Drawing from firsthand accounts, court testimony, and contemporary records, this history tells the story of Coranderrk, an Aboriginal community that operated successfully as a supplier of wheat and hops to Melbourne before an Aboriginal Protection Board-spurred Parliamentary Inquiry in 1881 deprived it of the bulk of its workforce. The first-person testimonies of both the Aboriginal witnesses and their non-Aboriginal allies and adversaries reveal the tensions inherent in the situation and provide a deeper and more accurate u.