by Clare Wright
Meanwhile, Robert Rede, dry and fortified in his quarters, scratched out a letter to Melbourne by candlelight. The absolute necessity of putting down all meetings Public/Private I think should now be apparent, he wrote, for the abolition of the Licence Fee is merely a watchword. Rede had a plan—that the whole of the goldfield be put under martial law and Hotham issue a proclamation to the effect that he would stop the agitation at all costs—but the former medical student showed less bluster than the boy soldiers. Like the diggers being magnetically drawn to Bakery Hill, Rede turned to Hotham for leadership. It would have cost his pride to write, I must also earnestly require some instructions for my future guidance.54
Lalor gave Rede an out. Late that night, with the dust settled by hours of soaking rain, Lalor decided to send a deputation to speak to Rede in a gentlemanly manner. The go-betweens would negotiate for the release of the prisoners. He chose George Black, who so recently had been on a similar mission to see Hotham, Raffaello Carboni, and the Catholic priest Father Smyth. When the trio reached the Yarrowee River below the Camp, the police stopped them. Only Smyth was allowed to proceed. He was taken directly to Rede. Flanked by his deputies, Rede accompanied Smyth back to where Black and Carboni waited in the company of the police.
Black immediately repeated the mistake he had made with Hotham. He demanded the release of the prisoners, and for good measure added his opinion that the soldiers were bullies and that Britons would not stand for such brutal treatment. The situation was hopeless. Rede expected the obedience and submission with which his office vested him. Black represented diggers who would no longer submit to tyranny; men who were desperate to assert their legitimacy after months of humiliation. The new codes smacked up against the old like waves against a cliff face.
Rede knew the licensing system was a scourge and must be replaced by something more prudent and acceptable to the people. He himself had written to Hotham on 7 November, suggesting alternative methods of raising revenue and stating baldly: I look at all direct taxation now as impolitic.55 He must also have known that ordering a full-scale licence hunt on the morning after the impulsive burning of licences at Bakery Hill was sure to exacerbate the already inflamed passions of the movement’s vanguard. But he was not prepared to appear anything but complete master of his senses and his forces.
Black now offered him a perfect bridge over the troubled waters that raged between them. Stop the licence hunts until the people had had the opportunity to put their case against the licensing system before Hotham once more. In return for such consideration, the people would lay down their weapons and pick up their shovels. They would cease their armed resistance if assured that they would not need to defend themselves and their families against actions such as the morning’s digger hunt.
But Rede smelled a rat, or at least the acrid stench of his own reputation going up in smoke. Was this a trick? He already believed that the protest against the licence tax was merely the thin end of a deeper revolutionary wedge. Nothing short of self-government would appease the leaders of this agitation. Was he to be the man who rolled out the red carpet for their entrance to Spring Street?
No, he could not afford to be the one who stepped cautiously back from the brink. He would have to stand firm. Dig his heels in, keep from wavering and eventually emerge triumphant. He could not promise that there would be no more digger hunts, he told the deputation. Then he dismissed them.
I can only say that things look as bad as they almost possibly can, lamented the GEELONG ADVERTISER after the deputation’s second failed attempt to broker a truce. Is there no peacemaker? 56 Martha Clendinning, alone in her store, her sister having fled back to Melbourne, wondered the same thing. Things must come to a violent ending, she predicted, and that very soon.
TWELVE
BLOODY SUNDAY
So it came to pass that the Ballarat diggings ground to an eerie halt on the first day of summer, 1854. If men were machines you would say that that a screw had shaken itself loose and the whole steely apparatus needed urgent maintenance. But human beings are made of flesh and bone and heart and mind, and on Friday 1 December the people of Ballarat stopped work of their own conscious accord. Miners downed tools. Storekeepers closed their doors. Families regrouped. Mates gathered in furtive clumps, like cows under a shade tree. Blacksmiths began fashioning pikes, the traditional weapon of peasant rebellion. Teams of diggers swept through the city, first requesting, then insisting, that the occupants hand over their guns and ammunition. (All requisitioned arms, it was promised, would be returned when they were no longer needed.) The hotels and shanties were humming with rumour, but there was a surprising lack of drunkenness.1 Battening down the hatches was a serious business. An uneasy hush fell over the festive season, as a community held its collective breath.
That night at the Adelphi Theatre, Sarah Hanmer held a benefit performance. It was a tribute to herself, under the patronage of Resident Commissioner Robert Rede and American Consul James Tarleton. The piece she chose to perform was Money—an irreverent poke at the very foible that had led all these feverish lambs to the slaughter.2 The Adelphi Players were in fine form. Mrs Hanmer as Lady Franklyn, Miss Julia Hanmer as Clara, and Miss Stevens as Georgiana, sustained their well merited reputation, wrote the GEELONG ADVERTISER. During the evening, Mrs Hanmer was presented with a gold watch and chain, as a mark of respect for her private worth and public character.3 The watch was purchased from funds raised from the benefit Mrs Hanmer had previously held to free the alleged sly grogger Frank Carey. Carey had refused the money after his reprieve by Hotham. Owing to the circumstances, neither Tarleton nor Rede was present on this balmy night to see Mrs Hanmer receive her gift.
Had they been there, they might have wondered what sort of game this formidable woman was playing. Earlier that evening, the Americans had held a meeting at the Adelphi to determine what their position would be in the looming crisis. The atmosphere was considerably charged. Charles Ferguson was at the meeting. Tarleton had warned his countrymen to stay out of any impending conflict, but others complained that we were doing nothing, while it was a matter of as much interest to us as to them, and began to accuse us of cowardice.
Publicly, the Americans voted to desist. They would not be seen as instigators. We regarded ourselves as foreigners, recounted Ferguson, and had no right to be foremost in an open outbreak against the government. Privately, it was obvious that many Americans, notably Mrs Hanmer’s friend Captain McGill, were taking pole position. The diggers could count on their support. Like other foreign nationals who were joining the drilling corps at the Stockade, they believed their actions were essentially defensive; a collective stand against a government that had proved at the Gravel Pits that it had no hesitation in firing on the people.
Sarah Hanmer was directing the proceeds of all her benefits to the Diggers Defence Fund. She was the war chest’s principal contributor. Yet the shrewd theatre manager was still able to court the patronage of Ballarat’s highest official and the honorary consul of the most influential immigrant group in the colony. Rede and Tarleton sponsored a benefit in her honour, despite the fact that within two days her theatre would be used to host the Ballarat Reform League’s most important meeting yet. Why would these men flatter her with their sponsorship, legitimate her prestige? Did they think this leading lady, who commanded the respect and affection of the American diggers, would use her influence to act as a go-between? Her prima donna Miss Stevens had, after all, solicited signatures from 1700 people to aid Frank Carey’s liberation. Did Commissioner Rede court Sarah Hanmer’s power, hoping it would be used to his benefit? Or fearing it would be used against him?
Peacemaker or firebrand? Sarah Hanmer kept everyone guessing. Sometimes it pays to have one foot in both camps, adroitly straddling the line.
On Saturday morning, the people of Ballarat woke to a stiff southerly breeze. The cool change did nothing to ease tempers. Business is entirely suspended, wrote Charles Evans, but one topic of conversation e
ngrosses the attention of diggers and storekeepers. Twenty-three-year-old Evans thanked his stars that, unlike so many of his fellow immigrants, he had not shacked up with a lass and planted his seed on Australian soil. Those whose means enable them are sending their families away, he wrote,
while others whom poverty compels to keep their wives and families amidst the scene of threatening danger are awaiting the approach of events which feeling bachelors may bless their happy fortune in not being troubled with.
For months—in some cases years—shamefaced men had been struggling to put food in the mouths of their children, watching their women labour under a hot sun or wash clothes in the driving rain to keep their families from the (purely figurative) poorhouse. Now these same men had to worry about how to protect their loved ones from an army that would scatter bullets among anonymous tents.
They knew they could do nothing to stop a storm at sea or a baby taken by merciful Providence but, lord knew, a man could stand up to another man. As the BALLARAT TIMES said, who was to blame? The Camp was legally in the right, but the licence hunt on the Gravel Pits, argued the BALLARAT TIMES, was a deliberate plan to transform indignation into open riot…an embryo rebellion.4 Could a man retreat from such wanton provocation?
There were at least 1500 people crammed into the Stockade by Saturday afternoon. Some had spent the previous night there, but most had slept in their own tents. The purpose of the Stockade, after all, was to prevent, by force if necessary, the arrest of unlicensed diggers. There had never been a licence hunt at night. But throughout the day on Saturday, more diggers kept rolling up, many coming from other goldfields, eager to add weight to the moral majority of resistance. The numbers were swelled by women who brought food into the Stockade, and at least one female sly-grog seller, who knew a captive market when she saw one and set up shop on the fringe of the palisade.5 We were of all nations and colours, wrote Raffaello Carboni. Great works! was the shout. Great Work. Magnum Opus. The alchemic principle of forging base matter into gold. A process that involves three stages: Putrefactio, corruption, darkness. Albedo, purification, whitening, the moon: female. Citrinitus, yellowing, enlightenment, the sun: male. The Great Work is said to be the uniting of opposites. Great Work requires conflagration to forge a bond.
But the fire in the bellies of the stockade’s inmates was hardly transcendental. A very mutinous and excited spirit was prevalent, wrote Alexander Dick, who had only arrived in Ballarat on 22 November. He could immediately see that his chosen destination was rife [sic] for an explosion. Peter Lalor, whose tent was inside the Stockade, could read the mood too. He needed to corral the energy, lest a purportedly disciplined ‘army’ disintegrate into a violent mob, as at Bentley’s Hotel. Already there had been reports that there were gangs roaming the Flat demanding cash, firearms and provisions from frightened diggers and their wives. These thugs were not under his authority, but mere looters taking advantage of the situation.
Martha Clendinning was one of their victims. Martha was in her store on Saturday 2 December, a date to be long remembered. A group of eight miners marched up in military fashion. The leader claimed to be a representative of the diggers’ Minister of War. He demanded any firearms she possessed. She said she had none, but was disbelieved. The leader moved to search her tent.
I did not like the idea of such a visitation so I said, ‘If you do not believe me, perhaps you would believe the Doctor if I called him to speak to you’. ‘Yes, yes’ he said at once, ‘call him out’ and he appeared much relieved at having a man to interview instead of a woman!
Martha escaped harm or loss of her goods, but knew that Saturday was a black day of wanton robbery and pillaging. She fetched her brother to stay with her that night when Dr Clendinning was called away.
On Saturday afternoon, Lalor once again stepped forward to take command. Emerging from the committee room of Diamond’s store, he mounted an old log and gave a stump oration. Alexander Dick was there to hear it. Lalor held a double-barrelled gun in his hand which he fingered in a nervous manner. His message was simple: We must make this a country we can live in. He had personal reason to project a future that included basic human and political rights for all its citizens, rich or poor, landed or roving. Peter Lalor was waiting to be married. Two days earlier, Lalor had written a letter to his fiancée, Alicia Dunne. In it, he explained his motives for putting up his hand to lead the rebel movement. This is what he wrote: I would be unworthy of being called a man. I would be unworthy of myself, and, above all, I would be unworthy of you and your love, were I base enough to desert my companions in danger. He urged Alicia to shed but a single tear should his efforts fail, for he would have died in the cause of honour and liberty.6 Lalor wanted to hold his head high as his young Irish bride walked towards him in the chapel of St Mary’s, Geelong in July the following year.
The central committee of the reform league must have been grateful for the timing of events. So far, there had been no grand plan. No strategy for gaining the upper hand. Every action had been responsive, protective, rearguard. The Stockade had been thrown up at random. The flames did not devour the Eureka Hotel, admitted Carboni, with the same impetuosity as we got up our stockade. The majority of the miners and storekeepers on the diggings were not overtly rebellious, nor prepared to take up arms. We of the peace portion of the residents, is how Martha Clendinning identified herself, though she was sympathetic to the miners’ land hunger and tax grievances. Henry Mundy counted himself in that portion. All reasonable people, he wrote, were willing to wait til the Commission had finished its labours and report. Such people still had faith that Hotham would do the right thing by them.
But even the activists were divided. Some of the members of the Ballarat Reform League had sworn the oath of allegiance at Bakery Hill, but not all. Humffray refused to enter the Stockade. Henry Harris and Charles ‘Ikey’ Dyte similarly clung to the hope of a constitutional resolution. Some were for a republic; others, like Lalor, claimed that the diggers’ resistance was purely defensive, designed to protect each other and protest against the misrule of Ballarat’s officials. Vern, cranky that Lalor had stepped so blithely into the leadership, was holding his own meetings down at the Star Hotel. Lalor had been a late starter, not part of the original reform league elite. Not everyone trusted his motives.
Tomorrow was Sunday. By custom, the Sabbath was observed as a day of rest on the goldfields. There would be no digger hunts. It would be a time to step off the rollercoaster of November’s events. Time to take stock. For some, time to pray. Father Smyth had personally entered the stockade and pleaded for those of his flock to be at mass in the morning. The meeting of the reform league was scheduled for 2pm at the Adelphi. At that meeting, the leadership would be able to discuss their policies and tactics. The majority of the 1500 people who were in the stockade to hear Lalor’s afternoon oration felt free to leave. People began to relax. Saturday afternoon was regarded as a half-holiday. No one recollected a licence check on a Saturday afternoon. They could go back to their own tents, back to their families, back to the hotels and refreshment tents. As H. R. Nicholls later wrote, the desire to turn out in good trim on Sunday had an effect which probably changed the fortune of war. One after another, the diggers left the stockade to get a clean shirt or to prepare in some way for Sunday. A government spy dutifully reported the unexpected exodus from behind the barricades.
Nicholls himself went to one of the many shanties on the fringe of the stockade. There he and his mates had drinks ourselves and conversed with a young lady, decidedly good-looking, who presided over the grog. Nicholls stayed until midnight then returned to the stockade. Jane Cuming’s husband Stephen also left the stockade that night on account of all the carousing and singing. He had urged Lalor to close the grog shops because if they were allowed to remain open, I concluded that it would mean absolute ruin. Stephen went home to Jane and Martineau and did not return.7
Swimming upstream was a contingent of Americans, led by James McGill. His
Independent Californian Rangers had decided to defy Tarleton’s pleas. They came now to the stockade, offering service. Many of McGill’s troops had seen combat in the Mexican–American War. They bore arms like feathers in a cap. McGill himself carried a handsome sword, a gift of Sarah Hanmer—a precious heirloom, brought across the seas. In a dramatic flourish, McGill headed his troop of men with this sword drawn. All of the Adelphi Theatre’s props—pistols, revolvers, sabres—had been distributed to the Californian Rangers. The actors themselves had swapped the stage for the Stockade. Was it as Carboni said—that the Stockade was nothing more than our infatuation, a higgledy-piggledy barricade containing a dozen family tents and sly-grog shops, defended by a handful of men brandishing theatre props?
By nightfall, about 1500 people remained in the Stockade, mostly those diggers and storekeepers like the Diamonds and the Shanahans, who lived in the captive tents; out-of-towners; and the sentries, chiefly Americans, posted to keep friends in and foes out.
There is another reason why so many of the men inside the Stockade on Saturday night might have gone home. There was a full moon. According to the principles of lunar menstrual synchrony, women are designed to ovulate on the full moon.8 Female humans’ biological blueprint is to release eggs when there is the most light in the night sky. Bleeding time thus corresponds to the new moon, a time of inward focus and self-nourishing.
The invention of electricity has changed this pre-modern prototype for human behaviour: now, not only do women menstruate at different times in the lunar cycle, but at different times from each other. However, most women are aware that when they live in close proximity to other women, their menstrual cycles start to coincide. With only candles and campfires for nightly illumination in the tents of Ballarat in 1854, women’s menstrual cycles would very probably have synchronised. And they would have fallen into step with the phases of the moon.
