Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution

by Peter Fitzsimons

  In other places, higher up, small ‘portholes’ have also been left in the barricades for the same purpose, so that defenders can fire on attackers while either staying relatively safe or positioning themselves over the top of the barricade. Against that, a defensive weakness of the Stockade is that, because it is built on a slope, there is higher ground overlooking it, from which a fair portion of those inside would be exposed.

  In this matter Vern proves himself useful, and with his tremendous sword giving him an appropriately martial air, issues quite expert directions as to how the whole thing should be constructed most quickly and efficiently, giving the Stockade maximum defensive advantage.13 In the words of digger John Lynch, who has just been elected a captain himself, ‘[Vern’s] military learning comprehended the whole system of warfare, every mode of attack and defence. He could dilate on them for hours, and with eclectic nicety describe their strong and weak points. But fortification was his strong point ….’14

  True, with only four hours put to its construction, the Eureka Stockade is a long way from being an impregnable fortress, but it will provide some relief from both flying bullets and galloping horsemen if the time comes and, whatever else, it gives the diggers a recognised gathering point.

  Keeping the men together is clearly going to be important - their unity is their strength. If they are separated from each other, the Joes could easily pick them off one by one. And yet, as Lalor makes clear to his men, the place is more like their secure barracks than a sure citadel. They need to be ready to move at a moment’s notice, to attack their foes from outside, should the need arise.

  They have scouts placed throughout the diggings, looking out for the traps and troopers, and Lalor and his men intend to be ready to race wherever they might be needed most urgently. And hopefully, they might soon be receiving reinforcements from other diggings …

  Mid-afternoon, Thursday, 30 November 1854, the Creswick Creek diggers rally …

  In full cry, Thomas Kennedy is an impassioned and impressive speaker, and rarely has he been in fuller cry than now.15 An hour before the atrocities of the morning in Ballarat, he had, in the company of George Black, commenced to race the 11 miles to Creswick on horseback and is now nearing the climax of his speech. In something between a howl and a harangue, he is making clear to the 2000 Creswick diggers that their brothers on the Eureka need them - their muscle and might - and the Creswickians must quickly march to Ballarat before the Redcoats attack. Then a messenger from Eureka suddenly appears, bearing a letter written by Samuel Irwin of the Geelong Advertiser, addressed to George Black and Tom Kennedy or ‘any MAN on Creswick‘.16

  It is passed to George Black, who is on the podium with Kennedy, and so Black now steps forward to read it. The letter communicates the shocking license-hunt of the morning with the subsequent arrests, the resultant meeting on Bakery Hill and that an attack really is imminent. They need help now. Not tomorrow morning, not the next day, not when the Creswick men can manage to get away. NOW! A similar message has been sent to Bendigo, where Henry Holyoake is attempting the same task as Thomas Kennedy.

  Here at Creswick, the letter provides the perfect fuel for Kennedy, who once again soars to the heights of oratory, inspiring, imploring, insisting that all brave men immediately start the march to Ballarat. If they will but just come, they will find plenty of space for them - plenty of food, arms and ammunition - and all they must do is get themselves there, NOW.

  To arms, brothers! The diggers of Creswick begin to prepare for the journey this very evening! And they will also need everything they can get from the local storekeepers in terms of guns and ammunition.

  While Kennedy stays behind to rally them, George Black gallops back to the Stockade.

  Late Thursday afternoon, 30 November 1854, drills at the Stockade

  For the rest of the day the various companies go through a variety of drills. Some of the squads have pikes, others rifles.

  Here, now, one old miner with military experience draws himself up and says …

  ‘Shoulder … poles!’ (The men bring their poles up to their shoulders)

  ‘Order … poles!’ (They bring their poles back down to their sides)

  ‘Ground arms.’ (They place their poles on the ground before them)

  ‘Stand at ease.’ (They slump back to something approaching their normal form)

  ‘Pick up pole …’

  ‘Shoulder pole …’

  ‘Right face …’

  ‘Quick march …’

  ‘Right countermarch …’17

  And so it goes as they march back and forth for over two hours as the sun beats down, and they go from being totally shambolic to something a little less than shambolic. At this point Lieutenant Michael Hanrahan, the fiery Irishman,18 who is Patrick Curtain’s second-in-command, has his men line up in ranks three deep in front of him and orders them to, ‘Prepare to receive cavalry!’19

  To what? ‘Prepare to receive cavalry!’20

  This, it turns out, means preparing themselves to face men charging at them on horseback, and Hanrahan gives it to them straight. They must charge at the horses with their weapons first and foremost. ‘Poke your pike into the guts of the horse, and draw it out from under their tail …’21

  All up, there is general enthusiasm for what they are embarked on, but none appears more passionate for the cause than the digger who charges back and forth, shouting wildly in a manner that shows he is badly drunken.

  ‘We’ll fight!’ roars he. ‘We’ll take them on! We’ll fight for our rights and liberties and we’ll burn the Government Camp so it blazes like the Eureka Hotel!’22

  Perhaps it amuses some diggers, but certainly not all. Of course Vandemonians are known to shout and drink and carry on like that, but, as far anyone knows, Henry Goodenough - a rather pompous Englishman with mutton-chop whiskers - has never even been to Van Diemen’s Land, so it doesn’t quite fit.

  For his part, Carboni puts up with it for as long as he can - which is not very long at all - and then loses his temper. Framing his right foot to an all-but-exact replica of the country he is proud to hail from, he skips forward, swings and plants one of his precious new watertight boots right in Goodenough’s ample posterior.

  Basta! BASTA! Enough. Enough. Enough.

  For all that, Carboni must get back to drilling his own company, though he is not impressed with what he has seen thus far, all this ‘marching, counter-marching, orders given by everybody, attended to by nobody’.23

  Another who is highly uncomfortable with the whole scene is John Basson Humffray. Throughout he has been a man for moral force, for constitutional agitation, for the rule of law … and now that the physical-force men have taken over, now that it really looks as if there will be serious violence, he knows firmly that he wants no part of it.

  When the drilling started a little earlier, one man approached the moral Chartist and threatened him: ‘[If you do] not form a company, and join the diggers, I will despatch you’.24 Again, the situation was defused by others intervening, but there had been no relief. Only a short time after that, a red-faced, pepperbox-revolver-wielding, cussing Yankee similarly threatened to take his life.

  ‘I am unarmed,’ Humffray replied with dignity. ‘If you choose to be a murderer, fire away.’25 And with that, he walks away from the affray and reaches his tent unharmed.

  Back inside the Stockade the captains decide that that is enough drilling for one day.

  As the sun begins to fall towards the western horizon on this last day of November, Carboni must hurry off to attend a hastily convened meeting of all the captains of the divisions with Lalor.

  Thursday, 30 November 1854, late afternoon, the Government Camp receives, and writes, troubling reports

  It has been a long, troubling day. But at least the troopers have managed to make those seven arrests. Commissioner Rede is just in the process of forming up a report to his superiors, addressed to Colonial Secretary John Foster with a penmanship as thin a
nd elegant as his hand - Our object was gained; we maintained the law …26 - when he is interrupted by a rather breathless spy from the diggings who has news that cannot wait. This spy, who seems to be slurring his words a little as if he might be drunk, reports that the Government Camp will come under attack at four o’clock the following morning! The diggers will be armed and determined to release the prisoners.

  In light of this news, the Commissioner is not panicked, feeling that the authorities will have the means of defending themselves, but he does finish his report with a rather more urgent tone: ‘We shall be on the alert. The absolute necessity of putting down all meetings, public and private, I think must now be apparent for the abolition of the license-fee is merely a watchword. The whole affair is a strong democratic agitation by an armed mob. If the Government will hold this and the other goldfields it must at once crush this movement, and I would advise again that this gold field be put under Martial Law, and artillery and a strong force sent up to enforce it. I would also suggest a proclamation from His Excellency that it is his determination to stop it. I must also earnestly request some instruction for my further guidance. I have &c. (Signed) Robt. Rede. Resdt. Commissioner.’27

  Captain Pasley, meanwhile, is dashing off his own quick report to the Colonial Secretary, to ensure the government is fully informed: ‘From what I have seen today, I am convinced more than ever that very strong measures are necessary on this Gold Field, and that sedition must be put down by force. I feel sure that conciliatory measures will only do harm at such a late period in the disturbances, and that the disaffected must be coerced. Although I have no doubt of our holding the camp against any force that the diggers can bring into the field, I think it is very desirable that we should be reinforced by the whole disposable troops in Melbourne, and by Artillery.’28

  A rider is soon dispatched to Melbourne bearing both of their communiques, the hooves of his galloping horse throwing up little spurts of dust behind.

  Early evening, Thursday, 30 November 1854, a meeting of minds inside the Stockade

  After the excitement of the monster meeting and the drilling and the marching, relative quiet has once again descended on the diggings as the men make their way back to their tents and hovels to either throw together some tucker for themselves or - if they are so blessed - have their missus do the same. (On the menu tonight, the same thing as every night - chops, sausages, damper and ‘black murphies’, otherwise known as potatoes, all of it washed down with billy tea.)

  Not all of them are so engaged.

  Within the confines of the canvas-walled general store of a just-married young couple, Martin29 and Anne Diamond, Peter Lalor has convened a meeting of all the captains of the divisions formed that afternoon. Joining them are those influential leaders of the Ballarat Reform League who believe the time has come for physical force to be ranged against the Ballarat authorities. Effectively the BRL, such as it was originally constituted, is now no more - in Hotham’s later estimation, this day has marked the time ‘the professional agitator gave place to the man of physical force’.30

  The meeting is held in a room only half again as big as an eight-by-eight-foot claim, meaning the dozen men are sitting around a small table packed shoulder to shoulder - fitting for the tight, tense atmosphere. It is one thing to have gathered all the diggers together, to have made fine speeches, to have saluted their new flag, and to have given their solemn oath of allegiance to each other and that flag. But now that the sheer excitement and exultation has passed, these men are left with the serious business of actually leading this mass of men in an armed rebellion against a serious force of troopers and soldiers. Against the possibility that they might be burst in upon by some of the spies they feel sure are amongst them, the experienced Raffaello Carboni places on the table some black bottles of rum and gives everyone a tumbler, so that it might look as if they are doing no more than having a nobbler or two together.

  And then to business. There is Lalor at the head of the table, his eyes glittering and intense, his expression resolute. For the first time he understands the passions that so gripped his brother Fintan all those years ago when he rose to the fore of the Free Ireland movement.

  There is, of course, Raffaello Carboni, like a frenetic cat, bursting with energy and only just managing to sit still. There is the grave-looking Irishman Timothy Hayes. As he has a wife and children, the stakes for him are higher than most. In good conscience he cannot be anywhere but here in the group that is leading the movement, while still not being comfortable at the increasingly militant turn it is taking. George Black feels much the same. For his part, however, John Manning has no such reservations, and he doesn’t mind saying so.

  Also present is the exceedingly slight and short 23-year-old, Edward Thonen, the Jewish man from ‘Prussia’, which is situated somewhere between Prague and Russia, as far as the other diggers can work out. He has always stood out on the goldfields for the ‘lemonade’ he sells to thirsty miners and his shrewd chess playing, and now stands out for the intensity of his gaze. All blazing eyes burning through a bushy beard and whiskers, he exudes determination to see this thing through, komme was wolle - come what may. Thonen is from the town in Germany where Karl Marx’s great compadre Friedrich Engels spent a great deal of time - Elberfeld - and was involved in the very uprising that Engels had participated in, which caused Thonen to effectively be expelled from Prussia.

  Carboni describes him, ever-colourfully, as, ‘Shrewd, yet honest; benevolent, but scorning the knave; of deep thought, though prompt in action; Thonen possessed the head belonging to that cast of men whose word is their bond.’31

  The affection that Carboni has for Thonen, as a matter of fact, is only matched by the extreme dislike he has for Thonen’s rough compatriot, Friedrich Vern, who is also at the meeting and clearly itching to ‘meet zer Tyrann mit der Pistole in der Handt!’ 32

  The oldest among them, at 40, is the Irishman Patrick Curtain, who, like Timothy Hayes and Tom Kennedy, is a family man and father of four. That afternoon, Curtain was impressive in the way he handled his newly formed pikemen division and is clearly a man of some military experience.

  It is time to get to grips. As a result of a previous quick meeting in Carboni’s tent, John Manning now hands over to Lalor a proposed motion - seconded by Carboni - to properly get the meeting underway, calling on Peter Lalor to be formally elevated to the position of ‘Commander-in-Chief, by the majority of votes’.33 (No, they do not live in a democracy in Victoria, as none of them has the right to vote for those in the Legislative Council, but there is, by God, a democracy in the Stockade.)

  Now, being careful about such things - after the bitter experience of his family in Ireland - Lalor is careful to tear up the piece of paper after reading the motion for fear that it will fall into the wrong hands. Not that he is remotely nervous or lacking in confidence.

  It is at this point that Lalor rises and proceeds to choose his words carefully.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he begins in his rich Irish brogue, ‘I find myself in the responsible position I now occupy, for this reason. The diggers, outraged at the unaccountable conduct of the Camp officials in such a wicked license-hunt at the point of the bayonet, as the one of this morning, took it as an insult to their manhood, and a challenge to the determination come to at the monster meeting of yesterday. The diggers rushed to their tents for arms, and crowded on Bakery Hill. They wanted a leader. No-one came forward, and confusion was the consequence. I mounted the stump, where you saw me, and called on the people to “fall in” into divisions, according to the fire-arms they had got, and to choose their own captains out of the best men they had among themselves. My call was answered with unanimous acclamation, and complied to with willing obedience. The result is that I have been able to bring about that order, without which it would be folly to face the pending struggle like men.

  ‘I make no pretensions to military knowledge. I have not the presumption to assume the chief command, no more than an
y other man who means well in the cause of the diggers. I shall be glad to see the best among us take the lead.

  ‘In fact, gentlemen, I expected someone who is really well known,’ he says, referring to the notably absent John Basson Humffray, ‘to come forward and direct our movement! However, if you appoint me your commander-in-chief, I shall not shrink; I mean to do my duty as a man. I tell you, gentlemen, if once I pledge my hand to the diggers, I will neither defile it with treachery, nor render it contemptible by cowardice.’34

  It is an impressive speech, with John Lynch recording, ‘The delivery, pregnant with manly sentiment, and modest withal, depicts the man - for sincerity and courage, worthy of a place in the rank of heroes.’35

  Still, one man does not obviously agree.

  For his part, Friedrich Vern also feels qualified to lead and steps up to actively campaign for the position. In an accent so thick it’s like wading through springtime mud on the diggings, Vern unburdens himself of every ounce of military knowledge he has in him. At least that is what those at the meeting suppose he is talking about, through the few bits and pieces of phrases the listeners can decipher.

  There is no doubt Vern really is a man with military nous and has overseen the efficient construction of the Stockade with that keen eye. He writes clear, concise instructions in the military manner that are well thought out and easy to follow, the lack of grammatical English notwithstanding. He is totally committed to the diggers’ cause and generous - all remember his PS100 contribution to get the legal defence campaign started for the three diggers accused of burning down the Eureka Hotel. And yet, having a foreigner as their formal leader would make it very difficult to get many of the Irish and British diggers to follow them, just on principle.

  One thing the meeting can make out, however, is that he claims to have a rifle brigade of 500 German diggers ready to roll at his command, a welcome piece of news, if any of them could bring themselves to believe it. Where is this mysterious brigade? Certainly there are quite a few Germans among the diggers - but hardly 500 of them.