We Are the Rebels: The Women and Men Who Made Eureka

These days it’s hard to believe that a journey could completely transform you. Today we can cross the globe so fast we might never even speak to the strangers in the seats around us. Unless disaster strikes, the voyage itself leaves us unchanged.

But by the time the gold-rush immigrants reached Ballarat, they’d already endured a colossal, epic journey. And it was an experience many of them found life-altering. A new era, as one shipboard journal proclaimed grandly. Men, women and children who had hitherto hugged the land now committed their destinies to the wild world of water.

But first they had to get over their seasickness—which was, like war and childbirth, a truly democratising experience. Few first-timers escaped it, and even old hands felt the effects as the land disappeared astern and the body lost its bearings. With nothing fixed to focus on, the balance between eye and ear was disturbed. The ship would pitch and rock and yaw, and even when that ceased there was still a constant nauseating motion in the head.

It helped to keep busy and concentrate on mechanical tasks, as Louisa Timewell discovered. Although the ship swayed like a hammock in the breeze, she and the other women still needed to go about their daily business. They held their babies on one hip while washing out clothes, trying to keep the basin steady. It’s very laughable to see them pitching about so, wrote Louisa. Fortunately for her, babies are strict taskmasters. I got on deck all day with the children, Louisa wrote, and the time passed off very pleasantly.

Céleste de Chabrillan was the wife of the new French Consul to Melbourne. She described a less pleasant scene on the Croesus as it headed for the open sea in 1854.

It jolted and tossed about on the waves so much that passengers and objects all came tumbling down on top of each other…The famous line ‘hare you sichowek’ (are you seasick?) went from one passenger to the next, some escaping to their cabins, others leaning over the side. The only reply one hears is moaning, groaning and retching.

Céleste herself felt the initial effects of this horrible sickness, but she refused to yield to its power: I am fighting against it. She stayed on deck—alone—while her husband Lionel remained in their cabin for three days with his head between two pillows. I was distressed to see him suffer so, she lamented. But the headstrong Céleste, a former dancer and courtesan, declined to stay by his side in their dark, cramped cabin: I prefer to face the enemy and I go back up on deck.

SARAH HANMER (NEE McCULLOUGH)

THE LEADING LADY

AIDING AND ABETTING REBELS WHILE SINGING FOR HER SUPPER

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BORN Drummadonald, County Down, Ireland, 1821

DIED Adelaide, 1867

ARRIVED August 1853, on the Lady Flora

AGE AT EUREKA 33

CHILDREN one daughter, Julia, aged twelve.

FAQ Actress and single mother. Had toured America before coming to Australia with her brother and daughter. Manager and proprietress of Adelphi Theatre, headquarters of American leaders of Eureka, and a financial benefactor of diggers’ cause. Lent costumes and props to miners in the Stockade.

Brave-faced Fanny Davis was mortified to find that defiance alone was not enough. It was a great mistake me being ill, she wrote, as I did not mean to be. It offended her dignity that crewmen needed to come down with mops and buckets to clean out her cabin.

Agnes Paterson was, by her own admission, reduced to a most pitiful condition and Charlotte Spence was a pitiable mess, refusing all nourishment for days. On the Lady Flora, the ship carrying the actor Sarah Hanmer and her daughter Julia to their new home, the doctor prescribed wine and porter for the invalids. Another passenger, John James Bond, thought that might explain why some of the ladies are again disposed to faint.

With heads reeling and stomachs churning, many immigrants prayed for death to put them out of their misery. But when they finally crawled out of the putrid stinking belly of the ship to face the light again, it was as if they were born anew. The first challenge had been overcome, and they were away. In time I might make a brave sailor, wrote Fanny Davis, marvelling at the new possibilities that suddenly seemed to arise before her.