Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution

by Peter Fitzsimons

  Ah, the fun of it. The sergeant of the detachment jeers, ‘I think we roused ‘em up early enough this morning. Joe’s dead now.”97

  And yet this is not merely a trail of triumph, for on one dray, behind the victorious soldiers, come their own dead. Privates Michael Roney and Denis Brien of the 40th Regiment, the latter of whom was killed shortly after the former, are far more respectfully laid out in their bloodied uniforms with their eyes closed and arms crossed in the manner of readiness for Christian burial. It is a shocking sight, ‘the dead soldiers stretched stiff and silent in carts, their showy uniforms a mockery now’.98

  In another dray close behind are the 13 men classified as ‘dangerously wounded’, including Captain Henry Wise, whose blue military trousers are drenched to the bottom of his boots with his own blood. (And, not that it matters, but he is also missing his watch, as it was stolen by one of the soldiers who carried him away.) They must get him back to the Camp quickly to try to save his life and the lives of at least two others thought to be mortally wounded - but they’ll do their best.

  For one of the prisoners being marched, however, it is already too late. He stumbles out of the line, faint from blood loss. John Lynch and another man are ordered to assist him and, though they do their best, ‘as he was fast dying we had to lay him down’.99

  Even now, however, as this catastrophic cavalcade heads back down to the gully before crossing Yarrowee Creek and climbing to the Government Camp, the atrocities do not cease. When a few prisoners try to make a break for it, they are furiously pursued just at a time when an anonymous Welsh digger - who has had no involvement with either the battle or the Stockade in general - has come on the scene. He just happens to be talking to the father of young Barnard Welch, Benjamin Welch, sitting on a hill just below the late Eureka Hotel discussing the whole affair, when the two of them spy some of the prisoners making a run for it do.

  ‘Oh, here’s a lark,’ says the fellow upon spying the prisoners running down the opposite hill by the Catholic Chapel, ‘I will go and see what is the matter.’

  ‘Do not run,’ warns Mr Welch. ‘If you run you may be mistaken for one of them.’100

  But the Welsh digger does not listen and immediately takes off on this bit of fun when to his horror he sees two mounted troopers, one apparently a sergeant, galloping towards him with intent. ‘Stop!’ the sergeant calls out. Panicking, the Welshman about-faces and quickly squeezes under the flap of a nearby tent. ‘Surrender!’ orders the trooper in pursuit.

  ‘No,’ replies the digger. ‘I’m going home. I had nothing to do with the fight. I’ve just come from my work.’101

  Once more, the trooper calls on him to surrender. Once more, the terrified Welshman refuses.

  ‘Fire!’ the sergeant shouts at a distance. The trooper mechanically dismounts, removes his pistol from its holster, points its muzzle at the digger’s chest and pulls the trigger. When the troopers have left, Mr Welch rushes to the fallen man where he lies, and finds him ‘totally dead’. The bullet appears to have pierced his heart and passed clean out the other side.

  It is with a quivering hand that he removes the poor fellow’s wallet from his pocket and opens it. Within, he finds a fully paid up, fully registered license from which he learns this poor s oul’s name.

  Llewellyn Rowlands.

  Another good man, gone to God.

  And for what?

  As the tragic train of drays squeaks and scrapes into the Government Camp, bearing its catastrophic cargo, those untouched by the morning’s battle lust gaze upon the bodies with horror.

  ‘The dead rebels,’ records Commissioner Rede’s Chief Clerk, Samuel Huyghue, ‘presented an example of humanity in its worst guise, their faces ghastly and passion-distorted and their eyes staring with stony fixedness, and in some instances, with their arms upraised, and fingers bent as though grasping a weapon in the death struggle.’102

  As the prisoners are crammed into the log lockup, chaos reigns, a chaos that worsens when shortly afterwards another, larger, body of prisoners arrives under guard. As they are all crammed together the authorities quickly lose track of who had been arrested under arms and who had simply been picked up in the general area. In the miserable madness of it all, there is one question that all those under guard want answered.

  What, pray God, is going to happen now? Are they really going to be hanged?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  AFTER THE TEMPEST

  But the light of the morning was deadened an’ smoke drifted far o’er the town.

  An’ the clay o’ Eureka was reddened ere the flag o’ the diggers came down.1

  Henry Lawson, The Fight at Eureka Stockade, 1890

  Seven o’clock, Sunday morning, 3 December 1854, ‘The tumult and the shouting dies / the captains and the kings depart’

  With the vast bulk of the Redcoats and police gone, those who had secreted Peter Lalor beneath the slabs decide to risk returning to see if he is still alive. There is so much blood apparent on the earth beside those slabs that the first man there - Lalor’s former shipmate and now fellow digger and rebel, James Ashburner - fears the worst. And yet, when he whispers to Lalor that most of the Redcoats have headed back to the Camp, a whispered response comes back. In a moaning muttering, Lalor asks him to go get Father Smyth.

  Ashburner is outside the Stockade in the company of Timothy Hayes, tending to some of the wounded when he finds the priest, and the three men quickly make their way back towards where Lalor lies. They are spotted by someone in the crowd, who immediately calls out to Police Sub-Inspector Thomas Langley.

  ‘There goes Hayes. He is one of the ringleaders,’ the informant blabbers. ‘He deserves more than those poor fellows.’2 Moving quickly, Langley immediately claims the prize arrest of the Irishman Hayes, together with Ashburner. But there is a problem once the trooper takes Hayes in hand. Though shocked - he had not been in the Stockade at the time of the battle and had taken no part in the clash - Hayes is by nature a gentle man and simply does not have it in him to lash out verbally or physically. This, however, is not the case with his wife, the worthy Anastasia, who had a part in sewing the flag that has been so worthily fought for.

  Sub-Inspector Langley is just leading the manacled Hayes and Ashburner away to join the line of prisoners when the red-headed Anastasia, her blue eyes flashing with anger, rushes up from where she has been tending some wounded diggers. After a withering look at her husband, she approaches Lieutenant Richards, Adjutant Commander of the 40th, as he marches with the wounded and prisoners back to Government Camp. Through clenched teeth, she says, ‘If I had been a man, I would not have allowed myself to be taken by the likes of you.’3

  One look in her eyes and Lieutenant Richards does not doubt it. More pointedly, she follows up directly to the English officer: ‘Why didn’t you attack the Stockade yesterday, when we were prepared to receive you?’4 It is less a question than a statement of real regret. She clearly would have loved to have seen the soldiers take on the diggers when the latter had been present in force and capable of delivering far greater firepower to their rebellion.

  And she is not the only one disappointed in her husband. After all that has happened, Mrs Shanahan found her husband hiding in the small outhouse.

  With only his grey horse for company, Father Smyth heads off to the pile of slabs, where, after establishing that Lalor is still alive, he furiously waves his arms to signal to some passing men that he needs help. One of the men who answers the call is still in his nightshirt, under-drawers and slippers. A group of them have all just assembled before the slabs when a stray trooper, coming from parts unknown, thunders up on horseback and, ignoring the Father while all the others quickly shrink away, aggressively addresses himself to the half-dressed man.

  ‘Oh!’ he roars, his sword raised above his head, as if ready to smite him dead. ‘You bloody bastard, you was one of them. Come along with me, and if you look back I will cut you down.’5

  With no choice but to
follow the tragic line of prisoners, off the unfortunate man goes in his nightclothes, careful not to look back, the trooper close behind.

  At last, at last, the mournful bugle calls the last of the police and troopers away from the Stockade. Only then do the other diggers rejoin Father Smyth before the pile of slabs. It is now judged safe and they can even speak openly to the still-buried Lalor, who now weakly whispers back up to them, ‘For God’s sake, boys, go and leave me.’6

  A Scottish digger by the name of Robert Lorimer, however, will not hear of it. He talks urgently but quietly to Lalor, his words tumbling over each other like a small waterfall. ‘If you wish to escape, now is your time. The soldiers are gone, and the troopers have cleared away also.’7 Not waiting for a reply this time, Lorimer urges, ‘Down with the pile of slabs, boys,’8 and many willing hands set to.

  Lifting the slabs from his hiding place, they soon have the exceedingly pale and groaning Lalor in the open air, where the severity of his wounds are reflected in his ashen face. His left arm is still well-attached to his shoulder, but he has no control of it. Now that he is standing, the blood comes from the wound in spurts.

  Lorimer had completed some medical studies at Edinburgh University before coming to Australia, and he now takes Lalor’s own coloured neckerchief and ties it tightly over the worst of his wounds, attempting to stem the continuing blood loss.

  Then, after getting Lalor onto Father Smyth’s horse, they put him in the charge of a trustworthy digger by the name of Billy Smythe, who rides beside him and practically holds him on the saddle. The two head off for Warrenheip, and they arrive not long after Independent California Rangers’ Revolver Brigade Commander James McGill has left for Melbourne in a Cobb coach. The 21-year-old is disguised in women’s clothes provided by - who else? - Sarah Hanmer of the Adelphi Theatre. (She did such a good job that a story would circulate afterwards that a male passenger on the coach proposed to McGill.)

  Another who manages to get away, in his case to Geelong, is James Esmond. He was in the thick of the action throughout and fought with the best of them as captain of one of the companies. Once resistance ceased, he was able to make his way out of the Stockade unmolested. The fact that he is far and away Victoria’s best known and most prestigious goldminer - credited and rewarded by the government as one of the discoverers of gold in the state - cannot have hurt him in this endeavour. Should it be known that a man of Esmond’s pedigree was in the thick of the fight against government forces, it would be an embarrassment to both that government and those forces.

  Many of the wounded diggers who have escaped being marched off to the lockup - it is considered they will likely die anyway - are being tended by Doctor Carr and his helpers in the nearby London Hotel, where the Englishman’s surgical skills have never been on such call as now. Many of the bayonet gashes are not mere flesh wounds or slashes to the skin; they have penetrated deep into vital organs. There is little that can be done, bar make the injured as comfortable as possible as their life ebbs.

  In the bar, just after 8.30 am, Raffaello Carboni is engaged in bandaging the wounds of a brave American digger, a man who stood his ground throughout the entire battle despite taking six wounds - all on the front of his body - and had only finally fallen when he fainted through loss of blood. For such a man, there is not a lot that a person as limited in medical experience as Carboni can do beyond cleaning and dressing those wounds the best he can and offering soothing words.

  Yet, just as he is assisting in the dressing of the man’s thigh, he looks up to see a digger he never liked, Henry Goodenough, enter the salon with wild eyes and gasping breath, holding a cocked pistol. The same fellow who was always exhorting them to attack the Camp, without ever wanting to get involved himself. Che cosa? What on earth is going on? Does Goodenough think the battle continues? And why is he poking the muzzle of the pistol right in Carboni’s face?

  ‘I want you!’ he roars at the Italian.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘None of your damned nonsense, or I will shoot you down like a rat.’

  ‘My good fellow, don’t you see? I am assisting Dr Carr to dress the wounds of my friends!’9

  Goodenough has no interest in any explanation that Carboni has to offer, and it is only now that the Italian understands. Far from being a rebel, the Englishman reveals he has been working for the troopers all along. Goodenough is a traitor, in the pay of those who have visited this terrible injustice upon them and then slaughtered them for daring to protest. Carboni is speechless with rage, but he’s also surprised that Dr Carr does not speak up for him, does not step forward and demand that trooper Goodenough unhand the Italian immediately. Despite Carboni now begging him to intervene, Dr Carr speaks not a word and stands silently as the fiery Italian is roughly dragged outside and manacled to a dozen other straggling rebels who have also been taken prisoner inside the Stockade and are in all states of exhaustion, trauma and injury. Bound to each other, some weeping, they are marched to the Camp, where, at this very time, there is a sudden outcry …

  Him! That’s HIM!

  Seeing a black man among the prisoners - none other than John Joseph - a soldier is convinced that he is the one who shot the now grievously wounded Captain Wise. The man is quite prepared to shoot Joseph on the spot, and this is exactly what would have occurred, ‘had it not been for the officers’10 who restrain the soldier. It has been one thing for summary executions to take place in and around the Stockade, but it is quite another here.

  At the Star Hotel, the worthy Captain Ross of Canada, the bridegroom of the Eureka flag, is even now rattling out his last agonising breaths. He was carried there as soon as the battle was over and lain on a sofa, but though two doctors work feverishly, his wounds are simply too grave.

  As desperate as the situation is, the licensee, William McCrae, is so panicked by having a rebel on his premises that he sends out a Camp runner to inform them of the situation. It is not long before a trooper arrives, pistol loaded. After telling McCrae that his license would not be renewed for harbouring a rebel, he searches the hotel and finds Ross, dead on the sofa in a pool of his own blood.

  Of course, it is not just the diggers that misfortune and tragedy have descended upon. Within the confines of the Camp’s rough hospital, the medical staff are doing what they can for Captain Wise and the other wounded soldiers, but it is little enough.

  The wounds to Wise’s legs are deep, he has lost a lot of blood, and he is now breathing with some difficulty on a cot. It is touch and go whether he will survive - only amputation might save him. Around and about, many of the other soldiers who have been seriously wounded are also having those wounds and slashes attended to. The lucky ones only have bits of lead dug out of their bodies. In both cases, the blood flows freely and the scene is terribly grisly and sad. Outside the hospital, however, among the soldiers in the Camp courtyard, the mood is entirely different.

  Upon the smoke and dust of the dispersing battle, there is a human dynamic that sees the misery of the shattered and scattered rebels more than matched by the joy of the victors coming together to toast each other three times over and once more for luck.

  The soldiers, some of them still smeared with blood, are laughing, chiacking and joyfully jostling each other as they dip their pannikins into a bucket full of brandy and gulp it down deeply. Rodomontade abounds: did you see the corporal and how his bayonet went right through that rebel?

  More laughter, more drinking and more jeering at the swell of prisoners who continue to dribble in.

  These last now include the dirty dozen with the dazed Raffaello Carboni, who is struggling to grasp what is happening and how, despite not even having been inside the Stockade when the attack came, he is under arrest. In short order he joins over 100 prisoners in the poisonously overcrowded log gaol.

  Two hours later, police inspector Henry Foster commands all the prisoners to strip down to their bare shirts and line up so that their details can be taken.

  One by on
e they step forward.

  ‘Timothy Hayes.’

  ‘John Joseph.’

  ‘William Atherden.’

  ‘John Manning.’

  ‘Raffaello Carboni.’

  Raffy Carbi-what? asks the trooper, not a little confused at such a bizarre and entirely unpatriotic name.

  He finally masters it, however, and writes down ‘Charles Raffaello’. In order to help him spell it, the Italian pulls out the small bag he has with him, which contains both his mining license and some of the gold he has gathered over previous days. Mr Foster takes the bag while the trooper takes the license, whereupon the next lot of prisoners arrives and he is again called outside the room. At this point Carboni is ordered to strip, when a trooper suddenly steps up and identifies Carboni as the very man he has seen whipping up the miners at the monster meeting, making him guilty of sedition.

  ‘It was easy to see,’ Lynch would record, ‘that the enmity of the police was particularly directed against a few, whom they blamed for instigating the others to insurrection. Hayes, Raffaello … Manning (non-combatants) were particularly disliked. So was a coloured gentleman, who was arrested in the thick of the fight, and who bore himself throughout the whole ordeal with a degree of dignity.’11

  In the confusion of it all, Carboni tries to keep his waistcoat with him, since it contains both money and papers. This request is not only refused but his clothes are now physically torn from him. Carboni is then kicked to the ground, knocked out and thrown - clothed only in his undershirt - into a cell with the other moaning men who used to be proud diggers but are now rather pathetic prisoners.

  True, those cells had only been intended to cope with a bare handful of prisoners, but that is just too bad. Just like bellowing cattle, the rest of the prisoners are herded, poked and prodded into the wooden enclosure, each one forced to press up hard against the other, with not even room enough to change their mind.