Eureka Stockade Remembered: the 152nd anniversary : Melbourne Indymedia

A number of events occurred to mark the anniversary including a Diggers march from Bakery Hill to the Eureka Monument; a Sunday Dawn Lantern walk; a 4am vigil on Dec 3 at the monument; a dawn oration; a march to Bakery Hill and the Cemetary including presentation of the Eureka Australia Day medals; and a Eureka Day luncheon.

=== Diggers March ===

Saturday was marked by the Diggers march from Bakery Hill to Eureka Park. About 30 people participated in this event. Professor John Molony addressed the crowd at the Eureka monument. "The price of freedom is our own involvement in defending it" he said to the crowd.

Molony exhorted the crowd that the Southern Cross flag, held in the Ballarat Gallery of Fine Art, should be brought back to where the diggers fought under it. He also took aim at the watering down of the diggers tradition "I understand that 5 million dollars has been put up for an extension of what I call the stockade. Look how they are deliberately eliminating the word 'stockade'. It is being eliminated constantly. That, over there is called the Eureka Centre, as if it was some kind of ([words unclear]) thing. This is the Eureka stockade, call it that! Call it if you like, the Eureka Stockade Centre, but don't let the word stockade be dropped out, because that is the diggers word for it. Stick to it."

"Shame, shame" roared the crowd in response.

"Live Australian democracy." said Professor Molony "Democracy is not some kind of abstraction. It is not something defined and written in a constitution. Something that is there in a parliament or where ever else....It is here in our own being." Molony said that people needed to live democracy day by day and be prepared to stand up for our own rights and the rights of the poor.

During the afternoon, the Eureka Stockade Memorial Association (ESMA) provided a sausage sizzle and groups of people picniced on the lawns of Eureka Park outside Eureka Hall.

After Professor Molony's address, Graeme Dunstan, the banner and lantern maker, took down one lot of banners and put up another.

=== December 3rd Eureka Vigil ===

The attack on the Stockade happened on Sunday 3 December, 1854. At 4am people started to gather beside the monument in a vigil to remember what inspired the people at Eureka in their rebellion, and how it continues to inspire those gathered, some 25 people.

Dr Joseph Toscano started with a partial and brief history of the Eureka rebellion and the principles it was based upon. Principles expressed in the Eureka Oath: Direct Democracy, Direct Action, Solidarity and Internationalism.

According to Toscano the Ballarat Council "understand the Eureka is interesting and a tourist event but they don't really like the fact it was a rebellion. And you will find that not much is actually done in the city to promote Eureka."

"In many ways Eureka is much more important than ANZAC Day will ever be. Because ANZAC day was a struggle on foreign soil for god, king and country. Where people were sacrificed on the shores of Gallipoli in their thousands, not for their self interest but the interests of ruling classes. This [Eureka] is where people themselves came together to improve their lives." said Toscano.

"If you think of the Eureka oath it encapsulates everything these men and women stood for." explained Joe as he described the massacre, with women coming forth onto the battlefield at dawn to assist the injured and dying, and to spirit away the survivors into hiding.

"We swear by the Southern Cross, to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties", the oath taken at Bakery Hill on 28 November 1854 was recited allowed by all present.

Each person in turn then explained why they had come and the significance of Eureka to their lives.

Near the end of the round, the vigil was joined by more people arriving including the Dawn Lantern Walk - 5 people this year.

=== Eureka Sunday Dawn Oration ===

At 6am The Eureka Stockade Memorial Association started another sausage sizzle and welcomed everybody to the Eureka Sunday Dawn Oration.

Father Adrian McInerny, arriving in the nick of time, read a blessing:
"God of all Creation, god of the rising sun. We thank you for this morning and we ask for your blessing upon us and upon our gathering. We ask that in our gathering we remember those who went before us; those who honoured this site with their blood; those who committed themselves to freedom and justice in our land. We ask that as we remember them, we commit ourselves to the same values so that those who live here may live in freedom. We ask this, oh God, through Christ our Lord, Ahmen!"

The Dawn oration was presented by historian, Dr Tony Pagliaro from La Trobe University, who has done the definitive research on Eureka Rebellion lieutenant, Raffaello Carboni.

In his oration he spoke of The Eureka Stockade being a turning point in the history of Victoria and of Australia "It is the site of the Eureka Rebellion that enhances [Ballarat's] prestige. The site where a number of people from differing nations drew a line in the sand, as it were, to indicate that authorities had exceeded what was legitimate in the exercise of power." he said.

"But it is clear to us now that Eureka was a turning point for Australia. It was the point at which citizens had been pushed to the end of their tether. It marks the point at which ruthless and arbitrary imposition of law by an autocratic Governor backed by a blind bureacracy sowed the seeds for its own demise."

"We are indeed fortunate that Raeffello Carboni, one of the miners involved in the proceedings prior to the military attack and tried for his involvement saw the significance and wrote that unique inside story fired with passion and indignation which is The Eureka Stockade. Passion to tell the truth, indignation to injustices perpetrated, and a graphic representation of that scene. He and the other miners tried for treason were freed by that one democratic feature they had a right to - trial by jury." he said.

"Democracy requires continous toil. The betrayal of principles can always recurr. But the defence of Eureka at Ballarat marks for our country the turning point where representations as individuals not as property owners starts to gain recognition as proper and legitimate. The moment which heralds in the democratic political working day. Truly a new dawn. Thank you." finished Tony Pagliaro.

=== Eureka Australia Day Medals ===

At 10am people gathered outside the Eureka Hall for a march down to Bakery Hill for a presentation of the Eureka Australia Day Medals.

"The Eureka Australia Day medal is given to people to honour their commitment to the sentiments which are expressed in the Eureka Oath." explained Joe Toscano. "This year of the five people awarded medals, one recently died and three are over eighty. There is one youngster who has actually turned up to receive their medal."

The first award was given posthumusly to Wendy Lowenstein, who died a few weeks previously. Anne and Bill Pickering knew Wendy personally and accepted the medal on her behalf. Other recipients include: Margaret McDonald, a teacher by trade; Gerry Harrant, a tireless activist and broadcasting; Pauline Mitchell, involved in the disarmament and nuclear free movement in Victoria for many years. The last person given an award this year is Kevin Bracken, Victorian Secretary of the MUA, for inceasing the trade union movements interaction with the community.

After the awards, the Eureka oath was spoken by the youngest member of the crowd and repeated by everyone present.

The march then continued through the streets of Ballarat to the Old Ballarat Cemetery. Respects were paid to the Diggers and Soldiers memorials, and one could read the inscriptions and infer how the rebellion has been dismissed and derided by the authorities as misdirected and misguided, and continues to do so.

One only needs to look at the Ballarat Town Hall where, even on Eureka day 3 December, the Australian flag with the union jack in the corner, takes precedence over the Southern Cross Eureka Flag.

Joe Toscano explaining the meaning of Eureka at the 4am Dawn vigil

The Dawn oration was presented by historian, Dr Tony Pagliaro from La Trobe University, who has done the definitive research on Eureka Rebellion lieutenant, Raffaello Carboni.

Joe Toscano explaining the Eureka Australia Day Medal.
The first award announced was to Wendy Lowenstein for her social activism over a long life particularly to her contributions to recording the oral histories of working people, Wendy is recently deceased

Joe Toscano explaining some of the history of the Eureka Diggers Memorial in the cenetery.

Joe Toscano and then Graeme Dunstan outline the history of this monument and its part to downplay the victory finally won by the miners at Eureka. The rebellion has been dismissed and derided by the authorities as misdirected and misguided.

Eureka: where multiculturalism was born

December 3, 2006

150 years ago miners from several nations joined forces to fight for a fair go, writes Kate Hagan.

THINK Eureka Stockade and people also tend to think "birthplace of Australian democracy". Images of Irish-led rebels challenging English authority immediately spring to mind. For the director of the Eureka Centre in Ballarat, Ron Egeberg, it was also the birthplace of multiculturalism. Miners of 20 nationalities took part in the stockade, in a list that is still growing as descendants provide details of their cultural backgrounds to historians.

Today marks the 152nd anniversary of the Eureka Stockade, which occurred on December 3, 1854, when 300 police and troopers charged a makeshift stockade defended by 150 gold diggers in Ballarat. The protest against corrupt officials and unfair mining licences took less than an hour and claimed 30 lives.

One of the more exotic dissenters was Finnish-born Isaac Matson, whose great-grand-daughter Joy Harley recently provided details about her ancestor to the Eureka Centre.

Harley, 75, of North Caulfield, is proud to have in her possession two brooches and an earring (the matching pair has been lost in the family) fashioned from gold Matson found in Ballarat.

"He didn't find a fortune but he did find some gold, and I've got the jewellery," she says. She has a scrapbook passed on from her grandmother Fanny Matson, Isaac's daughter, which includes a newspaper clipping of an obituary that appeared following his death in September 1917. It states that Matson was "an intimate friend of (stockade leader) Peter Lalor".

Joy Harley says her great-grandfather was a shipbuilder who carved figureheads for the bows of sailing ships in the Baltic. He travelled to California for the 1849 gold rush before making his way to Australia, where he married Mary Morgan on the Ballarat goldfields in 1854.

Egeberg says Matson was among a diverse group of miners from around the world who united in their quest for a fair go. "The blend of cultures would've been quite remarkable at the time," he says. "The thing that needs to be remembered is the people of the goldfields were well-educated, intelligent people who sought a peaceful resolution to the issues that were concerning them.

"Those issues were about their desire to have a say in how they were governed. Ultimately, it was about what we recognise today as the development of the Australian spirit — the want of the people of the goldfields for fairness and a fair go for all."

Ballarat University historian Anne Beggs-Sunter has compiled as part of her doctoral studies a list of the 20 nationalities represented among the rebel miners. She has also written an article about multiculturalism on the goldfields, which is due to be published in the Journal of Australian Colonial History. Beggs-Sunter says the stockade rebels represented the cultural mix of the goldfields, with one notable exception — the Chinese.

She says the number of Chinese miners at Ballarat was increasing rapidly by the end of 1854 and by March 1855 they numbered between 2000 and 3000.

"They kept very much to themselves as a separate group," she explains. "You can understand, with the language barriers, if the predominant language is English, and that's the language in which all the debates are taking place, they're not going to be part of it.

"But interestingly, later on the Chinese did get involved in their own protests against special discriminatory taxes that were put on them."

Recipients include: Margaret McDonald, an activist and teacher by trade; Gerry Harrant, a tireless activist and broadcaster; Pauline Mitchell, involved in the disarmament and nuclear free movement in Victoria for many years. The last person given an award this year is Kevin Bracken, Victorian Secretary of the MUA, for inceasing the trade union movements interaction with the community.

3.50am, five 8-foot poles under one arm, a plastic bag full of literature in my left hand, I step out into the darkness.

Tired, half awake, I notice another figure 50 metres in front of me across the road. The darkness embraces me as I stumble on the grass surrounding the Eureka monument in Eureka Park in Ballarat. Three or four people have already arrived, I struggle to thread the poles into the Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion banner, and with the help of a few other lost souls, we eventually haul up the banner.

Cars begin to pull up in the street adjoining the park, people stumble out, some carrying chairs, a few blankets. By 4.00am, nearly 30 people have formed a circle in front of the Eureka monument on the very spot at the same time 152 years ago where over 30 miners lost their lives in the struggle to defend future generations rights and liberties.

Each person spoke their mind, some bared their souls; some gave political speeches, while others spoke from the heart. Everyone was heard in silence. A bright light that was trained on the monument lit up one corner of the circle. Faces obscured by the dark, the words tumbled out of their mouths. By 5.00am, the anonymous faces had developed features as the darkness evaporated. The birds began to sign as the drizzle that threatened to sabotage the circle, stopped. Darkness turned into daylight, the speakers who had spoken so eloquently in the dark, suddenly became self conscious when the dawn arrived.

152 years ago, men screamed as bayonets tore through their flesh, musket balls made a mockery of flesh and bones. Tents burned, women screamed, the wounded groaned, the dying had their pockets rifled, blood stained the grass. 152 years later, a man from Mount Gambier had come to pay his respect two years in a row; a few locals also joined the celebrations. Around Australia, people went on with lives, few remembered the sacrifices of the past, thinking that governments not men and women had given them the few liberties they still enjoy today.

30 souls remembered; they had breakfast together in Eureka Hall, joined in the march to Bakery Hill, recited the Eureka oath and then walked to the cemetery to pay their respects to workers at either end of a bayonet who died to protect their rights and liberties from the wishes of the God, Queen and Country brigade.

We then walked back to Eureka Park through Ballarat. Holding banners and flags aloft, we remembered to use the past to understand the present and change the future. We recharged our batteries for another year of struggle using the 3rd of December as a moral battering ram to punctuate the spectacle that has reduced living to a series of commercial transactions.

It is a pity the Sunday Age - the paper that threw its lot in with the Eureka diggers 152 years ago mesmerised by the harsh realities of life in the post modern world - has forgotten to maintain the legacy of the Eureka struggle.

get over it
by guerilla strategist Wednesday December 06, 2006 at 03:20 PM

the stockade was a (very) ill-conceived operation .. I do not get emotional about strategy .. I like to win.

Kelly on the other declared war and fought tactically.

Bailing yourself up in a fixed location against a superior force is the effort of imbeciles .. they deserved what they got.

And you, you screaming emotional clown, wake up .. no one won a war with emotionalism!

Once a joyless slave man
Camped by a bottle shop
Under the shade of an apathy tree
And he drank as he watched
Hicks rot in Torture Bay
You’ll come and cop it in the arse with me

Waltzing complacency
Waltzing to oblivion

You’ll come and cop it in the arse with me!