1891
A pair of shears
‘If blood should stain the wattle’
These metal hand shears, with their triangular blades and rounded handle, are made in two pieces, bolted together at the top. They are believed to date from the 19th-century shearers’ strike.
The power of the unions, especially the shearers’ union, was growing, and from 1890 the shearers’ union sought to extend that power by closing the shop: shutting down any shearing sheds that employed non-union labour.
It was raining at Logan Downs Station on 5 January 1891. Roughly 120 workers gathered to hear the boss, Frederick Fairbairn, read out the new shearing agreement. They were presented with a contract that stipulated the right of any worker, union or otherwise, to work the shearing shed and the right to ‘give or accept work without interference or molestation’.
The shearers refused and walked off, setting up camp on the banks of Wolfang Creek. Shearers from Gordon Downs and Mount Abundance next went out on strike. The Logan Downs scene was soon acted out throughout central and western Queensland.
The striking workers met at Barcaldine on 1 February 1891 to assert that a line had been drawn in the sand. A fortnight later some 150 ‘scabs’ turned up from Victoria by ship, docking at Rockhampton. An open-air meeting at Barcaldine on 15 February declared the woolsheds at Bimberah, Beaconsfield, Barcaldine Downs, Lorne Minnie Downs, Bowen Downs, Northampton Downs, Maneroo, Isis Downs, Salter Creek and many more ‘black’. The squatters hired 2000 workers from Victoria, and there were Aboriginal and Chinese workers in the area who were prepared to take lower wages.
The arrival of scab labour turned up the heat. The unions brought firearms and ammunition to the district and the police and military presence was increased. It was more by luck than good management that no one was killed. Thousands of workers set up in tent towns around southern Queensland. Over the coming months unionists set shearing sheds and fences alight, riots were staged and picket lines patrolled. Bullock teams were attacked and scab labour was intimidated. There was a genuine fear of large-scale civil unrest. At Barcaldine, 1500 unionists faced off against a police contingent as scab labour arrived. There were several thousand angry unionists and a cavalry unit of as many as 200 mounted horsemen versus soldiers armed with Nordenfelt machine guns and Martini–Henri rifles. At other riots, bayonets were drawn.
Throughout the next six months, Barcaldine, about 1100 kilometres north-west of Brisbane, was the centre of operations. The town featured a large ghost gum (Corymbia aparrerinja) and this tree has slipped into legend as ‘the Tree of Knowledge’. According to The Worker: ‘The thousand-odd men at Barcaldine are encamped in a regular canvas town, and from a tree the blue [Eureka] flag is flying.’ In fact, the threat of violence and riot was much greater in Queensland than it had been on the Victorian goldfields.
The authorities charged 14 union leaders with sedition and conspiracy against the Crown and they were each sentenced to three years’ jail. A gathering of remaining union leaders and rank and file met, according to legend, under the Tree of Knowledge and at this point changed the labour movement’s strategy and tactics. Instead of direct action alone, the unions would also use the ballot box and form ‘Labour Electoral Leagues’, which evolved quickly into the Australian Labor Party (ALP) – the oldest political party in Australia.
The movement towards a political wing of the union movement had had green shoots elsewhere around the country, but it was the shearers’ strike that provided the catalyst for the formation of the party. In 1892, the manifesto of the Queensland Labour Party, a foundation document of the ALP, was read out at the foot of the tree.
But after six months, the shearers’ resources were spent and they gave in. The end of the strike came as a great blow to many activists. Journalist William Lane was particularly devastated. Lane had founded the Australian Labour Federation and was the editor of The Worker, for which paper he had covered the union trials. He was shaken by the result and hatched a plan to create a new, utopian society of Australians in the jungles of Paraguay – which he did in one of the legendary disasters of Australian history.
There was another shearers’ strike in 1894 when the graziers wanted to dramatically reduce the wage for shearing 100 sheep. Martial law was introduced in Winton, Queensland. This strike and the associated battles spread across the state. A number of sheds were burned and there was some small-arms conflict. At Dagworth Station the shearing shed was torched and 1240 sheep were killed. At least one unionist was killed. This incident and the pursuit of the unionists were immortalised by Banjo Paterson in his lyrics for ‘Waltzing Matilda’.
The 1891 strike had also been committed to verse by Henry Lawson and published by Lane in The Worker. Lawson’s poem ‘Freedom on the Wallaby’ read, in part:
So we must fly a rebel flag,
As others did before us,
And we must sing a rebel song
And join in rebel chorus.
We’ll make the tyrants feel the sting
O’ those that they would throttle;
They needn’t say the fault is ours
If blood should stain the wattle!