Henry had never seen so many people all at once. Just about everyone who lived in Ballarat was at the meeting – men, women and children. Some of the children were playing catch-chasey around their parents’ legs. The grown-ups were talking together, but not many were smiling.

Henry was sweating from the heat but a little cold feeling of worry made him shiver. He hadn’t told Father he’d be late coming back to the claim, and he’d get a thrashing for sure. He flinched, almost feeling the thwack of the belt already. Once again he’d have disappointed his father and made him angry. And what for? It wasn’t as if he cared about James Scobie, or the Bentleys.

‘There’s traps everywhere,’ Frank said loudly, an inch away from Henry’s ear. ‘They’re expecting trouble, and they’ll get it.’ Frank had swung his youngest brother, baby Joseph, up on his shoulders. Mrs Shanahan stood next to him with Bridget and Michael.

‘This is the beginning, my covies,’ Jack said, taking off his hat and fanning his face with it. ‘There’ll be no stopping us now.’

Men stood on boxes and spoke loudly so the crowd could hear them. They said the hotel was a place where criminals were protected by officials in the Government Camp. They spoke of the unfairness of life on the diggings. They asked everyone to revolt against the rottenness of a system that ignored the rights of a poor man like James Scobie and protected rich people like the owners of the Eureka Hotel.

‘Justice isn’t something to be bought by those who can afford it,’ said one of the speakers. ‘It’s a basic right! There should be one law for everybody.’

‘What about the poxy mining licence?’ shouted a digger in the crowd. ‘Where’s the justice there? It don’t matter if you find a ton of gold or nothing, we all have to pay the same. And we don’t even have a vote!’

‘Votes for miners!’ yelled another voice.

The noise from the crowd grew louder. It was like a storm brewing, Henry thought. Everyone had forgotten about James Scobie. They were angry about other things. It was the unfairness of the way diggers were treated that was upsetting them most.

As the last speaker finished talking, a hot blustery wind sprang up, swirling dust and twirling hats off heads. It seemed to make people even angrier. The crowd started to move in a giant wave down the Melbourne road, towards the Eureka Hotel.

Henry and the others moved with it.

‘There must be several thousand here,’ Jack said. His sunburnt face was redder than ever. ‘What we see here, my covies, is the power of the people.’

A short, bearded man climbed onto a window ledge of the hotel and held up his hands for silence.

‘That’s Mr Rede, the Gold Commissioner,’ Frank told Henry. ‘Would you look at his shifty eyes, now? He’s in a panic, you can tell.’

‘Order, please,’ yelled the Commissioner. ‘Order! Calm down, my friends. Think what you are doing.’

‘We ain’t your friends,’ jeered a voice, ‘and you ain’t ours, ya great nincompoop.’

People began to boo. A stone flew through the air. The Commissioner ducked, and then held up his hands again. ‘Order, my friends! Order, please!’ An egg landed in his beard, another on his waistcoat. After that there was a storm of eggs and stones and bottles, pieces of brick, potatoes, lumps of wood.

‘Hang Bentley!’ yelled a woman behind Henry. ‘String the murderer up from his own lamp post!’

‘Burn the hotel!’ The cry came from down the front, and it was taken up around the crowd. ‘Burn it! Burn it!’

The crowd now seemed twice the size it had been. Henry looked around. Suddenly he felt afraid. He didn’t want trouble, not the way Frank did. He was already in enough trouble at home. Or he would be when Father found out where he was.

Small bands of police moved in. Henry could see the blue of their uniforms at the outer edge of the crowd. Several troopers came from inside the hotel and stood on the verandah. That made the crowd angrier than ever. ‘Get the traps out of here,’ yelled someone. ‘It’s them what’s started it all.’

‘Get rid of the government,’ yelled someone else. ‘Send the useless beggars back home to England.’

‘We demand to have the vote,’ bellowed a huge Irishman with a black beard. ‘Diggers have rights!’

The crowd took it up. ‘Diggers’ rights! Diggers’ rights!’

Frank put down baby Joseph, picked up a stone, and hurled it at a street lamp outside the hotel. Henry watched with horror and fascination as the glass of the lamp shattered.

The crowd roared its approval.

‘That’s my boy,’ shouted Mrs Shanahan, punching the air. ‘Give ’em one for the grog-sellers!’

Stones were flung at windows. As the windows broke and glass crashed into the street there were more cries of ‘Burn the hotel!’

People surged into the building and began to smash it to pieces.

Clothes and furniture, crockery and silver and crystal were thrown from its windows. Somebody started a bonfire, and books and clothes were tossed into the flames. The grand piano was pushed out into the street and heaved on to its side.

In all the shoving and jostling, Henry was pushed towards the bowling saloon, a long canvas building next door to the hotel. He looked around for Frank’s red head, or Mrs Shanahan’s black bonnet, but they were nowhere to be seen.

Several men started ripping at the canvas walls of the bowling saloon. Then a tall person in a long fur cloak stuffed a pile of newspapers underneath the canvas. He gave the papers a last kick, and struck a match. The crowd around him cheered him on, shouting and laughing.

‘Jack!’ Henry yelled. ‘Jack, what d’you think you’re doing?’

Jack turned around. ‘I’m doing what everyone here wants to do. I’m righting a wrong. I’m the voice of the people, Henry!’

There was no doubt of that. To the crowd Jack was certainly a hero. And he’s my friend, Henry realised. Suddenly he felt really proud of that. We’re covies, he thought, him and Frank and me.

Of course what Jack was doing was right. This was how to get rid of the unfair licences, and crooked traps like Nockles, and poor miners being hauled off to the watch-house. You had to show that you weren’t afraid to stand up for your rights. If that meant destroying property, you just did it. You had to show that it was the people who were in charge.

‘Jack!’ Henry called out. ‘Jack! I understand!’ But by now the newspapers were burning fiercely, and Jack had vanished into the crowd.

‘Here come the Red Toads,’ a voice shouted. ‘They’re coming up the hill.’

But the red-coated soldiers were too late to stop the fire. The wind picked it up, and in seconds it had leaped to the hotel building. The Eureka Hotel was burning. Its bright paint blistered and cracked, its windows exploded, its floors fell in.

Henry’s ears rang with the sounds of hallooing and cheering. The heat from the flames scorched his cheeks. People threw more things into the fire – newspapers, sheets, curtains – to stoke the blaze.

Within half an hour the hotel was a smoking pile of ashes and twisted iron.

At last Henry spotted the Shanahans. He ran up to them, and Frank grabbed him by the arm. ‘We did it, Henry,’ he said. ‘They asked for trouble, the beggars, and we gave it to them. We taught them a lesson they won’t forget.’

‘We taught ’em a lesson,’ sang little Michael, swinging on his mother’s arm. ‘We taught ’em a lesson.’

‘Didn’t we, though?’ said Mrs Shanahan. ‘It’s a grand day, to be sure. It’s a day for the people, and it’s been a long time coming.’

Henry felt light-headed with excitement. The crowd had won. Jack had won. The troopers, and the Commissioner, had lost. It was a victory for the miners against those who made the rules. It was what everyone on the diggings wanted.

Then his mood changed. Not everyone. It wasn’t what his father wanted. Oh Lord. Now he’d have to tell Father why he was late, again. He said goodbye to the Shanahans and set off for the claim, running.

It was only then that he realised Frank had never given him that half crown, after all.