kind of warfare", "guerrilla-like warfare", and at times as a "war of extermination") is highly likely to have exceeded 30,000. (That is a tripling of the hitherto used minimum estimates for Queensland.) Yet even this figure is liable to increase if the results of the first attempt to use extensive primary sources to calculate the Aboriginal casualties due to violence on the Queensland frontier in this period is used. A paper prepared by Raymond Evans and Robert Ørsted-Jensen for the annual AHA conference at University of Queensland on 9 July 2014 indicated that a minimum figure of 65,000 Aboriginal casualties is a more realistic figure. The "Native Police Force" (sometimes "Native Mounted Police Force"), recruited and deployed by the Queensland government, was allegedly involved in the oppression, dispossession and murder of indigenous people during this period. The three largest massacres of whites by Aboriginals in Australian colonial history all took place in Queensland. On 27 October 1857 Martha Fraser's Hornet Bank station on the Dawson River, in central Queensland took the lives of 11 Europeans. The tent camp of the embryo station of Cullin-La-Ringo near Springsure was attacked by Aboriginals on 17 October 1861, killing 19 people including the grazier Horatio Wills. Following the wreck of the brig Maria at Bramble Reef near the Whitsunday Islands, on 26 February 1872 a total of 14 European survivors were massacred by local Aboriginals. The Battle of One Tree Hill and Darkey Flat Massacre also took place in the 1840s. Separation from New South Wales In 1851, a public meeting was held to consider Queensland's separation from New South Wales. On 6 June 1859 Queen Victoria signed Letters Patent to form the colony of Queensland. A proclamation was read by George Bowen on 10 December 1859 whereupon Queensland was formally separated from New South Wales. Bowen became the first Governor of Queensland and Robert Herbert became the first Premier of Queensland. The young colony was keen to fill its treasury. Seeing the gold rushes and their effects in Victoria and New South Wales, the government of Queensland offered significant rewards to anyone discovering payable gold deposits. Queensland was the only Australian colony that commenced immediately with its own parliament (responsible government), instead of first spending time with a governor appointed by The Crown. By this time, Western Australia was the only Australian colony without responsible government. Ipswich and Rockhampton became towns in 1860,