We Are the Rebels (3 page)
Authors: Clare Wright
By Christmas 1852, a year after Thomas Hiscock's discovery, the luxuriant land of
the Wathaurung had been stripped of vegetation. It was just ravaged earth, riddled
with holes and studded with calico tents. The goldfields were packed with hopeful
miners, and you couldn't elbow your way into a claim along the river frontage. But
this was nothing compared to the avalanche of humanity that was about to descend.
In 1853, as one early settler put it,
a huge tidal waveâ¦the memorable rush from England
and everywhere else
began in earnest. âAustralian fever' was raging around the world
as news of Victoria's gold hit the market squares of London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Paris,
Warsaw, Munich, Washington, Toronto and Shanghai. In three years (1851â4) the population
of Victoria tripled, rocketing from 77,000 to 237,000. By 1861 it had more than doubled
again to 540,000âhalf the total population of Australia.
About a quarter of this meteoric multitude lived in Melbourne and the rest were scattered
across the goldfields. (Just imagine if this rate of population growth happened today.
It would be like Melbourne's population of roughly 4.5 million jumping to over 30
million in the next ten years. Think of the pressure on roads, housing, transport,
food suppliesâeverything!)
What is most striking about the gold rush immigrants is their youth: it was the world's
young people who grabbed at the opportunities offered by Victoria's gold. Merchant
Robert Caldwell noted the
amazing energy
of the gold-rush generation. It was
young, impulsive,
generous and restless.
Indeed, visitors to Victoria often commented that there were
no old people to be seen. They weren't wrong: 80% of the population was under the
age of 34; 40% of them were younger than 20. And the birthrate went through the roof.
Records show that in 1851, five babies were born in the open-air campgrounds of Ballarat.
Six years later, in 1857, the number was 1665.
WATHAURUNG
First there was the great surge of pastoral expansionâoften violentâinto Victoria
from the 1830s. Fifteen or so years later, the gold rush amounted to a second wave
of dispossession for Indigenous occupants of the land.
Before European contact there may have been up to 3240 members of the twenty-five
Wathaurung language groups around Ballarat. By 1861, only 255 Indigenous people remained.
The gold rush certainly intensified the process of colonisation. But the influx
of immigrants and wealth also provided economic prospects for the Wathaurung. Their
local knowledge of gold deposits meant work as guides. Wathaurung women sold possum-skin
cloaks (
dallong
) to cold diggers. Wathaurung men were paid to hunt for fresh kangaroo
(
goin
).
The Wathaurung successfully adapted to and exploited the commercial opportunities
presented by the gold rushâand Ballarat's early residents came to rely on Indigenous
knowledge and craftsmanship.
Going aheadâgetting aheadâbecame the motto of the mid-1850s. It was as if the old
world was an enormous bog, dragging people down and suffocating their dreamsâbut
now there was an empty land far from home where you could break free from the sticky
mud of tradition and economic stagnation.
Charles Evans, aged 25 when he arrived in Victoria, was typical. On learning of
the discovery of gold, Charles and his older brother George were eager to go. They
hoped, as George recorded in his diary, to make their mother
independent of others'
assistance
.
CHARLES EVANS
THE SPECTATOR
DIDN'T TAKE SIDES BUT WROTE EVERYTHING DOWN
BORN
Ironbridge, Shropshire, 1827
DIED
Melbourne, 1881
ARRIVED
September 1853, on the
Mobile
AGE AT EUREKA
27
CHILDREN
Unmarried at Eureka; later a father of twelve.
FAQ
British lower middle-class, migrated to Victoria with brother George.
ROLE
Established printing and auction house in Ballarat late 1853. Kept a detailed
diary, including events at Eureka. Recorded death of woman at Eureka.
ARCHIVE
Diary, SLV MS 13518 (formerly known as the Lazarus Diary)
Twenty-two-year-old Dan Calwell left New York to come to Victoria with his brother
in April 1853. He told his sisters back home in Ohio that they could not imagine
how our hearts bounded in anxious anticipation of soon overstepping the long limited
boundaries.
Even in America, the Land of the Free, the Calwell brothers felt the
weight of family expectation and middle-class convention.
We are young
, reasoned
Dan,
and must do something to give ourselves a start in the world. We have
human
hearts.
Alexander Dick, a seventeen-year-old Scotsman, sought
a new, free and better
life
and
deliverance from what I regarded as servile bondage
.
Englishwoman May Howell saw her chance to escape the narrow expectations of home.
She looked forward to:
An independent life, trusting to yourself, putting forth all your energy, no leaning
on others, no one to control, or dictate to you, going where you like, doing what
you like, no relation laying down the law, and chalking out your path in life.
And it was not only single people looking to flee from lives bounded by rules and
routines. Irish couple Anastasia and Timothy Hayes already had five children when
they decided to try their luck on the diggings of Victoria. They were educated,
and devout Irish Catholics. They had already moved to England to further Timothy's
career as an engineer when the Hayes family joined many other large tribes uprooting
to follow their dreams.
ANASTASIA HAYES (NEE BUTLER)
THE RED RAGGER EUREKA FLAGGER
RABBLE-ROUSER AND MULTITASKER, ABLE TO BREASTFEED AND SEW A FLAG AT THE SAME TIME
BORN
Kilkenny, Ireland, 1818
DIED
Ballarat, 1892
ARRIVED
October 1852, on the
Mobile
AGE AT EUREKA
36
CHILDREN
Five children on arrival, sixth born on Ballarat diggings in 1854.
FAQ
Irish Catholic aristocracy from County Clare. Married Timothy Hayes, oil merchant/engineer,
in September 1841. Teacher at Catholic school, sewed Eureka flag, husband was Chairman
of Ballarat Reform League. Allegedly involved in amputation of Lalor's arm.
Victoria welcomed all
youth of energy, adventure and courage
. A restless generation
of young men and women united by one great notion: liberty.
If repression was the lock, gold was the key.
Victoria went viral. Newspapers around the world began carrying daily reports of
the riches to be found on the diggings. In New York, according to entrepreneur George
Francis Train,
Australia was the only topic on the street.
When Train arrived in
Victoria with his wife, southern belle Wilhelmina âWillie' Davis Train, he reported
that nowhere else in the world did
such a go-aheadative
place exist.
The Australian fever
was raging across the globe, and it seemed destined to continue.
Reports confirmed that the gold in the hills of Victoria wasn't just a flash in the
pan. It would be worth itâwell worth it, said correspondents like Trainâto uproot
families, dismantle homes, abandon villages and join the mass movement of people
to Australia.
GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN
THE YANKEE DOODLE DANDY
AN ECCENTRIC WITH A TASTE FOR TRAVEL (THE BOOK
AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS
WAS
BASED ON HIM)
BORN
Boston, 1829
DIED
New York, 1904
ARRIVED
1853
AGE AT EUREKA
25
CHILDREN
One died prior to Eureka, three subsequently. His wife Willie Davis Train
left him in 1872.
FAQ
Entrepreneur, merchant, republican, journalist and foreign correspondent while
in Victoria. Ran for President of the USA in 1872.
The picture painted of Victoria worldwide was as a land paved with gold. Newspapers
printed endless statements of gold returns, laying out the breathtaking value of
the gold in private hands and in Melbourne banks. On 8 April 1852, the London Times
reported the
astonishing results
achieved over the past three months: gold worth
£730,242â
and where it is to end no human being can guess. The field is reported to
be illimitable.
1848: THE REVOLUTIONARY SPRING
The 1840s was a decade of turmoil in Europe: economic, political and social. In
Ireland from 1845 to 1852 over a million people died in the Great Famine. At least
another million fled as refugees, sparking an enormous wave of migration to the new
world.
The Irish famine was triggered by a potato blight that also caused crop devastation
throughout Europe. Hunger and disruption drove peasants and the urban poor to join
the middle-class movements for political reform across Britain and Europe. Campaigns
for a variety of reform measures peaked in 1848, which is why it is sometimes called
the Year of Revolution or the Springtime of the Peoples.
Popular mass uprisings swept through France, Germany, Britain and Russia in 1848
as people demanded an end to tyranny. European monarchs were deposed or abdicated.
In England, a movement called Chartism demanded that workers, not just property
owners, be given the vote.
But the victories of 1848 were mostly short-lived. The forces of conservatism successfully
restored the status quo. But many people remained dissatisfied with the old world,
and with structures where your worth and standing were determined by birth, not merit.
This correspondent encouraged readers to hurry to the land where
boundless plenty
smiles side by side with countless wealth.
Just three months later, in July 1852,
the total value of
gold thus far found in Victoria had reached £1,647,810.
Letters home from the early gold-seekers also fuelled the enthusiasm for gold. James
Green wrote a note to his sister on 24 July 1853, telling her their brother George
should also âcome out'.
A few years here and he would be an independent man, he is
very simple if he stops at home digging potatoes when he might come here and dig
gold
.
The promise of instant wealth is always irresistibleâjust look at the vice-like grip
poker machines and lotteries have on today's punters. But how much more compelling
when there are eyewitnesses telling you all about the Midas miracle: [Gold] lies
on the surface and after a shower of rain, you may see it with the naked eye, and
a child can put in a spade, and dig that with his little hands in one minute, which
many of you in England wear out eyes and heart in getting.