Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution

by Peter Fitzsimons

  For, really, as one contemporary writer notes in the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald, Captain Harrison was ‘forgotten the moment he left the stage’. The correspondent goes on: ‘It is surprising that, with such a cause as the gold digger boasts with his means - with the large bodies of men of one calling unanimous on many points as to their grievances - that not one man has turned up having the least pretension to the talent of a leader.’7

  Despite the absence of that one truly charismatic leader to galvanise the diggers, at least the agitation persists, and on this occasion it takes an oddly lyrical turn …

  The net result of, to use La Trobe’s term, ‘co-operation’ on the diggings in Victoria is the formation of an ‘Anti-Gold License Association’, and in early June it is decided that all the diggers should sign a petition to be presented to His Excellency. But this, my friends, is not just any petition. This, the Bendigo Petition, is bound with green silk, runs to over 30 feet long and bears, it is claimed, 23,000 signatures8 gathered from the diggers all over Bendigo, Castlemaine, Ballarat, Stawell and Forrest Creek.

  Would that all of man’s angst could always turn into such a thing of physical and moral beauty as this. For the diggers not only affirm their view that ‘in the present impoverished condition of the Goldfields, the impost of Thirty Shillings a Month is more than Your Petitioners can pay’,9 but it also records their grievances on more temporal matters, specifically decrying ‘the Squatter Land Monopoly,’10 and that ‘armed men (many of whom are of notorious bad character)’11 are sent to collect the diggers’ license fees.

  The diggers maintain to His Excellency that the way they are treated for non-payment - being chained to trees and logs - is ‘contrary to the spirit of the British law which does not recognise the principle of the subject being a criminal because he is indebted to the state’.12

  Because the current across-the-board 30 shilling license fee makes no distinction between the successful and unsuccessful digger, and, regardless, the average digger is currently only making PS3 15 shillings per month, the petitioners earnestly request His Excellency to reduce it to ten shillings per month and allow 15 fee-free days to registered newcomers, as well as ceasing to send armed men to collect the fee.

  In conclusion, the document reads: ‘Your petitioners would remind Your Excellency that a Petition is the only mode by which they can submit their wants to your Excellency’s consideration, as although they contribute more to the Exchequer than half the Revenue of the Colony they are the largest class of Her Majesty’s Subjects in the Colony unrepresented.’13

  It is with high hopes that the petition is carefully secured and sent off to the Lieutenant-Governor in Melbourne, escorted by a delegation of three diggers from Bendigo, who personally hand it to His Excellency on 1 August.

  13-27 August 1853, Bendigo and surrounds

  And so, on Saturday 13 August, the diggers come from everywhere: up from every gully, up from every shaft, down from every hill and across from many other goldfields. This is not just a gathering, it is nothing less than a festival!14 For the opportunity to have a break in the tedium from eternal digging, digging, digging by attending the gathering to hear His Excellency’s reply, via the men who have just returned from Melbourne, is one embraced by many. Huge swathes of the diggings community meet at Golden Square, Fourth White Hill, and march in two files to the meeting at View Point (an elevated location adjacent to ‘the Camp’15) as part of a grand parade behind their own national flags, frequently accompanied by bands playing some of their favourite tunes.

  First are the Irish, ‘with their green banner … with the harp and shamrock on it, accompanied by the pick and shovel’.16 And then come the Scots. But what’s this? As described by digger William Howitt, ‘As if only third, instead of first in rank, the Union Jack of Great Britain. Close to it came crowding up the revolutionary flags of France and Germany accompanied by the stars and stripes of America, with some other minor flags.’17

  And yet the flag that garners most attention is the one that actually purports to represent them all. It is called the Diggers’ Banner and shows, ‘the pick, the shovel, and the cradle - that represented labour. There were the scales - that meant justice. There was the Roman bundle of sticks - that meant union. There were the kangaroo and emu - that meant Australia, &c. &c’.18

  Something new under the sun, this banner is not only symbolic of the growing feeling that these men are more than just a gathering of different nationalities but actually a band of brothers. It encourages those bonds, and there is great excitement at the idea of having a flag of their own.

  As to the downgrading in prominence of the Union Jack, that does not trouble an Englishman by the name of William Dexter, an avowed republican who had designed the Diggers’ Banner. He is forthright in saying, ‘Wherever any people had risen against their tyrants, that flag had waved in the van of Englishmen who had gone to put the people down again.’19

  But to tintacks, to brass buckles, and to the wretched matter of the gold licenses …

  The main speakers on the day will now address this gathering of 10,000 men pressed tightly in front of the gaily coloured tent that houses the speakers’ podium.

  George Thompson, one of the three delegates sent to Melbourne, gives the account of what happened at their meeting with the Lieutenant-Governor on 1 August, and the crowd leans forward as one to catch every word. They are immediately on edge, for amongst the many of La Trobe’s unsatisfactory, informal responses to their claims - a written reply is due in a week - is his response to reducing the license fee. ‘The law is the law,’ he has told the delegation. ‘You ask me to do what is impossible, I cannot destroy the law … While the license tax is a law it must be obeyed … I must do my duty regardless of the consequences (Boo, hiss) … Besides, there are other and more important interests to be considered than the gold-diggers.’20 (How dare he! Even more booing and hissing)21 However, it is perhaps the reading of La Trobe’s reported closing statement to the delegation that now particularly galls the foreign diggers in the audience: ‘If I find this petition signed by Germans and aliens, it will militate against its force with me.’22

  In essence, both the petition and the delegation’s trip to Melbourne has so far come to naught. La Trobe clearly does not intend to change anything. (In fact, quietly and privately, La Trobe agrees that the license fee started life as a temporary measure but has now become unworkable, and he would like to replace it with an export tax, but to acknowledge such a thing to his interlocutors would entirely destroy the authority of the tax as it stands. He dare not.) The diggers are incandescent with fury. Won’t listen to them? Doesn’t care about their legitimate grievances? Treating them as if they have no voice, no rights? More important interests? Well, perhaps we need to make the point.

  After the meeting breaks up, some of the more hot-headed men begin to gather arms and collect whatever ammunition they can get their hands on. The latter is so scarce that some break down tea-chests so they can strip off the lead fittings, melt them down and make musket balls. Some of the Germans and Americans even try to form armed companies, though one Polish digger, Seweryn Korzelinski - who had unsuccessfully fought for Polish independence against the Russians - is unimpressed. As an old soldier he knows only too well the likely result of civilians, no matter how engaged and enraged, taking on the trained and armed government soldiers. In his view, it can only lead to disaster.

  The feeling against La Trobe becomes all the stronger a week later at Bendigo when his written reply is circulated. True, La Trobe does make some positive, if hazy, noises in his long-winded dissertation, and they do include allowing some digger representation on the Legislative Council, releasing some land for purchase and disarming the goldfields constabulary, not to mention reducing the license fee and even coming up with a different ‘arrangement’ to extract the tax. But it is all so vague and wafty, like smoke from a distant fire that has no actual form, and the diggers know they can set no store by it.


  What they do focus on is the fact that La Trobe rejects outright any notion that the license fee could in any way be seen as an unjust tax. Far from it! According to him, ‘It is a charge made upon the individual for the liberty of seeking and appropriating to his own use that which, according to Law, is the property of the public, Property from which it is but reasonable and just, that the community at large … should reap some advantage for the common good.’23

  His Excellency also does not want to hear any more of the outrageous allegations made against the police: ‘I can only repeat … that I have been from first to last anxious that the administration of the law, and the necessary control over the gold field for the public security, should be carried on without undue severity … With regard to the broad assertion that unlicensed miners have been chained to trees, and condemned to hard labour, I am satisfied by the result of the enquiry I have made, that the statement will not stand the test of investigation … I am assured that no such illegal sentence as that of condemning the non-possessors of licenses to hard labour on the public roads has been passed, still less carried out.’24

  In short, he totally rejects everything the diggers have written to him about police brutality, in effect calling them liars. It is, in the view of the diggers, outrageous.

  As it happens, it is not just in Victoria, and not just on the diggings, that feelings are running high …

  The afternoon of 15 August 1853, Pitt St, Sydney speaks

  Enough is enough is enough. This packed meeting in the Royal Victoria Theatre,25 on Sydney’s Pitt Street - known for its graciousness and the fact that it is the first theatre in Sydney to have ultra-modern gas-lighting instead of candles - is not merely about the very serious issue of just what the Constitution of this colony should consist of, and therefore what kind of parliament we should have. It is also to kill stone-dead the draft legislation - the New Constitution Bill - put forward by William Charles Wentworth and his minions. Clearly it is an issue concerning many people, as witness the fact that not only is the floor of this late Georgian theatre full, but also the Regency-style boxes, both upper and lower, where it is standing room only. On stage are assembled no less than the good and great of the day, the Sydney establishment.

  It is the opening words of the Secretary of the New South Wales Constitution Committee, Mr William R. Piddington, reading the terms of the advertisement that have brought them together, and the crowd’s response, echoing from the gods, also reported by the Herald, that best captures the tone of the meeting:

  ‘COLONISTS! Will you submit to be robbed of your rights?’ (Shouts of ‘No’)

  ‘A Committee of the Legislative Council has passed a New Constitution, for the colony, by which it is proposed … One! To create a colonial nobility, with hereditary privileges.’ (Tremendous groans)

  ‘Two! To construct an Upper House of Legislature, in which the people will have no voice.’ (Great disapprobation)

  ‘Three! To add 18 new seats to the Lower House, only one of which is to be allotted to Sydney, while the other 17 are to be distributed among the country and squatting districts.’ (Disapprobation)

  ‘Four! To squander the public revenue by pensioning off the officers of the government at their full salaries, thus implanting in our institutions a principle of endless jobbery and corruption.’ (Groans)

  ‘Five! To fix this oligarchy, in the name of free institutions, on the people irrevocably, so that no future Legislature can reform it, even by an absolute majority.’ (Groans)

  ‘The Legislative Council have had the hardihood to propose passing this unconstitutional and anti-British measure with only a few days’ notice, and before it can possibly be considered by the colonists at large.’ (Great disapprobation)

  ‘Colonists! Speak now, or forever hold your peace.’ (Loud cheering)26

  And speak they most certainly do, one after the other, each man outdoing the previous speaker in the outrage expressed at the notion of having the whole political process controlled by the squatting class. And to hell with Wentworth’s publicly expressed notion that power should reside with those who create the wealth. The effect of the shimmering gaslight as it bounces back and forth from the pale salmon and blue of the walls to the heavy crimson material covering the boxes and seats is to create a sense that they are in another world. For all they know, the rest of Sydney, and indeed the country, has entirely stopped. This is all that matters now.

  Henry Parkes himself, the well-known political activist and proprietor of the Empire newspaper - a strong man with rugged features - is received with tumultuous acclaim and is equally strong and rugged in his forthright remarks, saying flatly, ‘I deny the right of the present Legislative Council of this colony to frame a new Constitution. (Renewed applause) A body delegated by the people themselves should be entrusted with this duty!’ (Hear, hear)27

  And so it goes. The highlight of the meeting, however, is yet to come. It is that tiny fellow, that ‘perfect little dandy’,28 Dan Deniehy, the lawyer son of Irish convict parents and one of the beloved orators in the colony. In his soft Irish lilt, ‘the boy orator’ is as entertaining in general as he is critical of William Charles Wentworth in particular.

  For Wentworth’s plan, Deniehy says, ‘would treat the people at large as if they are cattle to be bought and sold in the market’ (loud cheers) ‘or as they indeed are in American slave States, and now in Australian markets’ (tremendous cheering) ‘where we might find bamboozled coolies and kidnapped Chinamen’ (immense applause).

  And being in a figurative humour, he might endeavour to make some of the proposed nobility pass before the stage of our imagination, as the ghost of Banquo walked along in the vision of Macbeth, so that we might have a fair view of these ‘harlequin aristocrats’ (laughter), ‘these Botany Bay magnificos’ (laughter), ‘these Australian mandarins’ (roars of laughter).

  ‘Let them walk across the stage in all the pomp and circumstances of hereditary titles … In fact, I am puzzled how to classify them. They could not aspire to the miserable and effete dignity of the grandees of Spain. (Laughter) They have antiquity of birth, but I would defy any naturalist properly to classify them. But perhaps it is only a specimen of the remarkable contrariety that exists at the Antipodes. We all know the common water mole was transferred into the duck-billed platypus, and in some distant emulation of this degeneration, I supposed we are to be favoured with a bunyip aristocracy …’ (Great laughter)29

  Did you hear that? Did you hear that? A ‘bunyip aristocracy’! It is perfect! It is wonderful! It is exactly the right phrase to sum up the Wentworth proposal, and the explosive audience laughter is a wave, carrying all before it as it sweeps out of the theatre to those hovering outside, and through the streets of Sydney - seemingly the whole colony rocks with merriment. It is, in fact, a wave of laughter so powerful that it sweeps away Wentworth’s proposed legislation for members of a hereditary peerage to sit in the Upper House for life. And it will be in vain for Wentworth to subsequently defend his idea of an Upper House formed in this manner by saying, ‘We want a British, not a Yankee Constitution.’30

  And yet there is one more significant speaker to be heard before the meeting is closed, a formidable figure who is visiting Sydney all the way from Melbourne, if you can believe it. He is a Member of the Legislative Council of Victoria by the name of John Pascoe Fawkner, one of the first settlers in those parts, who made a fortune of PS20,000 in just his first four years there, through farming, hotel-keeping, bookselling and becoming a newspaper proprietor, before pursuing his true passion: politics. With his learned long face, aquiline nose and remarkably high forehead, he certainly looks the part of a distinguished gentleman - even if one of his contemporaries has described the former convict as ‘half-froth, half-venom’.

  Now, after some preliminary remarks thanking the men of Sydney for allowing him to address them, Fawkner gets to the point. He wishes to give a few statistics to ‘show the absolute necessity of a reform in the electoral sy
stem and Government of the colony’.31

  No matter that one critic would say he gave the same speech for fifteen years - it is for that reason that he now knows how to deliver it so well. His special bugbear is the issue of land and the outrage of the squatters having claimed so much of it that they deny others the right to claim any for themselves - and they give so little in return. In Victoria, just 700 squatters have control of the bulk of the colony, and they exert so much influence through this that they grind ‘the bulk of the people to the very dust’.32 Their obvious principle concern is not to lose control of the Legislative Council as, with their licenses to squat being annually renewed, the danger is that a truly democratic government would deny them their land.

  ‘After all,’ Fawkner now roars in the distinctly broad and sunburnt vowels of one who has been raised in this country, ‘you must know the squatters hold 250 millions of acres of land, which they pay only a nominal rent for, and which they have the power to buy at any time, at their own price. Yet the value of the land could not be calculated at less than a thousand million of pounds sterling, being at the rate of something like half-a-million of money to each of the squatters.

  ‘Now, should men that rich not be able to swamp the King or the Queen or any government upon earth with taxes well-paid? In the face of this, what have we made the poor digger pay for licenses to dig on Crown lands! Why, we make them pay PS60,000 for a few acres in one year, while the squatters who have 250 millions of acres between them pay a mere trifle; and this was imposed upon them only because they belong to the class to which I belong - the industrious labouring class.’33

  Hooray! Cheers ring out around the theatre. Fawkner is a new kind of ‘Australian’. He has not the slightest hint of apology about him for his rough experience, for not having been raised in England, even though he had been born there. He is not an aristocrat. He is of the people, and for the people.