10 The End of an Era

In THE Camp it was by no means a foregone conclusion that the old ways were over. For two weeks, life there had been well-nigh intolerable with the constant expectation of an attack at any moment of the night. The arrival of reinforcements on Tuesday and the frantic setting up of fortifications had comforted Rede and his closest advisers, Thomas, Pasley and the other military commanders. When they reviewed the events of Wednesday they concluded that, had the conduct of the diggers at the monster meeting been such as to warrant their interference, it would have had a successful outcome given the available forces. In their view the deployment of armed troops in considerable numbers on the field was the precise reason why the Bakery Hill meeting passed off so quietly. Gordon Evans, Inspector of Police, wrote that the presence of the troops had caused ‘panic amongst the ill-disposed and given confidence to the Government’, while Pasley had watched the meeting from the Camp and confidently judged that Bakery Hill was ‘in a position convenient for military operations’.1

In a mood of such buoyancy, and given even the faintest hope that the diggers would turn to constitutional means and petition through their moderate elements for redress, it was remotely possible that prudence and forbearance would prevail in the Camp. Rede himself had admitted that the licence fee and the methods of its collection were obnoxious, and the mere burning of licences constituted no act of sedition or even of law breaking. But gumption and tolerance were singularly lacking amongst the men whom Rede gathered around him on that Wednesday evening. They were now convinced that no attack would be made upon the Camp, so what purpose could be served by provocation? When he sat down to write a sub-title to his book a year later, Carboni came as close as anyone ever could to summing up the immediate causes of what followed in the next four days. In his text he said that, had it been possible to get the correspondence between Rede and Hotham, he would ‘therein unravel the Mystery of the Eureka massacre’. His sub-title did it neatly enough by referring to all that happened at Eureka as ‘The Consequence of Some Pirates Wanting on Quarter-Deck a Rebellion’. To Carboni, the pirates were those who, on their quarter-deck at the Camp and in Melbourne, had used authority in a grossly illegitimate and unjust manner, and who now wanted, even needed, a rebellion in order to restore some semblance of legitimacy to their long-continued behaviour. Rede and his advisers settled down that night to prepare an act of ‘petty official revenge’, not merely for the burning of the licences, but for the affront to their own dignity by the behaviour of the diggers since October.2

Pasley thought that it was ‘clearly necessary that some steps be taken to bring the matter to a crisis’. By so acting, he thought that the majority of decent diggers would realize that the game was up, and that it would be in their best interests to assist the authorities to put down the rebellious. As a consequence it was proposed that the police would set out on a licence hunt in the morning, strongly supported by the military. The possibility that there would be some ‘serious resistance’ was assumed, but a ‘firm front’ was needed in order to ensure that the ‘disaffected’ diggers would take up arms against the government, or their leaders would be discredited and lose their influence. In any case ‘a few days’ would suffice to settle the whole matter. What had begun in those early days on Ballarat, with the capitulation of the diggers when they first took out their licences, was to be brought to its logical conclusion by the same set of authorities three years later. The diggers would pay up—or else. The actual price was irrelevant. At about midnight, before they retired for the evening, Rede, Pasley and Evans sat down to write to their superiors in Melbourne. They were careful to make it plain that they were all in full agreement with both the nature of the problem and with what should be their first step on the morrow as a means to remedy it.3

At 10 a.m. on Thursday, 30 November, Carboni retired to his tent on the Eureka for his breakfast and to take a rest, as he had been at work since sunrise. All was quiet, with the field returned to its normal state of fervent industry. Even the boys of the Tipperary mob, led by ‘Three finger Jack’, were earnest in their pursuit of a lead. Carboni was finishing his letter to Archer and urging him to influence Hotham to abolish that ‘abomination’—the licence system, to show mercy and release the state prisoners, and to get rid of all the ‘pack’ at the Camp who were ‘detested’ by the diggers, with the exception of the magistrate, Hackett. He was about to sign off when word came in the form of the ‘usual Irish cry’ to run smartly to the Gravel Pits where the ‘traps’ were out and ‘playing hell with the diggers’. On the previous day he had paid his 2s 6d for a ticket of membership of the Reform League and, while he was not prepared ‘to give half-a-crown for the whole fixtures at the Camp’, he decided that, as he was committed formally to the cause, it was time to be up and off to see what was happening at the Pits.4

What was actually happening there was little more than an extended version of that to which the diggers were long accustomed, except for the more recent variation of military might. It was merely another digger hunt. Johnston, whose district was the Gravel Pits, arrived with police, was met with stones, and retired. Rede sent more police but, as a ‘mob’ had assembled declaring they would not take out licences, he went himself to harangue them about the law and his duty to enforce it, and to remind them that Hotham would do away with the fee if the newly appointed commission advised it. He asked them to disperse. Very few obeyed him so he read the Riot Act—with great difficulty, partly because his horse kept rearing. The troops ‘advanced in skirmishing order across the flat with cavalry on both flanks and in the centre’. A few shots were fired by both sides, but little resistance was shown and no loyal help offered. One policeman and one digger suffered minor wounds, while eight diggers were arrested or captured and taken to the Camp, presumably on the grounds of their riotous behaviour. According to Rede, ‘Our object was gained; we maintained the law’. He was moved to remark that, had it been otherwise and had resistance been offered, there would have been ‘considerable slaughter’. One of the officials said on departure, ‘If you do not pay your licences, how are we to be supported?’ and asserted that there were some disaffected scoundrels whom he was determined to arrest. Rede met Humffray and admonished him: ‘See now the consequences of your agitation,’ to which the quick answer was, ‘No, but see the consequences of impolitic coercion’.5

If Humffray deplored the consequences he saw about him on the Gravel Pits, he surely had greater reason to wring his hands over what occurred shortly afterwards. Thirty-five years later, in 1889, when the tongues of almost all those who could speak were silenced by death or dispersion, he wrote of having been threatened with violence by physical force on that fateful afternoon. But by then he was a well-established figure in Victorian society. Immediately after the event he called Rede the ‘arch rioter’ of that Thursday and wrote:

The diggers of Ballarat were attacked by a military body under the command of civil (?) officers, for the production of licence-papers and, if they refused to be arrested, deliberately shot at. The diggers did not take up arms, properly speaking, against the government, but to defend themselves against the bayonets, bullets and swords of the insolent officials in their unconstitutional attack, who were a class that would disgrace any government, by their maladministration of the law.

Those words were more consistent with the Humffray of late 1854. Their leader in the long hours of tribulation before that afternoon of 29 November, he remained as one with them in the fundamentals of their cause, although his own principles had demanded that he take up no arms with them.6

If it were clear to Rede by noon that he had managed to maintain the law, it was equally clear to the diggers that further maintenance of it, in that particular manner, was not going to be tolerated. Their leadership was in disarray, the League hardly existed beyond its rudimentary membership and looked to Sunday for its reformation. Work had again been interrupted with consequent flooding of shafts, eight diggers were under arrest at the Camp, and the deplorable business of licence hunting was being resumed in a fashion more odious than previously had been experienced. They themselves were in large measure unarmed and untrained, but their numerical strength was overwhelming. Furthermore they occupied a terrain which Hotham had observed earlier was singularly unsuitable for offensive action on the part of the military force. Their gravest danger was to come together in any locality where they could be attacked. Even Bakery Hill was unsafe because it was an open, cleared space where they could be surrounded and trapped, and it was too close to the Camp itself for comfort.

Beyond all this the diggers’ psychological disadvantages were enormous. Certainly there were strong, emotional responses to the situation in which they had been placed, yet it was clear, even to hotheads, that emotions were no match for lead and steel. The diggers also felt the desire, even the compulsion, to react, to ‘hit back’ and render impotent the force of the aggressor. Their weakness lay in the very nature of the aggressor rather than in their reaction to the repeated acts of aggression. The aggressor represented—indeed made partly incarnate—the most powerful nation on Earth. To the Irish among them, the loss of language itself, the fact that they were now British rather than Irish, the centuries-old conflict in which they had always been crushed, the memories of battles such as Vinegar Hill in which their men had been destroyed, the eternal cringing and half-shame which others forced upon them, and their oft-derided accent and position of subservience all added up to a negative for which only death could compensate. Death itself, for some, was an honourable alternative to dishonourable assimilation.

To many others it was all bordering on the incomprehensible, and for them Carboni was the spokesman. They too had suffered the aggressor in their European homelands, but Britain had stood as the beacon of freedom and democracy. How could it be that in this new land the British subjected them to injustice, to scandalous ineptitude, to haughtiness and dishonour? Finally there were the Americans, but whether it was that their banner of republicanism was too flagrant, their business interests too predominant or their cynicism too profound, the fact remained that, in the hour of decision on that Thursday, they were almost overwhelmingly silent. Only in the person of one of their most abject—a black man named John Joseph—were they finally represented.

The departure of the police and military with their prisoners left in the vicinity of the Gravel Pits an enraged but helpless mass of diggers who immediately began to throng around the old spot, Bakery Hill. Lalor mounted a stump and called upon them to form into ranks, while Alfred Black, George’s brother, took down the names of each division with its captain. Lalor asked Carboni to act as interpreter and specifically to tell those without firearms to make pikes from poles by attaching a shaft of steel to the end. Wisely the decision was taken to leave Bakery Hill and march to the Eureka where they would be on less exposed ground. The Southern Cross was unfurled, and Captain Ross, the young Canadian who had requested two diggers’ wives to make it for the Wednesday meeting, carried the flag at the head of the column.7 Behind Ross followed a motley lot, some armed only with picks and shovels. Numbering about one thousand, they went by the Catholic church, crossed a gully and came at length to a small hill on the Eureka. At that place Lalor gave his first order. It had nothing to do with rebellion, nor indeed anything at all to do with the resolution whereby they had pledged to ‘defend and protect’ arrested diggers—under which category the prisoners in the Camp presumably fell. The order was ‘to defend ourselves among the holes in case the hunt should be attempted in our quarters’.8

A meeting of the captains and other persons regarded as leaders immediately took place in a store run by Martin and Anne Diamond. Carboni named seven of them, including himself. Edward Thonen, born in Elbertfeld, Prussia, was aged about thirty. He sold lemonade on the fields and was reputed to be a peerless chess player. John Manning, Timothy Hayes and Peter Lalor were there and they, with Patrick Curtain, leader of the pikemen, made up the Irish representation. Kennedy was certainly present, although unnamed, and very probably Captain James McGill, who claimed to have been trained at the West Point military academy. George Black, who would not be seen after Friday, and Frederick Vern made up this emblematic thirteen. Those present constituted themselves into a ‘council of war for the defence’, without having any clarity as to what or whom they were to defend. Lalor was chosen as temporary president and asked to proceed with the election of a commander-in-chief. He made a short speech in which he disclaimed any knowledge of military matters, stated that he was disappointed that Humffray was no longer their leader and told them that, if he were chosen as commander, he would not shrink back, but would do his duty. ‘I tell you gentlemen, if once I pledge my hand to the diggers, I will neither defile it with treachery, nor render it contemptible by cowardice’.

Carboni declined to lead, despite some knowledge of armed aggression derived from his involvement with Italian insurrections. His grounds were that a Briton ought to be chosen. Vern pointed out that he would be able to provide a German rifle brigade of 500 men and clearly felt he would make an appropriate chieftain. But Lalor had already assumed moral command, and it was natural that the meeting voted for him. It was understood that his role was to organize the diggers for defence and ‘to resist force by force’.9 To that purpose all hands fell to, assembling rude fortifications, mostly of slabs, to enclose an area of about an acre. They shovelled minor earthworks around the slabs for added strength. There were stores within the area, and some diggers’ tents and huts, but it was mostly open ground on a slight prominence. To the south it abutted the Melbourne road and it lay only two hundred yards from the ruins of Bentley’s hotel. As the lead had not been followed that far, the ground was unmarked except for a few shallow shepherds’ holes making it a suitable place for drilling. In this simple manner the Eureka palisade was formed and some rough drilling took place while Henry Goodenough, both police constable and agent provocateur, went about during the whole afternoon urging an immediate attack on the Camp. He was able to return to Rede with the information that at 4 o’clock on the following morning such an attack would take place—an attack which was no more than the emanation of his own imagination.10

Bakery Hill was still symbolically the place of digger resistance and it was thought that more recruits would be gained by an official appearance there of the new commander. With hopes high, another meeting took place on the Hill, as the sun was setting beyond Langi Ghiran further to the west. Up went the Southern Cross, beneath which stood its ‘bridegroom’, Captain Ross, with his division about him and his sword in hand. Lalor, rifle in his left hand, mounted the stump again, and asked all to leave who were not prepared to swear an oath. No account was kept of those who left, but the others fell in by divisions around the flagstaff, led by their captains who saluted Lalor. The ardour of noontide had already passed for, of the 1,000 who had marched to the Eureka, only half were left, but they were at least organized, armed—if only rudimentarily—and determined. Lalor knelt, bareheaded and with his right hand pointed upwards. The first oath on Australian soil to a flag that was not British was sworn late on that afternoon of Thursday, 30 November 1854—sworn by men who in large measure owed fealty to Britain. Lalor proclaimed with a firm voice: ‘We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other, and fight to defend our rights and liberties’. An ‘Amen’ came loudly from the 500.11 They were doing no more than pledging themselves to resist if, from the Camp across the little valley, men again issued forth to coerce them at the point of bayonet, sword or rifle. That done they went back to the Eureka, as it was neither wise nor feasible to remain on Bakery Hill. Again the Southern Cross accompanied them and there, for a short while, it remained proudly unfurled.

That night no one with a sense of responsibility rested quietly on the Ballarat field. At the Camp further preparations were made for the diggers’ attack, now expected hourly. All the men able to bear arms did so and stood about talking in whispers, or resting fitfully on the rough ground. The horses of the troopers and cavalry were saddled ready for immediate action, sentries stood alert and all lights were doused or shaded. Meanwhile, in the pitiful fortification at Eureka no preparations were being made for an attack on authority. Indeed, little was done in preparation to repel one should it come from the Camp. With strict orders from Lalor to behave with moderation, some men were sent out to collect arms and provisions, for which receipts were to be issued and a promise of future payment made. All diggers had been enjoined to respect property, the penalty for infringement being extreme.12 Sentries were posted between Eureka and the Camp, although the likelihood of a military or police detachment being able to cross the valley without widespread detection was remote. In all a situation bordering on the outlandish had been reached, because no one on either side knew quite what to do.

Nevertheless, for the diggers, action was imperative. The soldiers, police and other assorted members of officialdom in the Camp were paid and foraged for doing exactly what they were about—upholding the Queen’s authority on the goldfield. But those who were flouting that authority on Eureka stood to lose by every hour that passed. Days of lucrative or hopeful endeavour had already been squandered in all this welter of protest, while shafts filled up with water and tools lay idle. A meeting had been called for Sunday. In the meantime, were they to stand about fretting and purposeless? A die had been cast in two ways which made any immediate return to normality impossible. It was not the actual taking up of their meagre arms or their enclosing of an acre of ground that mattered a whit. In a trice they could lay down their arms, leave their fortifications and return to work. Authority would doubtless be irked at their behaviour of Thursday, but another Melbourne commission was ready to investigate the situation. Surely a peaceful solution, with something given by both sides, and honour retained, was better than bloodshed. Yet they were bound by the die to some final form of negotiation for many of them no longer possessed licences, while eight others lay in the Camp under arrest. The diggers could still hope that reason would yet prevail and a truce be proclaimed. What they did not realize was that it was firmly held in the Camp that there was only one side with rights in the matter. As far as Rede, Thomas, Pasley and those near to them were concerned, pride, honour and even grandiose ideas for peace in the colony demanded that their side prevail.

The seriousness of the situation was apparent to Lalor. He called a meeting of his immediate lieutenants at which they deliberated upon a course of action. It was decided to send a deputation to Rede in an attempt to solve the impasse. Provided the Commissioner would give an assurance not to go out on licence hunts, and to release the prisoners forthwith, the diggers would lay down their arms and return to work. Carboni, George Black and Father Smyth were elected as their representatives, and when word of this decision was conveyed to the men it was received with considerable approval and genuine enthusiasm. It had been a wet and dreary evening and few wanted to prolong the business of protest, armed or otherwise. George Black was an obvious choice, being gifted with eloquence and reason, but Lalor’s reason for nominating Carboni is unclear, unless he knew that the Italian had had some passing acquaintance with Rede on previous occasions. The priest had already acted as a go-between, and his presence was probably deemed prudent to ensure that the delegation gained entry to the Camp and was heard by Rede.

When they arrived at the bridge over the Yarrowee the police intervened, but Smyth was allowed to go ahead and announce their intentions. Sub-Inspector Taylor appeared and took Black and Carboni to Rede, who had come out from the Camp to meet them as he thought it prudent not to permit the deputation to enter and see its fortifications. It was possible, after all, that they were spies rather than men on a serious errand. Rede stood, arm held in the manner of Napoleon, flanked on the right by Taylor who was uniformed and armed, with the police magistrate, Hackett, to his left. The priest joined his fellow delegates and Black immediately censured Rede for the licence hunt of that morning, reminding him that the diggers had taken a resolute stand at the meeting on the previous afternoon. Rede expostulated and asserted that no violence was intended, while Black retorted that ‘Britons hated to be bullied by the soldiery ...’ and then demanded, on behalf of the diggers, that their mates be released.

What ensued was almost a duplicate of the interview with Hotham on the previous Monday. Rede rejected the right of the deputation to demand anything on precisely the same grounds as had Hotham. Down the long centuries it had always been the same: only those with power could demand, while the rest petitioned or obeyed. If they put themselves in the false position of those who had power and demanded anything, they immediately destroyed their right to be heard at all. For Mr Commissioner Rede this was a perfecdy logical stand to take, as it had been for Hotham himself. No citizen or group of citizens could demand anything of Hotham, because he was responsible to his Queen. Hotham had put the unfortunate Rede in command on Ballarat and Rede was responsible only to what he was pleased to call ‘government’. One person alone represented authority on that cold, starry night with the moon shining in all its ‘southern splendour’ on the Commissioner who stood near an old gum. Rede became almost toad-like as he swelled with his vicarious power. The prisoners who were, in his estimation, guilty of a far worse crime than the mere infringement of the licence laws would remain ‘safe in chokey’, as Carboni put it later. They were guilty of the graver crime of riot, they would be brought to trial and Rede was not about ‘to interfere with the course of justice’. Charles Hackett, in the judgement of the diggers a very decent fellow, spoke his grave approbation to these sentiments, but agreed when Rede approved of bail for two of the diggers. The confrontation under the stars passed to the more fundamental point of the licence hunts.

It had long been conceded by anyone with a minimal degree of intelligence that the burdensome licensing system was at the best injudicious, and at the worst foul. Rede himself had pointed out to Hotham that the indignity to which the diggers were subjected by the manner of its enforcement was regarded by them all, even the least excitable, as outrageous. What demon of impatience or imprudence had moved him to the act of enforcement on that day remains obscure, but he was now presented with an opportunity to repair the damage and to be a man of wise moderation. It was a very simple thing the trio put to Rede. Let there be no more licence hunts, no more scouring of the fields by police and military, no more gross indignities to men hauled up from cold shafts and carted off to lock-ups, no more pecuniary benefits accruing to the law-enforcers—in short a halt to all that had so aggrieved the diggers over a space of three years. Surely, they thought, it was not too much to ask because their rider was that Rede acquiesce in it only until they had a further opportunity to petition Hotham on the matter. It was almost as if they said that they would abide by the Governor’s decision and that, should he eventually decide to continue with the system, they, like meek oxen, would accept the burden and subject themselves.

For this enormous favour the trio had something to offer. It would mean the end of resistance, a return to work by the diggers and a restoration of peace on the field. But Rede was not to be tempted by such honeyed words. What would Hotham think of him if he gave in now? Assuredly it would mean his sacking, but more importantly he was well aware that he had a ‘dooty to perform’ and, like it or not, he would do it. To this, Black interjected with the weighty consideration that, should the Commissioner persist in this slavish devotion to duty, it may well result in bloodshed. This remark forced Rede to state exactly what was in his mind in respect of the present situation. To him, and doubtless to those close to him, it was crazy to believe that the diggers wanted only relief from the licensing system. Rede had come to a profound conclusion. Clearly it was a far more complex matter than mere refusal of a tax. The Commissioner declared with some vigour, ‘The licence is a mere cloak to cover a democratic revolution’.

Mr Rede did not care to explain what such a revolution meant to him, but Black was quick to agree that the diggers merely rejected being forced to pay their tax ‘at the point of bayonet’. They also wanted the consequences of taxation, namely representation in the Legislative Council and an unlocking of the lands, so that their future as new settlers in the colony might be assured. Carboni interjected, perhaps thinking that such complex political ideas were too much for a man whose understanding of both democracy and revolution was scarcely in advance of that of a Bourbon prince. He insisted that the diggers had taken up their position to resist the way in which the licence system had been enforced. Speaking on behalf of those who had long suffered under the despotic and bloody regimes of continental Europe, Carboni declared, ‘We object to Austrian rule under the British flag’, which implied at least that in his and their estimation Britain was incapable of despotism. He went on to pledge that all would be well if only Rede would guarantee that there would be no further hunts until the Governor had made a decision. The priest intervened then and reminded Carboni that he could give no pledges, because it was up to Rede to make the initial concession. The diggers were not, and had not been, the aggressors. They bore no arms until they were coerced at the force of arms. Why should they lay them down now and possibly subject themselves to even worse coercion? Rede was quick to misunderstand the force of Father Smyth’s words and, placing his fingers on the Italian’s outstretched hands, he said, ‘My dear fellow, the licence is a mere catchword of the day, and they make a cat’s paw of you’. It was all over then. Rede said that he would make no pledge, but would give some consideration to how best he would organize further hunts for licences.13

Off into the night the trio went to report to the pitiful group of leaders on Eureka. Carboni felt he knew how things would turn out, and he gave it as his opinion that Rede would have no real say in the matter. On the morrow, or soon after, ‘he would come out licence-hunting on an improved style’.14 Rede and Hotham did not know, Carboni did not know, the so-called Council on Eureka did not know, that the first round in the battle of Eureka had been won on that Thursday, 30 November. It was won precisely because the diggers had not been duped into throwing down their arms, deserting the frail symbol of resistance called a stockade and returning to their holes to wrest their passing fortunes wrought in specks and nuggets. Had they done so, assuredly Rede and his assorted minions would have been out in force on the Friday to coerce, cajole, bully and even bayonet to ensure the payment of that odious fee. They stayed where they were, and all in the Camp knew it. That Thursday saw the end of a system in Victoria which was never to be repeated. It saw the end, too, of that whole structure of vileness called a Gold Commission. It saw the end of a police force organized to do little else than exact fines. For a few days yet it did not spell an end to the military bayonet on the goldfields, for there was further work for the military to do on Sunday morning. But an era was closed on the morning of 30 November 1854, for never again was a licence hunt perpetrated. Had they known of their achievement, the diggers could have rested peacefully that night on Eureka. As it was, they slept fitfully, for who could be sure that they would not at any hour be subjected to a superior force for which the earth ramparts and flimsy sticks of Eureka would be no obstacle?