When smallpox swept across the southeastern plains of New South Wales between 1830 and 1832, the Wiradjuri, Gomeroi, and Wailwan peoples didn't passively succumb to the disease—they mounted carefully observed medical responses that rivaled the most advanced European practices of their time. A recently published historical analysis, drawing on a medical report by Scottish-trained army doctor John Mair from 1831, reveals how three Aboriginal nations strategically fought back against an epidemic that decimated their communities.
The disease, which these peoples called "Boulol" in the northwestern plains and "Thunna Thunna" in the Lachlan and Wellington Valleys, likely was not their first encounter with smallpox. Elderly men at a cattle station in 1831 bore the distinctive scars of infection they had sustained as young people—probably during the 1789 or 1790 outbreak that had spread west from Sydney Cove. This prior exposure meant the plains and river country peoples had access to knowledge networks spanning from the coast to their inland territories, equipping them with hard-won understanding of how the disease spread and how it might be combated.
That knowledge translated into coordinated action. At multiple stations across western New South Wales, observers documented what appeared to be strategic isolation—people deliberately separating themselves from infected groups. At one cattle station, what a European stockman interpreted as enmity was likely something far more deliberate: strictly observed quarantine. The most striking example came from Wallerawang station, near present-day Lithgow, where a Wiradjuri group "convinced of the contagious nature of the disease" fled 100 kilometers southeast to Emu Plains, crossing to the opposite side of the mountains to escape the epidemic. That they returned a decade later is confirmed by local pastoralist James Walker, who recorded his gratitude for their return—he had relied heavily on their labor.
Alongside isolation protocols, the Gomeroi people developed and refined active treatments for the disease itself. George Clarke, a bushranger known as "the Barber" who lived among the Gomeroi for years, documented their medical response in striking detail. Treatment began with immersion in cold water, but when deaths continued, the Gomeroi doctors abandoned this approach and tried others. They removed head hair by scorching it close to the scalp, then proceeded to prick pustules with sharpened fish bone and pressed out fluid using flat instruments.
When John Mair reviewed Clarke's descriptions, the Edinburgh-trained doctor with experience at leading British and French hospitals recognized something remarkable: these treatments aligned with the most advanced medical interventions for smallpox known anywhere in the world at the time. Head-shaving and pustule pricking appeared in Mair's own medical textbooks. The Gomeroi had arrived at methods that matched European medicine's best practices—not through theory, but through observation, adaptation, and the willingness to abandon failing treatments and try new ones.
These three responses—isolation, migration, and adaptive medical treatment—mirror disease control measures that public health systems still employ today. They stand as evidence that Aboriginal nations facing catastrophic epidemics responded not with resignation, but with intelligence, coordination, and the kind of practical problem-solving that allowed their communities to survive and eventually rebuild.