Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution

by Peter Fitzsimons

  Of an instant, they suddenly rush the Captain, crying ‘JOE! JOE!’, whereupon, as reported by The Ballarat Times, ‘The gallant officer galloped away as fast as possible across the ranges leaving his men to do the best they could in his absence!’59 That best, alas, was not very good at all.

  To the cries of ‘JOE!’ is soon added a flurry of bottles, rocks, sticks - anything the diggers can get their hands on to demonstrate their complete contempt - all of which trace perfect arcs in the dusky twilight to land on and around the soldiers and startled horses in a rain of rebellion.

  In the face of it, many a Redcoat are visibly shaken, and some of the soldiers respond by firing wild shots in the direction that the missiles are coming from. Just what kind of a place is this? What have they let themselves in for? What are they facing?

  As it happens, this last question is still being decided, but the outcry is not quite as spontaneous as it seems. In fact, there have been rumours all over the goldfields just in recent hours that the three representatives they have sent to Melbourne have been arrested and the government, intent on massacre, is now sending cannon to the goldfields to train upon the meeting the following day. So neither the question, nor the diggers’ response to the government’s answer, is particularly surprising.

  The diggers fall upon the last two carts they fear might contain cannon. In the melee, groups of soldiers become separated from each other and therefore vulnerable. Some have been shot at, and a handful savagely beaten, while a drummer boy, John Egan, a ‘favourite with the men’,60 is shot in the thigh. Two officers, Police Sub-Inspector Samuel Furnell and his boss, Senior Sub-Inspector Thomas Langley, are shaken as bullets have passed so close to their heads they have heard them. (The diggers, too, have sustained damage. Brenden Hassell, a co-owner of the London Hotel, was standing in the doorway of his establishment shortly after giving an officer of the 12th Regiment directions to the Government Camp when the first shots were fired. One bullet came from out of the dark and shattered his shin.)

  Not all the diggers are pleased with the affair. Watching the whole thing, Samuel Lazarus would shortly record in his diary:

  It was a lovely moonlight night and the soft placid beauty of the sky was strangely at variance with the scene below where hootings groans curses the clatter of horses feet and the rattle of swords made up a horrible din which it would be difficult to describe. It is some relief to the feelings of Englishmen to know that the row was commenced and principally carried on by the worst portion of the digging community - old Convicts and Tipperary men, for no man however well disposed towards the diggers interests can disguise the fact from himself that it was a cowardly affair.61

  Back at the Camp, Captain Wise of the 40th bursts through the main entrance, caught between outrage at what has just occurred and joy at being back on the premises. The previous year he had spent time stationed here in charge of the pensioner force, and the beaming young officer is soon awash in handshakes from old friends and acquaintances who are equally delighted to see him. Wise and his regiment were overdue and those at the Camp were worried. And yet there is little time for such hail-fellow-well-met, under the circumstances. Suddenly, coming from the far distance, everyone is startled to hear the distinctive notes of a bugle from the distant realms of the Melbourne Road.

  In this man’s army, every bugle call has a different meaning, and this is one of alarm. Their troops - probably the follow-up 12th Regiment - are under attack! This is confirmed an instant later by the sound of gunfire, followed by a police officer bursting into the Camp a few minutes later in nearly as much of a lather as his horse, babbling something of what has happened. It is time for a bugle call of their own in the Camp, and when that call goes out the result is instantaneous as the mounted troopers quickly assemble and gallop away - the cavalry to the rescue.

  After they depart, Commissioner Rede’s very timid and artistic Chief Clerk, Samuel Douglas Smyth Huyghue - since arriving here, he has felt ‘a forlorn sense of exile under strange stars, and failed to recognize in the hard face of Australian nature, the face of a mother’62 - goes to the lip of the escarpment of the Government Camp looking out on the diggings, and would later compose an evocative account of what it was like, what he saw and heard:

  By this time it was intensely dark; one of those cloudless nights when the blackness under the stars seems palpable - but the entire area of the gold workings became transfigured into a sea of palpitating flame. First, far away on the Eureka line the illumination began through the lighting of innumerable fires and the incessant flashes from guns and revolvers discharged before each tent on the crowded slopes. It then spread gradually to Bakery Hill, the Gravel Pits, Red Streak and Golden Point - the most famous of the workings - until it lit up the whole valley beyond the Yarrowee and seemed to break into intenser surges of fire in the track of the approaching troops. I never witnessed such a sight before and probably never shall again. It was accompanied too by an ever-increasing roar from the throats of what might have been the entire mining population, which, fury-urged, rolled towards us as the voice of doom. Had a legion of gnomes burst raging from the ‘swamped out’ sinkings, with a chorus other than that of the frogs of Aristophanes, they could not have added much to the din of the infernal discord.63

  Every now and then a galloping horseman returns, seeking fresh squadrons of reinforcements, which are in turn dispatched.

  Meanwhile, out on the diggings, Raffaello Carboni is with some other miners on Bakery Hill discussing the news of the attack when a fresh detachment of Redcoats and mounted police arrives from the Camp, led by an officer of the 40th Regiment who is apoplectic with rage. His sword drawn, almost as if he would smite them all with a single blow, the officer accuses them of having launched the attack, ‘pack of scoundrels’64 that they are. It is with some difficulty that the officer is persuaded that they are not the instigators, in part because the miners sincerely offer to help find the soldiers still missing from the fracas. One is discovered in an abandoned tent, another in a hole down Warrenheip Gully way, and so forth until they are all collected.

  As Carboni would note, that is not the end of the tension. Sporadic gunfire from sources unknown heightens the atmosphere of lawlessness, danger, revolution … coming fast.

  Courtesy of the cavalry, the bulk of the 12th Regiment are able to gather themselves and fight their way back to the bridge over the Yarrowee. Hotly pursued by the angry diggers, they make their hurried way to the Camp and are more than relieved when the mob does not follow them over the bridge.

  ‘Up to this point the mob stuck like hungry wolves close to the heels of the soldiers,’ Samuel Huyghue would recount, ‘only kept back by the bristling sabres of the cavalry. There however the troops charged; the insurgents were driven back, one being cut down and several wounded. Then they slowly retired with a roar of baffled rage, while the soldiers affected a passage and made good their entrance within the lines.’65

  It is now 11 o’clock and Huyghue wanders among the battered and bewildered young soldiers who have only just made it to safety - six of whom have to be rushed to the infirmary - stunned at how youthful they appear.

  ‘They were stripplings, mostly - half-weaned cubs of the Lion Mother, and had only just landed from the transport that brought them out from the Depot in sober England to receive their first lesson in “colonial experience” from the [diggers] of the Goldfields.’66

  When apprised of the full details of what has happened, the outraged Commissioner Rede wastes little time in reporting the events to the Chief Commissioner of the Goldfields, Wright, and setting out his plans for the immediate future, most particularly pertaining to the meeting of the diggers that is scheduled to take place on the morrow. ‘I have decided on the following mode of action. A magistrate accompanied by persons on whom I can depend will attend. They will report to one immediately if anything seditious is said or if any advice should be given to the miners to commit an illegal act. Immediately on receiving such report I s
hall proceed accompanied by the whole of the force I can take without endangering the safety of the Camp and shall call on the people to disperse, should they refuse I will read the riot act and then order the police to disperse the meeting. Should a shot be fired or the police roughly handled, I will call on the military to act, I will arrest the speakers on the spot if possible or if not as soon as they can be found. I am so convinced that active measures must be employed to maintain order and give confidence to the well disposed that I am determining to act in the most energetic manner. I will endeavour in every respect to act in strict conformity to the law but I hope that under the very peculiar and pressing circumstances in which I now find myself placed that should I overstep the exact line I may confidently look for the support of His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor.’ 67

  The Commissioner also feels strongly enough on another matter - the lack of formal guidance he has received - to add a small reproach:

  It would have been a great assistance to me had I received some instructions or the opinion of the law offices of the crown on the exact extent to which I am legally empowered to go in a case of sedition. I cannot too strongly urge that the editor of the Ballarat Times should be arrested and sent to Melbourne for his seditious article in the copy I sent down. The soldiers & police I am happy to state show the very best dispositions.

  I have the honour to be, Sir,

  Your most obedient servant,

  ROBERT REDE, Resident Commissioner.68

  The Commissioner puts down his quill and breathes heavily. There is no way around the fact that he is responsible for a part of Her Majesty’s empire that is now getting totally out of hand. He knows, more than ever, that he must act strongly and decisively to bring it back under control.

  From all across the diggings comes the constant flash and roar of guns fired into the air. Not that the sound of gunfire is rare on the goldfield - it is, in fact, a common practice for the diggers to discharge their guns into the air at the end of the day to ensure that they remain in working order. But it has never been like this.

  These are not scattered shots. This is a constant roar. This is a warning from the diggers that they, too, are heavily armed, and no occupying army is going to be able to easily quell them.

  11 pm, Tuesday, 28 November 1854, on the Eureka, they flag the future

  And, yes, it is difficult to concentrate, and even to talk with such constant gunfire going on nearby, but talk they must. The subject being discussed by Peter Lalor, Tom Kennedy, John Basson Humffray, Charles Ross and another digger by the name of John Wilson69 in a tent out the back of Cameron’s store is the need to have a flag of their own, a unifying symbol to signify that they are no longer loyal to the Union Jack and do not recognise the authority of those who bear arms under it. But just what should their own flag look like?

  As it happens, although Wilson is perhaps the one who has said the least to this point, it is while he chances to gaze at the night sky that the gentle muse of inspiration alights on his shoulder. The Southern Cross.70

  It is the most recognisable constellation in this wonderful, strange country they’ve come to, and they all know it.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ he would ever after remember calling to the others. ‘Here’s the idea … There. The Southern Cross, five white stars on a blue field.’71

  Most importantly, when Wilson puts the suggestion to the others, the idea is instantly embraced - and by no-one more eagerly than Charles Ross, a third-generation military man from Canada, of fine and distinguished features, regarded by his mates as a man of ‘force and spirit’,72 who has just the right idea of how it should look.

  Taking up his quill, he draws upon a scrap of paper, modifies it, and then modifies it some more. Drawing and re-drawing, he comes up with a design that he thinks is more than satisfactory - a flag that perhaps has echoes of the NSW Ensign of 1832, which boasts a cross of St George with the stars of the Southern Cross, and, more recently, the flag of the Australasian Anti-Transportation League, which also features the Southern Cross.

  Who then can he enlist to make this flag for them? There are some diggers’ wives around, of whom a few have been intimately involved in the agitation of previous weeks, and none more so than Anastasia, wife of the Chairman of the Ballarat Reform League, Tim Hayes. As beautiful as she is tough, Anastasia was involved in the Young Ireland movement of Fintan Lalor, made it through the potato famine, managed to give birth to five children in Ireland and transport them to the other side of the world, and then gave birth to her latest right here in a tent on the goldfields.

  Of course Anastasia is only too pleased to take Charles Ross’s rough drawing and, with the help of her friends Anastasia Withers and Anne Duke, gather up blue wool and cotton cloth of the type used to make the diggers’ shirts for the base material, twill and cotton material for the cross and 100 per cent cream wool for the stars. They set to with a will as all falls quiet … 73

  CHAPTER TEN

  READING THE RIOT ACT

  Yentlemens. Go vere you vill, you meet mit der tyrann. Ze only way to meet tyrann ish mit der pistole in der handt!1

  Friedrich Vern, to his fellow diggers

  Commissioner Rede to John Basson Humffray in the midst of the Gravel Pits riot: ‘See now the consequences of your agitation!’

  Humffray replies: ‘No, but see the consequences of impolitic coercion.’ 2

  Wednesday morning, 29 November 1854, the standard is raised atop Bakery Hill

  Of course the sound of sawing and hammers pounding on wood is not unusual on the diggings at this time, because the process of sinking the shafts 150 feet deep requires a great deal of carpentry, as the miners constantly shore up the collapsing sides with wooden walls. But on this bright, searingly hot morning, all the activity is put to a different purpose. In preparation for the meeting that is to be held this afternoon to hear personally what the response was to the demands Black and Kennedy made to the Lieutenant-Governor on their behalf, several miners particularly handy with hammers, saws and hard yakka are putting their energy towards building a stage. It comes complete with an impressive flagpole from a tree cut down from Byle’s3 Swamp in the Bullarook Forest, soaring no less than 60 feet. With its base in an abandoned shaft, the flagpole now stands straight and true, and the fact that it is situated atop Bakery Hill means it is visible from all over the diggings.

  Once the whole thing is completed in the late morning, the moment comes when ‘bridegroom’ Charles Ross comes forward with the new flag that the Anastasias - Withers and Hayes - together with Anne Duke, have been working on. For it is now ready to be displayed, and there will never be a better time than right now as this group of armed men reach for a new symbol of their unity, a symbol entirely separate from that which the Union Jack represents.

  At first the flag hangs loosely as it is hoisted up the mast, and it is not easy for the gathering of grimy men of the diggings to focus on its form. But once at the top, it catches the light breeze of liberty and, sure enough, there it is! Now the massed men can for the first time appreciate the simple beauty of the massive standard - measuring roughly three yards high and four-and-a-half yards wide.

  Charles Ross stands at the base of the flagpole, sword in hand, as if he is ready to fight to defend it. And yet, in this company, with these assembled men gazing up at it intently and proudly, there is clearly no need.

  As reported by the impressed correspondent for The Ballarat Times: ‘Its maiden appearance was a fascinating object to behold. There is no flag in Europe, or in the civilised world, half so beautiful and Bakery Hill, as being the first place where the Australian ensign was first hoisted, will be recorded in the deathless and indelible pages of history.’ 4

  And beautiful the wool and cotton flag indeed is, displaying as its primary feature a white cross upon a dark blue background, upon which four stars represent the Southern Cross constellation. ‘No device or arms, but all exceedingly chaste and natural.’5

  Thomas Pierson is amo
ng those impressed by the sight, and would later make a drawing of the flag in his diary, beneath the inscription:

  I should have stated that the diggers hoisted at the meetings their flag whitch they called the flag of the southern Hemisphere, I will try to sketch it - it was made of silk + quite neat.6

  And indeed it is. There it gracefully flies and acts as a beacon for the next three hours or so as, in their thousands, the diggers start to emerge from their holes, humpies, huts and tents, and stream towards it for the meeting due to start at 2 pm.

  In the meantime, however, all is not happy on the goldfields. A meeting of the committee of the Ballarat Reform League at the Star Hotel breaks up in near carnage as the passions between those who believe in ‘moral force’ - continuing with petitions and resolutions - an d those who believe in ‘physical force’ - taking up arms against the British brutes who so goad them - becomes ever more inflamed. The leader of the moral-force men is John Basson Humffray, and he is doing precisely what he does best, making a speech, when one of the physical-force men pulls out a gun and points it at his head. Yes, the gun is quickly wrestled away from the aggressor by another committee member, but it is as good an indication as any of just how fiery the feeling is now as the schism in the Ballarat Reform League grows. In any case, while the meeting finishes in an uproar, there is little time to reflect on it - the big meeting is about to begin.

  In the searing sunshine - the afternoon is now hotter even than the morning - they come in force, some 12,000 diggers strong, in front of the newly constructed podium and wait for their leaders to speak. It is the biggest meeting yet held on these goldfields, which now boast a total population of some 32,000.