In 2015, Indigenous AFL player Adam Goodes stirred the ire of conservative pundits in challenging the relentless taunting which long followed his presence in the game. The AFL’s Indigenous round witnessed Goodes turning on opposition supporters in the performance of a war cry. As would be later learned, what was intimated figuratively at the time as the throwing of a spear was in fact Goodes hurling an imaginary boomerang in an expression of hunting and sporting prowess. However it can be interpreted, this performance sits alongside Nicky Winmar baring his chest in response to similar abuse in 1993. Each moment presented a stark image contending the racial inclusiveness of modern Australia. What the ‘Adam Goodes fire’, as journalist Paul Sheehan coined it, revealed in particular was the lasting fragility of non-Indigenous Australians when reminded of their unsettled past around the issue of race, and, in particular the treatment of Indigenous people. In view of other key events in post-Mabo Australian history, this paper will explore the depth of emotional history from settler experiences of frontier violence in particular as a means of explaining the purchase of the myth of white victimhood upon the settler Australian imaginary.