Read The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka Online
Authors: Clare Wright
Tags: #HIS004000, #HIS054000, #HIS031000
Charles Dyte
married Evelina Nathan sometime between his arrival in Victoria in 1853 and the birth of their first son, David, in 1854. Their marriage is not registered in the official Victorian births, deaths and marriage records, but it is likely they married in the Melbourne or Ballarat synagogue. Evelina gave birth to twins, Miriam and Teresa, in 1858, and two more daughters, whose births were not registered. Neither of the twin girls ever married. They died in Ballarat: Miriam, eighty-five years old, in 1943 and Theresa, eighty-one years old, in 1939. Charles Dyte died in 1893 aged seventy-six and Eve in 1899, also aged seventy-six.
Annie Hollander
died in Ballarat in 1898, aged forty-one, after bearing sixteen children. She is buried in the Jewish section of the Old Ballarat Cemetery, along with her son Morris (died 1875, five hours old) and daughters Fanny (died 1874, three days old), Jane (died 1875, sixteen years) and Eva (died 1884, ten years).
Mary Faulds
, whose baby Adeliza was born inside the Eureka Stockade on 3 December 1854, would have six more children with her husband, Matthew. They lived the rest of their days in Ballarat and Buninyong. Mary died in 1897.
Rebecca Noonan
, who was assaulted by police on 3 December while pregnant, gave birth to baby Rebecca on 1 April 1855. Rebecca was born with a scar on her neck that corresponded with the bayonet wound on her mother's neck, inflicted during the stockade attack. On 26 December, and again on 19 February 1855, her husband, Michael Noonan, petitioned the government for compensation for the loss of his tent, store and all belongings on the grounds of the
dire disaster which he has encountered [which] has been all but ruinous to himâ¦a married man with a family of five children, totally dependent on his industrious and unceasing industry.
His petition was put away.
This book has been ten years in the making. A long road invites many debts. I give thanks and praise to all those who have helped me along the way, but in particular:
My colleagues in the History Program at La Trobe University, where I undertook the research for this book through an Australian Research Council-funded postdoctoral fellowship, and later completed the manuscript through a La Trobe University Humanities Bridging Fellowship. Special thanks to Judith Brett, Richard Broome, Marilyn Lake, Katie Holmes, Adrian Jones, John Hirst, Diane Kirkby, Gwenda Tavan, Alice Garner, Janet Butler and Alex McDermott for their intellectual support and companionship.
All the Eureka descendants who trusted me with their families' heritage. I could not include every story, but the spirit of your ancestors lives and breathes in the text. I am exceptionally grateful to the following people for their enduring support and patience: Don Walker, Ella Hancock, the HowardsâDamian, Marcia, Shane, Eric and Adele, Andrew Crowley, Anne Hall, Ellen Campbell, Val D'Angri, Bill and Chris Hanlon, John Wilson and Lorraine Brownlie.
Staff at the State Library of Victoriaâmy second home. Special thanks to Shane Carmody for his boundless enthusiasm and Gerard Hayes for finding me the picture of the Adelphi Theatre interior. I also acknowledge the SLV's generous provision of images for this book, and thank Margot Jones for all her help.
The many people who have been fellow travellers on some leg of the journey: Anna Clark, Helen Garner, Jenny Darling, Donica Bettanin, Dot Wickham, Susan Kruss, Ron Egeberg, Roger Trudgeon, Peter Freund, Kay Gibson, Jan Croggan, staff at the Public Record Office Victoria, Paul Pickering, Katherine Armstrong, Gabriel Maddock and Kristin Phillips.
Barb Malmgren, Bernadette Hess and Barbara Burge for their expert care and counsel.
The kind souls who agreed to read the first colossal draft of the manuscript: Barry Jones, Fiona Capp, Ray Cassin, Tim Sullivan and Rick Kane. The final product was much improved by your judicious road testing. All errors of fact and judgment remain my own. Tim also gave crucial ongoing technical advice on mining technology in his role as Museums Director at Sovereign Hill.
Jacinta di Mase, my literary agent, for her quiet dignity and steely determination to make this book fly. You are a ripper.
The team at Text. What a dream it has been to work with you all. Thanks to Michael Heyward for bringing me into the fold, and to Emily Booth, Jane Novak, Rachel Shepheard, Kirsty Wilson, Shalini Kunahlan and Chong Weng Ho for bringing the book to life. Hats off to my editor, Mandy Brett, for her skill and fine mind. There are not enough thank-yous, Mandy.
Friends and family, so many of you, but especially Justine Sless and Katrina Carling for school pick-ups and sleep-overs on demand; Richard Perry for a lifetime of books; John Goldlust for lunchtime chats; Madeleine and George Wright for their faith; and Ruth Leonards, mother extraordinaire, for letting a thousand kindnesses bloom.
Bernie, Noah and Esther Wright, my favourite people.
And Damien Wright, who has loved me and loved me and loved me through a lot.
All illustrations are courtesy State Library of Victoria unless otherwise stated.
Endpapers
The digger's road guide to the gold mines of Victoria, and the country extending 210 miles round Melbourne
. âCarefully compiled from authentic sources & lithographed by Edwd. Gilks. Aug. 1853'. Published by S. Leigh 93 Flinders Lane East.
Plate section one
1
Queen Rose
: Ballarat Historical Society Collection.
2 Eugene von Guérard,
Old Ballarat as it Was in the Summer of 1853â54
, 1884, oil on canvas. Collection: Art Gallery of Ballarat. Gift of James Oddie on Eureka Day, 1885.
Ballarat 1.8. Aug 1853.
Eugene von Guérard 1811â1901.
3
Alarming Prospect, Single Ladies off to the Diggings
, 1853. John Leech 1817â64. Issued as frontispiece to
Punch'
s âPocket Book', 1853.
Travelling to the Diggings, the Keilor Plains. Victoria.
1853. John Alexander Gilfillan 1793â1864.
Illustrated London News
, February 26, 1853. âSketches from the Victoria Gold Diggings'
.
4
Lucky Digger that Returned
. Victorian Gold Fields 1852â3. S. T. Gill, 1818â80.
detail from
The girls the diggers left behind, and what they had to do
. 1851. William Strutt,
Victoria the Golden
, sketchbook. From the Victorian Parliamentary Library via SLV.
Plate section two
1
Zealous Gold Diggers
,
Bendigo July 1st /52
. S. T. Gill.
Sly Grog Shanty
. Victorian Gold Fields 1852â3. S. T. Gill.
2 Sarah Hanmer: courtesy Lorraine Brownlie.
3
Interior of Adelphi Theatre, Ballarat 1855
, artist unknown.
Store at the Diggings
, 1854, Thomas Ham engraver 1821â1870.
4
Subscription Ball
(sketch), 1854, S. T. Gill.
âA Very Just Complaint': cartoon from
Melbourne Punch
, 1856.
Plate section three
The man Scoby mentioned in the printed form as killed, was hid in the Abbotsford Convent during the riots, under the influence of Peter Lalor late speaker of the Victorian Legislative Assembly and his cousin or uncle one Father Kennedy who had charge of the Catholics Church at Ballarat at the time of riots in fact they caused the riots. See officials report on Ballarat riots.
I am given to understand that Scoby is living at Dowling Forest near Ballarat his two sons George and James Scoby, keeps (livery stables) at Ballarat.
At the time of the riots Scoby was a young man, unmarried he is about 60 years now.
10 April 18/92
3 Charles A. Doudiet.
Swearing allegiance to the âSouthern Cross'
, 1854, watercolour on paper. Collection: Art Gallery of Ballarat. Purchased by the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery with the assistance of many donors, 1996.
Bakery Hill Meeting Poster: courtesy State of Victoria. Public Record Office Victoria, Eureka Stockade Historical Collection, VPRS 5527/P/4.
Katholisch Kapelle aus den Gravel Pit Lunis 3u Ballarat Januav 1854
, Eugene von Guérard.
4 Eliza Howard née Darcy, Patrick Howard and family: courtesy Ella Hancock and Adele Howard.
Eureka veterans at the 1904 anniversary: kind permission of Ballarat Heritage Services.
PREFACE
1
A copy of Deegan's lecture, âThe Mining Camps of the Fifties', is held by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.
2
Geoffrey Blainey drew the arresting word picture in a discussion with Tony Jones on the ABC's
Lateline
on 7 May 2001.
3
Argus
, 6 December 1854.
4
The full speech can be downloaded from the Whitlam Institute's website.
INTRODUCTION: DUST AND RATTLING BONES
1
H. R. Nicholls published his account, âReminiscences of the Eureka Stockade', in 1890.
2
The number of miners killed during and after the Eureka clash is highly contentious. The conclusion to this book explains why. Twenty-seven men are listed as died from wounds received on 3 December, registered on Ballarat District Death Register on 20 June 1855. At least three bodies are known to have been buried at sites other than Ballarat: Ian MacFarlane,
Eureka from the Official Records
(Melbourne: Public Records Office Victoria, 1995), 104. Dorothy Wickham has also traced nine other civilians reported as dead of wounds inflicted at Eureka in other sources: Dorothy Wickham,
Deaths at Eureka
(Ballarat: Ballarat Heritage Services, 1996), 48. Peter Lalor listed twenty dead in his published account of the affray:
Age
, 7 April 1855. In 1892, this list was inscribed on a Ballarat statue in Lalor's honour, with the words
and others who were killed
tacked on the end. For the full text of the statue inscription, see Bob O'Brien,
Massacre at Eureka: The Untold Story
(Ballarat: The Sovereign Hill Museums Association, 1992), 132. Greg Blake has recently claimed that these âothers' may number at least twenty-one unidentified casualties. Blake also concludes that there were many more military casualties than the four military officially reported. See Gregory Blake,
To Pierce the Tyrant's Heart: The Battle for the Eureka Stockade, 3 December 1854
(Loftus, ACT: Australian Army History Unit, 2009), 198â200. Some witnesses later reported up to fifty dead of wounds sustained during the battle. See chapter 12 of this book. The real figure may never be known.
3
The observations of Charles Evans are all drawn from his diary, written between 24 September 1853 and 21 January 1855. Until 2012, this diary was known as the âSamuel Lazarus diary'. My research discovered that Charles Evans was the true author of the famous goldfields diary. For an account of the research journey that led to the official change in provenance, see Clare Wright, âDesperately Seeking Samuel: A Diary Lost and Found,'
La Trobe Journal
90(2012):6â22.
4
Ballarat Times
, 3 December 1856.
5
These population figures are from Public Record Office Victoria (hereinafter PROV), VPRS 1189/95 M55/443, monthly returns of the Gold Fields Commission. Population statistics for Ballarat and the goldfields 1854 are also found in VPRS 1189/95 L55/1734, VPRS 1189/94 and VPRS 1085/09. These figures are sometimes inconsistent with each other, and occasionally change markedly from month to month.
6
This quote is in the Andrew Crowley file in the Montrose Cottage Collection held at the Gold Museum, Ballarat.
7
All observations of Maggie Johnston are drawn from this diary. Ellen Campbell has now lodged a transcript of the diary at the State Library of Victoria. Margaret (Maggie) Johnston. Diary, transcript, 1854 May 18âOct. 17 1856, 1854. State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection MS 1641288.
8
Ballarat Star
, 26 July 1884.
9
Ballarat Star
, 28 November 1884.
10
Argus
, 4 December 1854, 9. There is no registered death for Catherine Smith in 1854 or 1855. There is a Moyle family still living in Upwey, but my attempts to contact them have been unproductive.
ONE: A VIRGIN COUNTRY
1
Scottish journalist and politician Thomas McCombie had immigrated to Victoria in 1841. These observations are excerpted from McCombie's later writings,
Australian Sketches
, penned after his return to England in 1859. âSketching' Australia was a popular pastime, akin to today's travel writing, and there are many published
Australian Sketches
.
2
Henry Mundy wrote his remarkable 730-page memoirs sometime before his death in 1912.
3
William Howitt's famous work,
Land, Labour and Gold
, was published in London in 1855, on his return to England after two years in Victoria. William's wife, Mary Howitt, with whom he co-authored 180 published works of poetry and prose, did not accompany her husband and two sons to Australia.
4
It was quite common for a ship to have its own in-house newspaper, circulated by an enterprising editor who had brought a small printing press on board. Ship's newspapers contained news of births, deaths and marriages during the journey, shipboard gossip, notices for entertainments, advertisements for items being bought or sold, as well as editorial comments about what immigrants could expect in their new life in the colonies. The State Library of Victoria holds all ten volumes of the
Marco Polo Chronicle
, published by Francis Whitfield Robinson and edited by Dr Gillespie.