We Are the Rebels (29 page)

Clara Seekamp certainly was not taken in by Hotham's scapegoating tactic. After Henry
was arrested for sedition, Clara became the sole editor of the Ballarat Times. In
her leader on New Year's Day 1855, she called Hotham to account:

Who are the foreigners? Where are the foreigners? What is it that constitutes a foreigner?…Poor
Governor Hotham! Could you not have found some other more truthful excuse for all
the illegal and even murderous excesses committed by your soldiery and butchers?…
Why did you disregard our memorials and entreaties, our prayers and our cries for
justice and protection against your unjust stewards here, until the people, sickened
by hope deferred, and maddened by continued and increased acts of oppression, were
driven to take up arms in self defence?

Clara hit the nail on the head: hope deferred. The lack of judicial transparency,
the unchecked miscarriages of justice, the futility of all lawful means of having
grievances heard and disputes resolved. It all added up to one mighty roadblock to
the dream of
chalking out your path in life
. How long must the restless immigrants
wait for a shred of the freedom they had been assured was theirs in the
Promised
Land
?

THE MINER'S RIGHT

Fast forward one year to 3 December 1855. The trials of the thirteen miners charged
with treason had dissolved in farce, making a laughing stock of the government. Popular
feeling was with the diggers. No jury would convict their peers of a capital offence
when there was not a shred of evidence—except perhaps for a mangled blue and white
flag stolen by a trooper from the ashes of the Stockade.

By the time the courts set free the last of the prisoners, the Goldfields Commission
had also tabled its report. It ranked the miners' grievances in this order:

the licence fee (
or more properly the unseemly violence often necessary for its due
collection
);

the
land grievance
; and

the want of political rights and recognised status
rendering the mining population
an entirely non-privileged body… without gradations of public rank
.

In other words: tax, property and the vote.

The Commission's recommendations for alleviating these complaints were quickly adopted.
The licence system was replaced by an export tax on gold. Effectively, it worked
like an income tax rather than a poll tax. The hated licence fee was replaced with
a miner's right. For £1 per year, it entitled miners to fossick for minerals and
gave them access to a plot of land on which they could make capital improvements.
It also enfranchised them to vote in and seek representation on the Victorian legislature,
as well as on a new local system of mining courts. Women could purchase a miner's
right, but were excluded from the vote—at least after a legal loophole was closed
by the 1856 Electoral Act. (Victorian women would not win the state franchise until
1908.)

The 1856 Act also changed the structure of parliament. The Legislative Council became
an upper house, and the property qualification for becoming a Member was abolished.
At the same time a lower house was established: the Legislative Assembly, which became
known as ‘the people's house'. Peter Lalor was elected to the Legislative Assembly
as the Member for Ballarat East in 1856.

Historians have argued about whether the Eureka Stockade, as ‘the Ballarat Massacre'
came to be known, was responsible for this new democratic order in Victoria.

Some, like Geoffrey Blainey, say no: a bill for the new constitution was already
in the system. It would have been passed regardless of the turmoil at Ballarat. Others,
like Geoffrey Serle, acknowledge that constitutional reform was inevitable. However,
they maintain that universal manhood suffrage—giving the vote to men who did not
own property—was not a foregone conclusion. These historians say it was the voting
rights connected to the miner's right—which
was
a direct outcome of Eureka—that
led to the most democratic franchise (for men) in the world.

So that was two victories for the miners. Not guilty in the criminal courts. Big
winners from the commission of enquiry.

But many victims of 3 December had claimed compensation from the government for
property losses when the military set the Eureka ablaze, and these people were mostly
disappointed.

A board of enquiry found in mid-winter 1855 that the destruction of tents on the
morning of 3 December was a
necessary consequence
of the
resistance offered to the
military. Your Board lament the losses sustained by individuals
, read the report,
but cannot forget that if the sufferers were not actively engaged in an overt act
of Rebellion they displayed no disposition to support authority.

Thus Anne Diamond, whose husband was shot inside their store before it was burnt
to the ground, found her claim for £600 rejected. In this the struggling miner's
wife was no different from Catherine Bentley, the formerly prosperous publican's
wife, whose claim of £30,000 for the loss of her hotel and the forced annexation
of land held in her name was brushed aside.

For these new Australians it was a small taste of the bitter pill of dispossession
suffered irretrievably by the old Australians.

THE YOUNGEST AUSTRALIAN

In her firecracker leader of New Year's Day 1855, Clara Seekamp took the temperature
of her community and predicted a patriotic fever that would burn low but would not
completely die.

What is this country else but Australia? Is it any more England than it is Ireland
or Scotland, France or America, Italy or Germany? Is the population, wealth, intelligence,
enterprise and learning wholly and solely English? No, the population of Australia
is not English, but Australian. Whoever works towards the development of its resources
and its wealth is no longer a foreigner but an Australian, a title fully as good,
if not better, than that of any inhabitants of any of the geographical dominions
in the world. The latest immigrant is the youngest Australian.

Two months after this, Karl Marx wrote in a German-language newspaper that the Eureka
Stockade outbreak was but
the symptom of a general revolutionary movement in Victoria.

In fact, if there was a revolution at Eureka, it was not political: it was sociological.

The mining community of Ballarat did not intend to overthrow the British Crown,
any more than it wanted to create an equal distribution of wealth or a global map
without colour lines. Any republican feelings were embryonic. Any feminist sentiments
that may have been stirred up were equally tentative, and in any case were soon
buried in the whirlwind of gold-rush change.

More widespread was the desire to create what we would now call a meritocracy: to
replace the old, rigid power relationships with a more fluid social hierarchy. One
based on achievement rather than birth, breeding, rank, marriage or conventional
sex roles.

In this, the young gold-rush generation largely succeeded. They mightn't have struck
it rich, but as their lives went on they built businesses, farms, families and towns.
Ultimately, they built a nation.

But this was all to come.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has been a heap of fun to write. All praise and credit to my editor, Mandy
Brett, who is required personnel on any razor gang. Apart from being handy with a
red pen, she is a top chick.

Huge gratitude to Michael Heyward and all at Text Publishing for the vision behind
this book. Your belief in me and the scope of my work is a blessing. Jess Horrocks
is responsible for the gorgeous layout and graphics. I don't know if you are a rebel,
Jess, but you are undoubtedly a legend.

Thanks also to my agent, Jacinta Dimase, for holding my hand and never letting go.

Special thanks to the students in Michael Grose's Year 12 Australian History class
at Northcote High School who agreed to road test this book. Cheers to Principal Kate
Morris and Veep Nick Murphy for letting me roam around your classrooms without so
much as a lifejacket.

Much love, as always, to my family, who guide and support me in everything I do.

Last but never least, thank you to my gem of a husband, Damien, and our children
Bernie, Noah and Esther. You guys are keepers.

OTHER READING

PRIMARY SOURCES

Clacy, Mrs Charles.
A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852–53:
Written on the Spot
. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1853.

——. Lights and Shadows of Australian Life
. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1854.

Clendinning, Martha.
Recollections of Ballarat: A Lady's Life at the Diggings Fifty
Years Ago
, 1892. State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection, MS
10102/1.

Davis, Fanny.
Ship Diary
, 1858. State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts
Collection, MS 10509.

Dick, Alexander.
Alexander Dick Diary
, 1854–56. State Library of Victoria, Australian
Manuscripts Collection, MS 11241.

Evans, Charles.
Charles Evans Diary
(formerly known as the
Samuel Lazarus Diary
),
1853–55. State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection, MS 11484.

Howell, Mrs W. May.
Reminscences of Australia, the Diggings and the Bush
. London:
W. May Howell, 1869.

Howitt, William.
Land, Labour and Gold: Or Two Years in Victoria, with Visits to
Sydney and Van Dieman's Land
. London: Longman, 1855.

Huyghue, Samuel.
The Ballarat Riots
, 1884. State Library of Victoria, Australian
Manuscripts Collection, MS 7725.

Kelly, William.
Life in Victoria in 1853 and 1858
. London: Chapman and Hall, 1860.

Mossman, Samuel.
The Gold Regions of Australia
. London, 1852.

Pierson, Thomas.
Thomas Pierson Diary
, 1852–55. State Library of Victoria, Australian
Manuscripts Collection, MS 11646.

Ramsay-Laye, Elizabeth.
Social Life and Manners in Australia
. London, 1861.

Swan, Jane Ann.
Diary of a Voyage from Gravesend to Port Phillip on the William and
Jane, 12 August 1853–2 December 1853
, 1853. State Library of Victoria, Australian
Manuscripts Collection, MS 11465.

Train, Miller Davis.
Letters of Miller Davis Train
, 1854. Royal Historical Society
of Victoria, MS 000134.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Annear, Robyn.
Fly a Rebel Flag: The Battle at Eureka
. Fitzroy, Vic.: Black Dog Books,
2004.

——.
Nothing but Gold: The Diggers of 1852
. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1999.

Bate, Weston.
Lucky City: The First Generation at Ballarat, 1851–1901
. Melbourne:
Melbourne University Press, 1978.

Blake, Gregory.
To Pierce the Tyrant's Heart: The Battle for the Eureka Stockade,
3 December 1854
. Loftus, ACT: Australian Army History Unit, 2009.