We Are the Rebels

by Clare Wright

  BUSINESS AS USUAL

  DECEMBER 3 SUNDAY

  The awful day of the attack made at

  the Eureka at 5 in the morning.

  DECEMBER 4 MONDAY

  All day long funerals passing.

  DECEMBER 5 TUESDAY

  Somewhat similar.

  DECEMBER 6 WEDNESDAY

  Mrs Lane staying with me for a week.

  So Maggie Johnston recorded the events of that weird, savage week. Life went on. By the end of the month, most of the funerals were over, the shops were once again open, mining operations were in full swing and the rattle of the windlass chimed in with the usual goldfields din.

  Peter Lalor was in hiding in Geelong, under the care of his fiancée Alicia Dunne. Along with Lalor, Frederick Vern, George Black and James McGill had a price on their heads. Anastasia Hayes made a reckless attempt to broker a secret communication with her husband while he was in the lockup, and was lucky to escape with her life. A dozen rifles were pointed at the moving object, recorded Samuel Huyghue when a ray of moonlight befriended her (for it proved to be a woman) and she got off scatheless. Thirteen men—including Timothy Hayes, Raffaello Carboni and the African-American John Joseph—were sent to Melbourne to be tried for treason. Henry Seekamp had been arrested in his home, with Clara and her children looking on, and would face a charge of sedition. The rest of the prisoners were released to the ruins of their burnt-out tents, grief-stricken families and uncertain futures.

  Robert Rede’s report for the last week of December notes an increase of 855 women and 1955 children, and a decrease of 4130 men. A better state of order is returning, he writes, and the miners are resuming work…little gold has been raised.

  Eureka Wright, whose parents Thomas and Mary Wright were in their tent inside the Stockade when it was stormed, celebrated her first birthday.

  Dear Jamie and I spent a quiet day alone, wrote Maggie. Our first Christmas.

  HOPE

  But if daily life returned to its normal routines, rituals and rites of passage, Victorian political life would never be the same again.

  When the multicultural gold miners of Ballarat hastily constructed a rough barricade around a dozen tents, they intended to provide a place of armed refuge. A haven for unlicensed diggers against the official licence hunts designed to oppress, entrap and humiliate them. They raised a flag that would fly beside the French, German, American, British, Canadian and other standards that were usually flown at public meetings. They called it the Australian Flag. Standing below that flag’s simple design—a design inspired by their new homeland—they swore an oath. They vowed to stand by each other to defend their rights and liberties. Those rights, they considered, were nothing more or less than their entitlement as free-born Britons to be treated like men. Not animals, serfs or slaves: men.

  The miners were not disloyal to their sovereign, but they had lost any shred of respect for the underlings who served her. They did not want to change the system of government; they wanted to be included in it. At no time did they riot against or launch an assault on authorities.

  They were not insurgents. They were not revolutionaries. They were escapees from old-world hierarchies who had been promised liberty in the new world they’d sacrificed so much to reach.

  They rebelled against an unpopular and viciously policed poll tax when all their peaceful protests had been smacked down. They fought back when the military launched a pre-emptive strike intended to restore the authority of a government that taxed but would not listen and an imperialist agenda that had pledged so much but delivered precious little.

  They sewed a flag and built a fence.

  Following bloody Sunday, however, Governor Hotham needed a more dangerous enemy than that. He quickly determined that only foreigners could have been responsible for such outrageous acts. No one was fooled, particularly when Hotham then declared an amnesty for any Americans involved in the affray. The Americans had been the only ones who, perhaps, truly did foresee a republican future. After all, they had already had one successful shot at armed insurrection against redcoats.

  Clara Seekamp certainly was not taken in by Hotham’s scapegoating tactic. After Henry was arrested for sedition, Clara became the sole editor of the Ballarat Times. In her leader on New Year’s Day 1855, she called Hotham to account:

  Who are the foreigners? Where are the foreigners? What is it that constitutes a foreigner?…Poor Governor Hotham! Could you not have found some other more truthful excuse for all the illegal and even murderous excesses committed by your soldiery and butchers?… Why did you disregard our memorials and entreaties, our prayers and our cries for justice and protection against your unjust stewards here, until the people, sickened by hope deferred, and maddened by continued and increased acts of oppression, were driven to take up arms in self defence?

  Clara hit the nail on the head: hope deferred. The lack of judicial transparency, the unchecked miscarriages of justice, the futility of all lawful means of having grievances heard and disputes resolved. It all added up to one mighty roadblock to the dream of chalking out your path in life. How long must the restless immigrants wait for a shred of the freedom they had been assured was theirs in the Promised Land?

  THE MINER’S RIGHT

  Fast forward one year to 3 December 1855. The trials of the thirteen miners charged with treason had dissolved in farce, making a laughing stock of the government. Popular feeling was with the diggers. No jury would convict their peers of a capital offence when there was not a shred of evidence—except perhaps for a mangled blue and white flag stolen by a trooper from the ashes of the Stockade.

  By the time the courts set free the last of the prisoners, the Goldfields Commission had also tabled its report. It ranked the miners’ grievances in this order:

  the licence fee (or more properly the unseemly violence often necessary for its due collection);

  the land grievance; and

  the want of political rights and recognised status rendering the mining population an entirely non-privileged body… without gradations of public rank.

  In other words: tax, property and the vote.

  The Commission’s recommendations for alleviating these complaints were quickly adopted. The licence system was replaced by an export tax on gold. Effectively, it worked like an income tax rather than a poll tax. The hated licence fee was replaced with a miner’s right. For £1 per year, it entitled miners to fossick for minerals and gave them access to a plot of land on which they could make capital improvements. It also enfranchised them to vote in and seek representation on the Victorian legislature, as well as on a new local system of mining courts. Women could purchase a miner’s right, but were excluded from the vote—at least after a legal loophole was closed by the 1856 Electoral Act. (Victorian women would not win the state franchise until 1908.)

  The 1856 Act also changed the structure of parliament. The Legislative Council became an upper house, and the property qualification for becoming a Member was abolished. At the same time a lower house was established: the Legislative Assembly, which became known as ‘the people’s house’. Peter Lalor was elected to the Legislative Assembly as the Member for Ballarat East in 1856.

  His
torians have argued about whether the Eureka Stockade, as ‘the Ballarat Massacre’ came to be known, was responsible for this new democratic order in Victoria.

  Some, like Geoffrey Blainey, say no: a bill for the new constitution was already in the system. It would have been passed regardless of the turmoil at Ballarat. Others, like Geoffrey Serle, acknowledge that constitutional reform was inevitable. However, they maintain that universal manhood suffrage—giving the vote to men who did not own property—was not a foregone conclusion. These historians say it was the voting rights connected to the miner’s right—which was a direct outcome of Eureka—that led to the most democratic franchise (for men) in the world.

  So that was two victories for the miners. Not guilty in the criminal courts. Big winners from the commission of enquiry.

  But many victims of 3 December had claimed compensation from the government for property losses when the military set the Eureka ablaze, and these people were mostly disappointed.

  A board of enquiry found in mid-winter 1855 that the destruction of tents on the morning of 3 December was a necessary consequence of the resistance offered to the military. Your Board lament the losses sustained by individuals, read the report, but cannot forget that if the sufferers were not actively engaged in an overt act of Rebellion they displayed no disposition to support authority.

  Thus Anne Diamond, whose husband was shot inside their store before it was burnt to the ground, found her claim for £600 rejected. In this the struggling miner’s wife was no different from Catherine Bentley, the formerly prosperous publican’s wife, whose claim of £30,000 for the loss of her hotel and the forced annexation of land held in her name was brushed aside.

  For these new Australians it was a small taste of the bitter pill of dispossession suffered irretrievably by the old Australians.

  THE YOUNGEST AUSTRALIAN

  In her firecracker leader of New Year’s Day 1855, Clara Seekamp took the temperature of her community and predicted a patriotic fever that would burn low but would not completely die.

  What is this country else but Australia? Is it any more England than it is Ireland or Scotland, France or America, Italy or Germany? Is the population, wealth, intelligence, enterprise and learning wholly and solely English? No, the population of Australia is not English, but Australian. Whoever works towards the development of its resources and its wealth is no longer a foreigner but an Australian, a title fully as good, if not better, than that of any inhabitants of any of the geographical dominions in the world. The latest immigrant is the youngest Australian.

  Two months after this, Karl Marx wrote in a German-language newspaper that the Eureka Stockade outbreak was but the symptom of a general revolutionary movement in Victoria.

  In fact, if there was a revolution at Eureka, it was not political: it was sociological.

  The mining community of Ballarat did not intend to overthrow the British Crown, any more than it wanted to create an equal distribution of wealth or a global map without colour lines. Any republican feelings were embryonic. Any feminist sentiments that may have been stirred up were equally tentative, and in any case were soon buried in the whirlwind of gold-rush change.

  More widespread was the desire to create what we would now call a meritocracy: to replace the old, rigid power relationships with a more fluid social hierarchy. One based on achievement rather than birth, breeding, rank, marriage or conventional sex roles.

  In this, the young gold-rush generation largely succeeded. They mightn’t have struck it rich, but as their lives went on they built businesses, farms, families and towns. Ultimately, they built a nation.

  But this was all to come.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book has been a heap of fun to write. All praise and credit to my editor, Mandy Brett, who is required personnel on any razor gang. Apart from being handy with a red pen, she is a top chick.

  Huge gratitude to Michael Heyward and all at Text Publishing for the vision behind this book. Your belief in me and the scope of my work is a blessing. Jess Horrocks is responsible for the gorgeous layout and graphics. I don’t know if you are a rebel, Jess, but you are undoubtedly a legend.

  Thanks also to my agent, Jacinta Dimase, for holding my hand and never letting go.

  Special thanks to the students in Michael Grose’s Year 12 Australian History class at Northcote High School who agreed to road test this book. Cheers to Principal Kate Morris and Veep Nick Murphy for letting me roam around your classrooms without so much as a lifejacket.

  Much love, as always, to my family, who guide and support me in everything I do.

  Last but never least, thank you to my gem of a husband, Damien, and our children Bernie, Noah and Esther. You guys are keepers.

  OTHER READING

  PRIMARY SOURCES

  Clacy, Mrs Charles. A Lady’s Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852–53: Written on the Spot. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1853.

  ——. Lights and Shadows of Australian Life. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1854.

  Clendinning, Martha. Recollections of Ballarat: A Lady’s Life at the Diggings Fifty Years Ago, 1892. State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection, MS 10102/1.

  Davis, Fanny. Ship Diary, 1858. State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection, MS 10509.

  Dick, Alexander. Alexander Dick Diary, 1854–56. State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection, MS 11241.

  Evans, Charles. Charles Evans Diary (formerly known as the Samuel Lazarus Diary), 1853–55. State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection, MS 11484.

  Howell, Mrs W. May. Reminscences of Australia, the Diggings and the Bush. London: W. May Howell, 1869.

  Howitt, William. Land, Labour and Gold: Or Two Years in Victoria, with Visits to Sydney and Van Dieman’s Land. London: Longman, 1855.

  Huyghue, Samuel. The Ballarat Riots, 1884. State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection, MS 7725.

  Kelly, William. Life in Victoria in 1853 and 1858. London: Chapman and Hall, 1860.

  Mossman, Samuel. The Gold Regions of Australia. London, 1852.

  Pierson, Thomas. Thomas Pierson Diary, 1852–55. State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection, MS 11646.

  Ramsay-Laye, Elizabeth. Social Life and Manners in Australia. London, 1861.

  Swan, Jane Ann. Diary of a Voyage from Gravesend to Port Phillip on the William and Jane, 12 August 1853–2 December 1853, 1853. State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection, MS 11465.

  Train, Miller Davis. Letters of Miller Davis Train, 1854. Royal Historical Society of Victoria, MS 000134.

  SECONDARY SOURCES

  Annear, Robyn. Fly a Rebel Flag: The Battle at Eureka. Fitzroy, Vic.: Black Dog Books, 2004.

  ——. Nothing but Gold: The Diggers of 1852. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1999.

  Bate, Weston. Lucky City: The First Generation at Ballarat, 1851–1901. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1978.

  Blake, Gregory. To Pierce the Tyrant’s Heart: The Battle for the Eureka Stockade, 3 December 1854. Loftus, ACT: Australian Army History Unit, 2009.

 
Cahir, David. Black Gold: Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria. ANU E-Press, 2012.

  Corfield, Justin, Wickham, Dorothy and Gervasoni, Clare. The Eureka Encyclopaedia. Ballarat: Ballarat Heritage Services, 2004.

  Goodman, David. Gold Seeking: Victoria and California in the 1850s. St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1994.

  Johnson, Laurel. Women of Eureka. Ballarat: Historic Montrose Cottage and Eureka Museum, 1995.

  MacFarlane, Ian. Eureka from the Official Records. Melbourne: Public Record Office Victoria, 1995.

  Molony, John. Eureka. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1984.

  Serle, Geoffrey. The Golden Age: A History of the Colony of Victoria, 1851–1861. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1963.

  Smith, Neil C. Soldiers Bleed Too: The Redcoats at the Eureka Stockade 1854. Brighton, Vic.: Mostly Unsung Military History, 2004.

  Twomey, Christina. Deserted and Destitute: Motherhood, Wife Desertion and Colonial Welfare. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2002.

  Wickham, Dorothy. Deaths at Eureka. Ballarat: Ballarat Heritage Services, 1996.

  ——. Women of the Diggings, Ballarat 1854. Ballarat: Ballarat Heritage Services, 2009.

  MORE WORKS ON EUREKA BY CLARE WRIGHT

  Beyond the Ladies Lounge: Australia’s Female Publicans. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2003.

  ‘Desperately Seeking Samuel: A Diary Lost and Found.’ La Trobe Journal 90 (2012): 6–22.