Rebellion in Australia: the Story of the Eureka Stockade

Australian history is not rich in dramatic events, but one that has always gripped popular imagination is the battle of the Eureka Stockade. For over a century Australian trade-union and political leaders have been wont to regard Eureka as a national symbol, an inspiration in difficult times, in depression or war. And yet, as scholars have succeeded in demonstrating, there is a certain illogicality in this reverence for what was, in many ways, a pointless and vulgar tragedy.

The rebellion, for such it has been called, took place in the colony of Victoria, which, in the early eighteen-fifties, was a comparatively new British settlement in Australia with a population of less than ninety thousand. The discovery of gold in 1851, however, attracted a tremendous number of immigrants, most of them from the British Isles, but some from the continent of Europe, some from Canada and the United States, and some from Malaya and China, all merging into an influx such as no British colony had experienced before. Men from neighbouring New South Wales and South Australia came to try their luck on the Victorian diggings, and thousands crossed the straits from the island of Tasmania.