In 1851, gold was discovered in Victoria, in southeast Australia. The result was
a gold-rush that drew fortune-seekers from across the world; Australians,
Englishmen, Scotsmen and Dutchmen brushed shoulders with Americans, Jews, black
Africans, and Italians. The result, not unlike the gold-rushes of contemporary
America, was the development of a rowdy, near-anarchic frontier sub-culture that
quickly became a terror to the established government.
Heavy license fees
were levied against the miners, by a Colonial government worried at their
rapidly increasing numbers and wild lifestyle. These fees were collected by
British soldiers as well as policemen - the former were unsympathetic to the
miners' cause, while the latter were commonly ex-convicts who displayed
brutality and rank corruption in their behavior.
The real or perceived
injustices suffered by the Victoria miners - who styled themselves 'diggers' -
led them to form the Miners' Reform League, which by the fall of 1854 was headed
by Irish immigrant Peter Lalor. Open violence began to break out. On October 6th
of 1854, the Scottish miner James Scobie was murdered at the Eureka Hotel, very
probably by its owner, James Bentley. Bentley was acquitted by a corrupt
magistrate and as a result, a mob of diggers, possibly numbering as many as
10,000, came out to protest.
Several more protests and riots took place,
and a column of British soldiers was attacked. Supposedly, the drummer-boy John
Egan was killed by the diggers, though surviving military paperwork indicates
that he died six years after the event. The government responded to the influx
of violence by sending two regiments, the 12th and the 40th Infantry, to the
Ballarat gold-fields, their numbers supplemented by an unscruplous police
force.
On December 1st of 1854, Lalor and the diggers began to construct
a stockade on the Eureka Plateau, overlooking the road to Melbourne. No less
than 500 of them were sworn in under his newly-designed flag, the 'Southern
Cross'. Lalor set about organizing an army for his miniature rebel state. Two of
the best-armed units in his makeshift army were made up of American adventurers
- the 'Independent California Rangers Revolver Brigade' and the 'American First
Rifle Brigade'. Among them were many veterans of the Mexican-American War, as
well as several black Americans.
After a false alarm the previous day
(which may have been deliberately engineered by the government forces), the
stockade was attacked on the morning of December 3rd, 1854. 276 soldiers and
policement attacked somewhere between 150 and 200 men in the stockade. Within
ten minutes, the 'battle' was over, and the soldiers had taken the 'Southern
Cross' as their prize. Lalor was shot in the arm and later had to have it
amputated.
Six of the government forces - including one captain - were
killed during the skirmish. There is no reliable estimate for how many of the
rebels were killed; the official number known to have been killed is 27 but
likely it was much higher than this, especially considering some of the wounded
fled from the site and died alone in the bush. The government forces behaved
with unbecoming savagery, shooting and bayoneting some wounded men; what could
have turned into a horrendous massacre was only ended when some of the miners'
women began to cover the wounded with their own bodies, and when a British
captain threatened to shoot any policeman who fired on a man who was wounded or
had surrendered.
Though their brief uprising was crushed, the diggers
enjoyed great public sympathy. When the survivors were brought to trial they
were acquitted. The men put on trial were a diverse crowd - they included
Italian Raffaello Carboni, black Jamaican James M. Campbell, Dutchman Jan
Vennick, black American John Joseph, and a Scottish Jew, Jacob Sorenson. All
were pardoned and enjoyed the status of local celebrities - a crowd supposedly
carrying Joseph through the streets of Melbourne in a chair.
The miners
also triumphed in the political sphere - within one year of the revolt, all but
one of the Reform League's demands had been granted, and Lalor was beginning a
long and prosperous political career.
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