We Are the Rebels (23 page)
Authors: Clare Wright
Tuesday 28 November was Thanksgiving. For the American community on the diggings
it was a chance to celebrate with a lavish dinner at Brandt and Hirschler's Victoria
Hotel at Red Hill. The proprietors had
gone the whole hog
, providing
a perfect legion
of delicacies
for the 70 men who attended.
No one else was giving thanks. Popular discontent was at its peak, and there was
going to be another monster meeting at Bakery Hill tomorrow, the 29th, and the talk
was of rebellion. It was rumoured that a formal declaration of independence would
be made. In every quarterâthe pub, the field, the store, the campfire, the theatre,
the churchâpeople stopped
to discuss the theory of political relationships
, as the
Geelong Advertiser put it.
Pennsylvanian Thomas Pierson was more specific. At the daily stump meetings being
held, people
speak openly in unmeasured terms against that old scamp the Governor
and nearly all in office. [They] urge people to declare Independence
. One speaker
Pierson heard said if all the people would just assert their rights and claim
a Republican
Government,
then we could
stand here as Proud as any of the sons of America.
W. H. Foster, a civil servant on the diggings and a cousin of the previous governor,
Charles La Trobe, wrote home in a letter to his parents in December 1854 that the
licence tax issue was simply a convenient smokescreen for the Americans who were
here in great numbersâ¦with a view to institute independence
.
There had always been a concern among some British bystanders at how quickly Victoria
was becoming
Americanized
. It was a loveâhate relationship. In George Francis Train's
assessment, the colonial government admired the energy, entrepreneurial ingenuity,
can-do spirit
and brash confidence of the American immigrants. It was less comfortable
with the American disrespect for authority, which seemed to be rubbing off on the
rest of the goldfields populationâespecially as the authorities did nothing to win
back the people's regard. After the Eureka Hotel blaze, George Francis Train wrote:
Give the colonists their own way, and they will remain loyalâcross their path and
they will have a flag of their own
.
Witnesses revealed that there had been speakers at the Eureka Hotel riot urging the
people
to drive off all the Government officers, send the Government home and to
declare their Independence
, as Thomas Pierson recorded after he left the scene.
Hotham himself admitted to his boss in England, Sir George Grey, that Victoria
possesses
wealth, strength and competency to hold its position unaided by the Mother Country
.
His question was: are we to run the risk of the colony
walking alone?
It was less than 80 years since the American Revolution. The memory of colonists
defeating redcoats was anything but ancient history.
Rede made a point of attending the Americans' Thanksgiving dinner. He needed to
curtail, not strengthen, the influence of the Americans on Ballarat's public culture.
But he also needed to be respectful of Yankee traditions and of their consul, James
Tarleton. Rede's first actâalthough deference was not his favourite positionâwas
to bow graciously to Tarleton, the guest of honour.
Tarleton, for his part, proclaimed the loyalty of the Americans to the laws of their
adopted land and urged his
countrymen not to get involved in the current agitation.
During the toasts Rede was suddenly called away. There had been a skirmish on the
Melbourne Road and troops from the Camp were being dispatched to respond.
A company of the 12th Regiment was marching into town, part of Hotham's next wave
of fortification for the Camp. This particular small contingent was actually just
a guard detail for several wagons full of ammunition and baggage: the real manpowerâthe
regimental units waved off by Mrs Masseyâwould come later that night.
As the ammunition-bearing battalion crossed Eureka, it was ambushed by a group of
diggers lurking in the shadows. Incoming soldiers had become used to hostile welcoming
committees of men, women and children hooting, jeering and throwing stones at them
as they made their way to the Camp. But this time a violent scuffle broke out, in
which the wagons were overturned and several horses wounded, a drummer boy was shot
in the thigh and an old American severely injured. Onlookers predicted fatalities.
Resident Commissioner Robert Rede never got the chance to make his toast to the Queen.
He left the Americans to their party, not quite convinced that Tarleton's righteous
words would be mirrored in noble action.
While the Americans were giving thanks and Rede was trying to negotiate Ballarat's
allegiances, preparations were being made on the Flat for the monster meeting.
Relations between the Camp and the diggers had broken down completely after the
Reform League's unsuccessful attempt to intercede on behalf of Fletcher, McIntyre
and Westoby. The Camp was worrying only about its own security, not about normal
law enforcement. Tent and store robberies were now occurring nightly. Horse stealing
had become so common that horses without stabling were considered useless. A fierce
dog was worth a king's ransom. And the police were now vastly outnumbered by the
military, which meant they had lost even more status with the community. Some diggers
had started to burn their licences as a symbolic protest against the authorities.
Scandalous stories were flying every which way, gossip spinning out of control.
The
second Ballarat revolution is in everyone's mouth,
wrote the Argus on the morning
of 29 November.
Rumour with her many tongues is blabbing all sorts of stories.
The
Gold Commissioner had been taken hostage. The Camp was burned to the ground. The
fifteen-year-old drummer boy had been killed in the ambush of the 12th Regiment.
Fletcher had
thoroughly broken down
and was at risk of suicide. James Johnston had
purchased five town allotments at the Ballarat land sales that week. (This one was
true.)
Bakery Hill was once again the venue for a monster meeting, set for 29 November
at midday. (
Bakery Hill is obtaining
creditable notoriety as the rallying ground
for Australian freedom,
wrote the Times.) Ten thousand people downed tools, shut
up stores, gathered up children and headed towards Bakery Hill. It was a hot day,
with clouds of dust swirling in the gusty wind.
The meeting brought the usual catalogue of goldfields public protest: long speeches,
heartfelt resolutionsâone of which was that the Reform League would meet at the Adelphi
Theatre at 2pm on Sunday 3 December to elect a central committee. There were fiery
threats and troopers circling on horseback. Sly-groggers did a steady trade on the
fringes of the crowd.
But three wholly new things happened on 29 November.
The first was that for the first time the next morning's papers referred to those
present as
the rebels
.
The second was that the diggers lined up to throw their licences upon a bonfireâan
act of communal defiance of the law. The Ballarat Reform League had voted by a majority
of three that its members should burn their mining and storekeeping licences. When
committing their licences to the flames, the diggers swore to defend any unlicensed
digger from arrest, with armed force if necessary. Those miners who did not become
members of the Reform League could not expect the same protection. Thus the Ballarat
diggings became a closed shop.
The third was that a flag was hoisted. Not a national flag, but a purpose-made flag,
a flag the Geelong Advertiser dubbed
the Australian flag
. This was the only flag
hoisted that day.
This is the flag that we now know as the Eureka Flag. But on 29 November it was briefly
raised not at Eureka but above the crowd at Bakery Hill. Its purpose was
to attract
attention
: like
the band that roamed the diggings playing âLa Marseillaise', the
French revolutionary anthem, it was meant to lure the miners away from their toil.
To rally them, and direct their righteous anger towards Bakery Hill.
The flag they called the Australian Flag took its design inspiration from the one
thing that united each and every resident of Ballarat: the constellation of the
Southern Cross.
Five bright stars in the shape of a kite. Those five stars had alerted immigrants
to the transformation that occurred when they crossed the line into the southern
hemisphere. They had connected the paths of travellers from all the Australian colonies
long before they became a single nation. Those stars hung in the only heaven that
native-born Australians knew. Five shimmering white stars against a clear blue field
hoisted, as Frederick Vern put it,
under Australia's matchless sky
.
Raffaello Carboni stood before fifteen thousand people at Bakery Hill that morning.
I called on all my fellow-diggers
, he later recalled,
irrespective of nationality,
religion, and colour, to salute the âSouthern Cross' as the refuge of all the oppressed
from all the countries on earth.
Carboni was well satisfied with the crowd's response:
The applause was universal.
The Ballarat Flat now had its own flag to rival the huge Union Jack fluttering above
the Camp.
Henry Seekamp was also on the spot to witness the hoisting of the new flag on its
80-foot flagstaff at eleven o'clock on the morning of the 29th. In the issue of the
Times printed on Sunday 3 December, he (or perhaps Clara, as this is one of the âseditious'
editions for which he denied responsibility) wrote:
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. The flag is silk, blue ground with a large silver cross;
no device or arms, but all exceedingly chaste and natural.
Ballarat's rebel flag was, indeed, remarkably pure. It said simply: âWe are here.'
There has always been debate about the origins of the âEureka' flag. The usual story
is that it was designed by a 27-year-old Canadian miner called Henry Ross, who then
recruited three diggers' wives to sew it. Ross was friendly with artist Charles Alphonse
Doudiet (another Canadian), who has left the clearest picture of the flag that was
unfurled on Bakery Hill that day. But actually, there is no evidence that Ross designed
the flag. That idea may come from the original cover of Raffaello Carboni's 1855 account of
the Eureka Stockade, which bears a sketch of the flag. Underneath are the words:
When Ballarat unfurled the Southern Cross the bearer was Toronto's Captain Ross
.
Elsewhere in the book, Carboni refers to Ross as the
bridegroom
of the flag, meaning
Ross was the standard-bearer: he hoisted it up the flagpole. It doesn't necessarily
mean he designed it.
Tradition says that three women sewed the flag in secret: Anastasia Hayes, Anastasia
Withers and Anne Duke. Frederick Vern described it
as a banner made and wrought by
English ladies
. (Only Withers was EnglishâHayes and Duke were both Irishâbut the
distinction may not have been apparent to Vern, who was from Hanover in Germany.)
ANNE DUKE (NEE GAYNOR)
BORN
Ireland, 1838
DIED
Echuca, 1914
ARRIVED
1842, on the
William Sharples
AGE AT EUREKA
16
CHILDREN
Pregnant at Eureka with the first of twelve children.
FAQ
Irish family immigrated to Australia when Anne was four years old. Lived on Bendigo
diggings where her family kept a store, before she married George Duke in March 1854.
Believed to be one of the women who sewed the Eureka Flag.
Some historians prefer the âmen's flag story' first related by J. W. Wilson in 1885.
Wilson had been told that Henry Ross
gave the order for the insurgents' flag
to a
local tent and tarpaulin-making firm, Darton and Walker. According to this version,
Ross gave his order at 11pm on Thursday 23rd and the flag was first raised 39 hours
later, at 2pm on Saturday the 25th. This flag was said to be made of
bunting
.
However, there is now little doubt that it was women who sewed the flag. It was made
using traditional women's sewing skills: flat-felled seams sewn by hand. When the
flag was restored in the 1970s, the original pins found in the seams were the kind
you might get in a mid-nineteenth-century woman's sewing kit. According to the most
recent conservator, Kristin Phillips, the flag isn't made of bunting; it's made of
ordinary âclothing fabric bought off the roll' used âeconomically'.
And it's big: 3400 millimetres x 2580 millimetres. It could not have been made in
less than 48 hours, and probably closer to 60. It would have taken many hands, gathered
around the perimeter of the flag, to construct the flag with any speed at all. And
you would have to keep turning it in order to sew round the edges of the stars, which
would mean the other people working on it would have to move too.
An enormous job, then; and a tricky one. (And, contrary to one popular theory, the
stars weren't made out of women's petticoats. They were made of new woollen fabric.
Even in the uncomfortably dressed nineteenth century, petticoats usually weren't
made of wool.)
So where, on a camping ground like the diggings, could you meet in secret to construct
a huge rebel flag?
There were few places in which a four-metre roll of fabric could be unfurled on the
ground and still have room around it for a team of seamstresses. The Adelphi Theatre
would have been big enough, but Sarah Hanmer was involved with the American community,
not the Irish. Was the flag sewn in the Catholic church where Anastasia Hayes, the
doyenne of the Catholic community, was employed? St Alipius was certainly one of
the few tents big enough. And it was already common knowledge that the Irish were
making themselves a protest flagâ¦
Anastasia Hayes, Anastasia Withers and Anne Duke probably were the
English ladies
that Frederick Vern refers to, but it's likely there were more than three of them.
Eliza Darcy, who by now had joined the Catholic congregation in Ballarat, was almost
certainly one of the clandestine seamstresses. Her granddaughter Ella Hancockâat
97, now the oldest living Eureka descendantâgrew up on stories of Eliza's handiwork.
Between the women who probably came together under cover of darkness to sew the rebel
flag there were at least nine children and two pregnancies. So there is no faulting
their dedication.
Or maybe it's just that if you are going to be up half the night with sleepless infants,
you may as well do something that will be recorded in the pages of history.
