in the Port Phillip district who began whaling and sheep farming in the area in late 1834, and is also mentioned in the journals of George Augustus Robinson, the Protector of Aborigines in the region. Ongoing conflict (late 1830s) In 1837 settlers in the Portland Bay District appealed to Governor Bourke for protection from attacks by Aborigines. In 1838 a group