When the settlers first arrived in the Bathurst area in 1815, the Wiradjuri people were accepting of their presence. Within a few years, however, the number of new settlers increased along with the size of their herds of cattle and sheep. Disputes broke out and lives were lost. The Wiradjuri saw the settlers as invaders of their lands while the settlers thought the land belonged to them now.

In 1824, Windradyne led his warriors in a war against the British settlers. He was determined to chase them back over the mountains. It was a desperate fight with loss of life on both sides.

One story we do know from that war is of an encounter between a young settler by the name of William Suttor and Windradyne. It happened at the very start of the war in a hut near the Winburndale Rivulet, not far from where Ida met Jenny in our story. Windradyne and his warriors could have easily killed William, but they did not. Windradyne knew William to be a good settler. The two men talked and parted as friends. Windradyne's war party went on to make their first attack in the war. But no animals, stockmen or property on the Suttor farm were harmed in the fighting that followed.

Windradyne's warriors were brave and skilled fighters but they could not win a war against men with guns and horses. By the end of 1824, Windradyne decided to end the war and put his trust in a peaceful way for Wiradjuri and settler to share this country.