Eyewitness at Eureka

In December 1854, growing tension between the government of Victoria and the thousands who had flocked to the gold-fields near Melbourne over the previous three years flared into armed insurrection. Provoked by corrupt and insensitive policing, and harbouring long-standing grievances about extortionate mining licence fees and a restrictive system of land ownership, hundreds of miners burnt their permits and built a makeshift defensive stockade on the Eureka gold lead at Ballarat. The British colonial administration responded with overwhelming force. A brief but bloody assault led to some hundred casualties, including a likely total of thirty-five dead miners, in an act of repression commemorated in Australia to this day. Here is a contemporary account of what happened written by one miner, Alfred Madocks from Ipswich.