The Night They Stormed Eureka (24 page)

She pulled at the hem of her T-shirt and rubbed the lichen away from the rest of the inscription.

Sacred to the memory of Percival Puddleham (1801–1884) and his dear wife Elsie (1814–1854) and their most beloved children, Sam and Lucy. He giveth his eternal rest.

There were no other dates. Perhaps, thought Sam, whoever had ordered the stone carved hadn’t known when Lucy lived and died. Or maybe they just didn’t want to put Lucy’s dates there without hers as well.

Mr Puddleham had loved her. He hadn’t just accepted her for his wife’s sake. They had been a family.

‘Goodbye,’ she whispered. She’d bring flowers, she thought, even if she had to reach over fences in the dark tonight to pick them.

So Mr Puddleham had survived. He’d lived for another thirty years. And not married again, she supposed, or had other children. But she hoped he had been happy. She would find out. Somewhere there’d be a record of the hotel — she knew he’d have opened one. No way would he let his Elsie down.

And what of George and the Professor? If they’d started their school, maybe she could find a trace of them in a history book or someone’s old letters. They all still seemed so close. If she shut her eyes maybe she’d be there again, could smell the wood smoke, the flames from burning tents, the blood …

It was so hard to think. The mind can only take in so much, she thought. My mind is full. I should be weeping for Mrs Puddleham, crying for the men who died for freedom, sobbing for the lost hopes, that lost proud flag …

But I’m here. It’s gone.

For a moment the sense of loss was so strong that she worried that she would faint.

And then she saw it. A T-shirt, on a young man riding past on his bicycle. The Eureka flag, which she had just seen destroyed.

Not gone, she thought. They are still there in the past. The past is always with us, and Eureka … the stockade fell, but the message changed Australia. We didn’t lose last night. We won. Last night we won Eureka.

I was part of it, she thought. I can cook a dumpling and bake Welsh cakes. I can hug another person now, and waterproof a tent. Maybe I should wear a T-shirt too — one that says: ‘I served stew at the Stockade'.

The dog sat up. He barked once, sharply.

‘Sam?’ It was the bushranger’s voice, a boy with George’s eyes. She shook her head. No, not George or the bushranger. Nick. She looked across the silent graves.

‘I said she’d be here.’ Nick opened the graveyard gate with Mrs Quant and Liz behind him.

Liz stared at the dog. ‘It’s just like Bitsa. Here, boy!’ she called eagerly.

The dog stayed close to Sam.

Liz ran towards her, the others following. ‘Sam, are you okay? We were worried!’

‘I’m fine,’ she began, then stopped, her hand on the dog’s head. He gazed up at her, trusting, just as he had gazed at Happy Jack. Sometimes you need to stand together. When you stand together you can change the world.

Somewhere in the past a family and friends had loved her. Somewhere they had stood side by side, all of them together achieving what none of them could do alone. Somewhere, maybe, even now, a gift of gold waited for her like the Professor had promised, just one among so many gifts from long ago.

It didn’t matter. Not just now, at any rate. At last she knew what she had to do. Sam brushed the hair from her face as the three of them came towards her, and tried to smile. It was hard. The bruise on her cheek was back.

‘I need help,’ she said. She stood by the silent grave, the dog by her side, and waited for her friends to reach her.

This is not a true story, but parts of it are true — the Eureka Rebellion and what led up to it, and life on the diggings, are as accurate as I can make them. There was a stockade, and yes, the rebels might just have made it — turned Australia into a republic, inspiring the colonies here to rebel against English rule just as the American colonies had. (And no, the rebellion was not all about paying for mining licences, whatever you have been told. The cost of the mining licences caused discontent, and starvation too. But if you read the speeches of the people who were there, you’ll see the stockade itself and the rebellion were about freedom and the right to vote — a revolution to bring democracy.)

The massive force at the stockade by the Saturday night is also accurate. Only about 120 men were left when the stockade was stormed early Sunday morning, but this was because of trickery. Governor Hotham had spies among the diggers, who lured most of the force out into the darkness. The Eureka Stockade was only a struggle, not a major battle. But if Hotham hadn’t moved so swiftly, it may well have been very different. The rebellion may well have spread to all the eastern colonies.

Those bits of the book are true.

The Puddlehams, Professor Shamus O’Blivion, Mr and Mrs Higgins, George and Sam are fiction. I have also simplified much of what happened in those tumultuous days that led to the uprising.

Much more happened than I’ve had Sam see here, but it would have made the story too complex to include it. Nor would one person — like Sam — have been aware of all the things happening in that turbulent time, even things that were taking place nearby. We know a lot more about the world around us these days, with TV, radio and the internet to spread the news, not to mention mobile phones. This book should be read as a story with a historical background, not as history.

Clothes on the diggings

Diggers mostly wore tough trousers in grey serge or denim from the California goldfields. Their shirts were red or blue and usually pretty faded. They usually wore broadbrimmed hats made from cabbage-tree leaves, and sometimes colourful sashes in red or blue or yellow, with maybe bright spotted handkerchiefs about their throats. Pink wasn’t a ‘girlie’ colour in those days. But servantswere supposed to only wear pastels, or dark colours, or white. Mrs Puddleham would have longed for a bright colour like pink.

Diggers

Anyone hunting for gold. Australian males might say ‘G’day, digger’ to any new person they met. In World War I Australian soldiers were called ‘diggers’ because they dug the trenches where they sheltered from enemy guns, but also because the word ‘digger’ had been used in a casual way since the goldrush days.

Drummer boy

The little drummer boy existed. Most onlookers — including the soldiers — assumed he was killed, and this might be one reason for the soldiers’ extreme violence after storming the stockade. But in fact he was taken to hospital and recovered.

Eureka

This was Ancient Greek for ‘I’ve found it’ — in this case, gold! (Unsuccessful diggers would declare their holes ‘blanks’ or ‘duffers'.)

Eureka flag

The new blue-and-white flag based on the Southern Cross, now known as the Eureka flag, first flew either at the Monster Meeting at Bakery Hill or the next day, Sunday 30 November.

There are many claims about who made or designed the flag. The most likely candidate seems to be a Canadian, Captain Charles Ross, who asked some diggers’ wives to make the flag, and drew them a sketch on a scrap of paper. The story goes that the women used tent material for the background, with the white cross and stars made from someone’s silk wedding dress. (Ross was wounded at the stockade and died the next day.)

Another story is that John Wilson, Inspector of Works at the Police Department, who was sympathetic to the miners, looked up at the sky the night before the Monster Meeting and got the idea for the flag. He told a tent-and-flag-maker, who made the flag for the meeting.

But the flag that flew at the Eureka Stockade is probably the one that is now in the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery — and the flag in the gallery isn’t made of silk or tent material. It’s made from thirteen pieces of very fine blue woollen cloth, possibly from cloth for a petticoat, four pieces of cotton twill for the cross and five pieces of fine cotton lawn for the stars. It was probably sewn by three women — probably Anastasia Withers, Anne Duke and Anastasia Hayes, who were in the stockade during the battle.

After the battle Trooper John King climbed the pole at the stockade and cut the flag down. His widow gave it on permanent loan to the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery.

There may have been an earlier flag, however, that
was
made of tent and wedding dress, as the original flag was certainly dragged down from the pole by soldiers at some stage before the stockade and another one quite likely hoisted instead.

Food on the diggings

The colonies had few roads — even in the towns, only a few streets were paved with bricks or cobbles. There were proper roads to a few outlying settlements, but none to the goldfields. It cost a lot to get food to the diggings — and you could make your fortune selling it for even more.

In 1852 a cartload of Tasmanian apples sold for fifty-seven pounds — enough money for a family to live on for a year.

Meat was bought from local squatters or farmers. A live sheep cost about twelve shillings, or sixteen shillings butchered into various cuts.

Treacle was sold in tins and lasted well even on long journeys to the goldfields or distant farms. It was the one luxury that poor farmers, as well as diggers, could enjoy.

Governor Hotham

It would be easy to make Governor Hotham a villain — and many miners believed he was one. Instead he, too, was trying to do his best with a government badly in debt, and a local council made up of squatters and merchants — wealthy men of property who did have the vote — who insisted that taxes be levied mostly on miners, not on themselves.

Grog shops and shanties

Illegal pubs, often just tents, where ‘hooch’ was brewed.

Joes

‘Joe’ was used to refer to anyone in authority, but mostly to either licence inspectors or troopers, who were also given the job of checking for licences. Troopers were a bit like our police.

The term ‘Joe’ was first used at the time of Governor Charles Joseph Latrobe — Joe. His troopers were called ‘Joe’s traps'. The expression was later shortened to ‘Joe’ or ‘the Joes'.

Joe! Joe! Joe!

The cry of the diggers to say the troopers were coming to check licences.

New chum

Someone who had just arrived in Australia, including immigrants who went to the diggings.

Pattens

Wooden clogs, sometimes with a metal edging, which fitted over your shoes to keep you high out of the mud. Also good for stamping on cockroaches and snails.

Peter Lalor

Peter Lalor was born in 1827. He was an Irish engineer who worked on the Melbourne-to-Geelong railway before he joined the gold rush. He had lived through the Irish Potato Famine of 1846–1850, when one million Irish died of starvation while food continued to be exported from Ireland to make money for the absent English owners of much of the country. He’d also seen the failed Irish rebellion against Britain in 1848, in which his brother fought. His father had been an Irish member of parliament and had organised farmers armed with pitchforks to resist landlords who tried to evict poor farmers who couldn’t pay their rent.

After the stockade was stormed Lalor hid down a mineshaft, and then was helped back up to a hut in the ruined stockade. He was taken to Father Smyth’s presbytery, where his arm was amputated by Dr Doyle, on the night of 4 December. Then, with his bleeding stump, he escaped on Father Smyth’s horse to Warrenheip.

Anastasia Hayes, who had helped sew the flag, took Lalor’s amputated arm and threw it down a mineshaft so the troops wouldn’t find it.

A two-hundred-pound reward was offered for his capture.

After a few weeks’ recovery Lalor hid in a wagon and was taken to Geelong where his sweetheart Alice Dunne hid him and looked after him. They were married on 10 July 1855.

Lalor was never arrested.

Lalor eventually became a member of the Victorian parliament and was made the Minister for Railways. He became more conservative as he got older and, when the railway workers went on strike to get more than one day off a week, he brought in Chinese workers to replace them. The workers barricaded the Geelong and Clunes roads and threw bricks at the Chinese workers.

Petty fours

Mrs Puddleham’s pronunciation of the French
petits fours,
small sweet biscuits.

Professor Shamus O’Blivion

If you read stories written during the gold rushes you may come across characters called ‘Gentlemen Once'. These were remittance men — men paid allowances by their families back in Europe to make sure they stayed far away. Younger sons of the nobility or wealthy merchants, ex-university professors and, yes, even a man who claimed he had been Queen Victoria’s butler, worked side by side on the diggings. Australia was a long way from their past lives, and a very good place to hide from their histories — or their true selves.

Happy Jack and the Lemonade Man

Peter Lalor listed Happy Jack and ‘the lemonade man’ among the dead. Their true names aren’t known. Perhaps their families, if they had any, never knew what happened to them.

The dog

Soon after the stockade fell witnesses reported a dog sitting on the body of its master, howling. I chose to give the dog to Happy Jack.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

This is Shakespeare, from a soliloquy delivered by Macbeth. I’ve quoted it in another book too.

Redcoats

British soldiers in those days, many of whom were stationed in colonies like those in Australia, still wore bright red coats. Blue-coated troopers were in charge of local law and order — such as it was. The military was called in when the Governor decided that law and order had broken down.

Rifles and muskets

Rifles — weapons with ‘rifled’ grooves in their long barrels to give the ammunition greater velocity — were mostly used by men who were very good shots. Muskets were ‘smoothbore’ — bigger weapons that shot much larger ammunition, but not as far and nowhere near as accurately. Most of the soldiers at Eureka were armed with muskets, as the military tactics of the day involved standing in lines or squares and firing so many shots more or less at once en masse into the enemy that they didn’t need to be accurate. This was also one of the reasons the rebel army had to practise drilling, marching and firing in line. They weren’t just trying to look like soldiers — they needed to learn to stand and fire together to hit the targets.