On that afternoon of Thursday 30 November, storm clouds were building. Police Constable Henry Goodenough, a government spy embedded with the rebels, started a rumour that the Camp would be attacked at 4am. (Henry’s 26-year-old wife, Elizabeth, and their six-month-old baby, Mary Anne, had no doubt been sent away from the Camp with the other government wives.)
Goodenough prowled the various scattered diggers’ meetings dressed in miner’s clothing, swearing loudly and pretending to be drunk. At one gathering Raffaello Carboni gave the mouthy oaf a kick in the privates to shut him up. When Judas Iscariot Goodenough, as Carboni later called him, planted the story that the Camp was soon to be attacked, there was every reason to think it might be true. The eight men arrested at the Gravel Pits that morning were considered political prisoners, just as Fletcher, McIntyre and Westoby had been for the burning of the Eureka Hotel.
And if the rebels were to start something? That would suit the Camp just fine. We shall be ready to receive them, wrote Captain Pasley. I am more convinced than ever that…sedition must be put down by force…before many days have passed, it will be necessary for us to sweep the whole goldfield.
Had somebody instructed Goodenough to bring matters to a crisis, even if none truly existed?
That evening a violent thunderstorm shook the night sky. It rained for three hours solid, a great drenching of fat summer rain. During the whole night, the police troopers were exposed to the downpour, waiting beside their horses, saddled and ready for action.
Fortifications were made to various sections of the Camp, including Rede’s and Johnston’s quarters (a particularly exposed locality) and the military barracks. It was the job of the police to guard these vulnerable targets. So the exhausted and no doubt frightened young men lay wrapped in their cloaks on the saturated ground or crouching under their horses for shelter. To kill time, recounted Samuel Huyghue, the lads sat spinning yarns of former service in the field. For some, there would have been an element of truth to their tales. For most, the one-upmanship was pure bravado.
Robert Rede, dry and fortified in his quarters, scratched out a letter to Melbourne by candlelight. The absolute necessity of putting down all meeting Public/Private I think should now be apparent, he wrote, for the abolition of the Licence Fee is merely a watchword. The real agenda, suggested Rede, was revolt.