It's lunchtime at RMIT University in Melbourne's CBD.

Two students sit on what appears to be a concrete slab, sharing a laugh and a cigarette as they soak up the fading autumn sun.

The students probably don't know it, but what they are lounging on is actually a memorial to the bravery of two Australian men who were once warriors for their country.

The men were fighting a war that took place on home soil, but it's a conflict many Australians know little about.

It was on this spot that two Aboriginal men from Tasmania were the first people to be publicly hanged in Melbourne, almost four decades before Ned Kelly was infamously executed at the nearby Old Melbourne Gaol.

Indigenous men Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner were hanged in Melbourne in 1842. ( Supplied: City of Melbourne )

About 6,000 people gathered on January 20, 1842 near a small rise at what is now the intersection of Franklin and Bowen streets, to witness the execution of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner, according to the Chronicles of Early Melbourne.

The men were hanged after they had waged a six-week guerilla war against white settlers.

"Such an affecting, appalling, disgusting, execrable scene my eyes never saw," witness James Dredge, a former assistant protector of Aboriginal people, wrote in his diary.

"The unhappy victims were bungleingly [clumsily] and cruelly consigned to their fate."

The memorial site has been defaced by vandals, who may not have understood its significance. ( ABC News: Danielle Bonica )

'Civilise the blacks' of Victoria

The men were among 16 Aboriginal people transported from Tasmania to Victoria by the official 'Protector of Aborigines' for the Port Phillip district, George Augustus Robinson.

Mr Robinson wanted the group from Tasmania to help "civilise the blacks" in Victoria and he used Tunnerminnerwait to help him investigate frontier conflicts in the western part of the district, according to Deakin University historian Clare Land.

The conflicts included the first recorded mass murder of Aboriginal people in Victoria, the Convincing Ground massacre, near what is now Portland.

While estimates vary, it is believed white whalers killed between 60 and 200 people from the Gunditjmara clan in the massacre, according to the Heritage Council of Victoria.

A painting depicts the journey of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner to their hanging. ( Supplied: State Library of Victoria )

It was soon after visiting the site of the killing that Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner joined a group of three women including the Tasmanian Aboriginal woman Truganini, who had by then left her role as a negotiator for Mr Robinson.

The group waged a six-week guerrilla-style war against the settlers as they moved towards Wilson's Promontory.

They set cattle stations on fire, stole guns and shot dead two white whalers.

Their motivations for the killing are not fully known, but Dr Land said it may have been linked to the whalers' history of "mistreatment of Aboriginal women".

It was an issue that had hit Truganini's own family, after whalers had killed her mother and partner and abducted her sisters several years earlier.

The conflicts sparked a hunt from officials, who sent out three military groups as well as Aboriginal police officers or 'native police' to search for the guerilla fighters.

A depiction of the hanging of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner by Ballarat artist Aunty Marlene. ( Supplied: City of Melbourne )

The five were eventually captured and charged with murder.

Their trial was widely reported, with the Port Phillip Patriot branding them "black murderers".

The women of the group were acquitted, but Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner were convicted and sentenced to death.

The two men were buried in unmarked graves on the site of what is now Melbourne's Queen Victoria Market.

Dr Land said while the exact motives behind the conflicts may never be known, she believed the men died fighting for freedom.

"Coming from Tasmania where these men witnessed full-on genocide … to then come to Victoria and see the same thing unfolding would have been pretty disturbing and that may have been why they just had enough," Ms Land said.

Honour for 'resisters of colonisation'

In 2016, the City of Melbourne erected a memorial in honour of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner.

It is believed to be the first major city landmark in Australia which acknowledges the Frontier Wars, which were fought between European settlers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from 1788 to the 1930s.

Metal chains on the memorial symbolise the hanging of the men. ( ABC News: Danielle Bonica )

Disputes over land led to acts of resistance by Aboriginal people and open massacres of Aboriginal men, women and children by settlers.

The exact number of Indigenous people killed in these conflicts is unknown, but historian Henry Reynolds has estimated the toll runs to tens of thousands.

The locations of known killings of Aboriginal people by Europeans between 1836 and 1853. ( Supplied: Koorie Heritage Trust )

Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Memorial Committee convenor, Joseph Toscano, advocated for almost 12 years for the warriors' memorial.

But after a lengthy approval process, the understated marker is often overlooked and misunderstood by the general public.

Joseph Toscano campaigned for 12 years to get a memorial to Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner. ( Supplied: Joseph Toscano )

"It's a monument that should act as an example to other Australians, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to find out their local history and then agitate for the creation of more monuments … to honour the people that were involved in the resistance of colonisation," Dr Toscano said.

"The interesting thing with the monument that was built outside of RMIT is that it's almost even designed to trick people into not realising what it is.

"I think the intention is to point out to white Australians their flippant attitude and ignorance towards these histories."

Community divided on military recognition

But the question of how exactly the Frontier Wars should be remembered in Australia's military history remains a point of contention.

In Tasmania this year, local Indigenous group 'Frontier Wars' were allowed to participate in Hobart's annual Anzac Day march for the first time.

But later, the RSL opposed the group taking part in future Anzac Day marches.

RSL Tasmania CEO Noeleen Lincoln said the parade was not the place for any commemoration of Frontier Wars.

"Nobody is saying the Frontier Wars weren't a disastrous time in our history because they were," she said.

"But Anzac Day originated in 1916 and the Frontier Wars were in some cases centuries before that."

For Aboriginal author and historian Bruce Pascoe, Australia's character was not forged at Gallipoli, but rather at sites like the Convincing Ground massacre in Victoria's south-west.

Aboriginal author and historian Bruce Pascoe wants better recognition of colonial violence. ( Supplied: Magabala Books )

Pascoe believes recognising colonial violence against Indigenous Australians is the only way to understand modern Australia as we know it.

"We need to acknowledge the fact that there was a land war," Mr Pascoe said.

"We also need to acknowledge that Aboriginal people lost it, that they never ceded the land and those facts are important in the national story and in how the nation moves forward.

"Australia has developed a child's history of our country which eliminates the very murder of an Aboriginal person and the theft of their land.

"Until Australia is prepared to swallow that part of our history then we don't have a conversation."