A common attitude toward Aboriginal people of Victoria by British settlers was that Aborigines were a 'dying race' who would become extinct when faced with the onslaught of European civilisation.

'Mr Longmore said he considered that, by the efforts of the State, the condition of the aborigines had been greatly ameliorated; but he feared that they would never be civilised, and that they were quickly dying out' ¹.

This belief was ignorant of the vitality of Aboriginal communities and the fact that early settlers had tried to bring about 'extinction' through acts of violence and the attempted dispossession of Aboriginal people from their land.

The establishment of the missions and reserves system, from the 1860s, was itself a recognition that Aboriginal people were not dying out and, therefore, they needed to be controlled and contained.