Eureka Flag
The Eureka Flag was flown at the Battle of the Eureka Stockade, which took place on 3 December 1854 at Ballarat in Victoria, Australia. It was the culmination of the 1851 to 1854 Eureka Rebellion on the Victorian goldfields. Gold miners protested the cost of mining permits, the officious way the colonial authorities enforced the system, and other grievances. An estimated crowd of over 10,000 demonstrators swore allegiance to the flag as a symbol of defiance at Bakery Hill on 29 November 1854. It was then flown over the Eureka Stockade during the battle that resulted in at least 27 deaths. Around 120 miners were arrested, and many others were badly wounded, including five soldiers.
The field is Prussian blue, measuring and made from a fine woollen fabric. The horizontal arm of the cross is wide, and the vertical arm is tall. The central star is slightly larger than the others, being about, all from point to point and the other stars. The white stars are made from a fine cotton lawn, and the off-white cross is cotton twill. In addition to a modern, standardised version, there are also other Eureka Flag variants.
Since the 19th century, the Eureka Flag has achieved customary use as a general-purpose symbol of protest and has been adopted by supporters of the Australian republic and trade union movements. It has also been incorporated into the official logo of the far-right Australia First Party and is often seen on bumper stickers accompanied by white nationalist political slogans. There have been efforts, such as around the time of the 150th anniversary in 2004 by Ballarat MP Catherine King, to give legal standing to the Eureka Flag under the Flags Act and to reserve it for more progressive causes.
The Eureka Flag is listed as an object of significance on the Victorian Heritage Register and was designated as a Victorian icon by the National Trust of Australia in 2006. The "King" fragments are part of the collection of the Art Gallery of Ballarat, which is responsible for their conservation. Since 2013, they have been on a long-term loan to the interpretative centre located at the Eureka Stockade Memorial Park, where they remain on public display. There are also other notable authenticated Eureka Flag fragments to have been exhibited and sold at auction.
The disputed first report of the attack on the Eureka Stockade also refers to a Union Jack being flown during the battle that was captured, along with the Eureka Flag, by the foot police.
History
The Port Phillip District was partitioned on 1 July 1851 by the Australian Constitutions Act 1850, as Victoria gained autonomy within the British Empire after a decade of de facto independence from New South Wales. Approval of the Victorian constitution by the Imperial parliament was pending, with an election held for a provisional legislative council consisting of 20 elected and ten appointed members subject to property-based franchise and membership requirements.Gold prospectors were offered 200 guineas for making discoveries within of Melbourne. In August 1851, the news was received worldwide that, on top of several earlier finds, Thomas Hiscock, outside of Buninyong in central Victoria, had found still more deposits. As gold fever took hold, the colony's population increased from 77,000 in 1851 to 198,496 in 1853. Among this number was "a heavy sprinkling of ex-convicts, gamblers, thieves, rogues and vagabonds of all kinds".
The local authorities soon found themselves with fewer police officers and lacked the infrastructure needed to support the expansion of the mining industry. The number of public servants and factory and farm workers leaving for the goldfields to seek their fortune led to a chronic labour shortage that needed to be resolved. The response was a universal mining tax based on time stayed, rather than what was seen as the more equitable option, being an export duty levied only on gold found, meaning it was always designed to make life unprofitable for most prospectors.
Licence inspections, known as "digger hunts", were treated as a great sport and "carried out in the style of an English fox-hunt" by mounted officials who received a fifty per cent commission from any fines imposed. Many recruits were former prisoners from Tasmania and prone to brutal means, having been sentenced to serve in the military. Miners were often arrested for not carrying licences on their person because of the typically wet and dirty conditions in the mines, then subjected to such indignities as being chained to trees and logs overnight.
In the years leading up to the Eureka Stockade, several mass public meetings were held to address the miners' grievances. The Bendigo Petition received over 5,000 signatures and was presented to Lieutenant-Governor Charles La Trobe by a miner's delegation in August 1853. There were also delegations received by the Ballarat gold commissioner Robert William Rede and La Trobe's successor Charles Hotham in October and November 1854. The ever-present "physical force" faction of the mining tax protest movement gained the ascendancy over those who advocated "moral force", including John Basson Humffray, after a judicial enquiry into the murder of miner James Scobie outside the Eureka Hotel. There was no finding of guilt regarding the owner, James Bently, who was deeply suspected of involvement, with the case being presided over by a police magistrate accused of having a conflict of interest.
Then, there was an uproar over the arrest of Catholic Father Smyth's disabled Armenian servant, Johannes Gregorius. He was subjected to police brutality and false arrest for licence evasion, even though it was revealed he was exempt from the requirement. Gregorius was instead convicted of assaulting a constable and fined 5 pounds despite the court hearing testimony to the contrary.
Eventually, the discontent began to spiral out of control. A mob of many thousands of aggrieved miners burned the Eureka Hotel on 17 October 1854. On 28 November, there was a skirmish as the approaching 12th Regiment had their wagon train looted in the vicinity of the Eureka lead, where the rebels ultimately made their last stand. The next day, the Eureka Flag appeared on the platform for the first time, and mining licences were burnt at the final fiery mass meeting of the Ballarat Reform League – the miners' lobby. The league's founding charter proclaims that "it is the inalienable right of every citizen to have a voice in making the laws he is called upon to obey" and "taxation without representation is tyranny", in the language of the United States Declaration of Independence.
On 30 November, there was further rioting where missiles were once again directed at military and law enforcement by the protesting miners, who had henceforth refused to cooperate with licence inspections en masse. That afternoon there was a paramilitary display on Bakery Hill. The oath-swearing ceremony took place around the Eureka Flag, and military companies were then formed. In the preceding weeks, the men of violence had already been aiming musket balls at the barely fortified government camp during the night.
The rebels, under their commander-in-chief Peter Lalor, who had left Ireland for the gold fields of Australia, were led down the road from Bakery Hill to the ill-fated Eureka Stockade. It was a crude "higgledy piggledy" battlement erected between 30 November and 2 December that consisted of diagonal spikes and overturned horse carts. In the ensuing battle that left at least 22 rebels and seven soldiers dead, the stockade was besieged and captured by the advancing government forces. They briefly wavered, with the 40th Regiment having to be rallied amid a short, sharp exchange of ranged fire lasting around 15 minutes at dawn on Sunday, 3 December. The Victorian police contingent led the way over the top as the forlorn hope in a bayonet charge.
Origin and symbolism
The earliest mention of a flag was the report of a meeting held on 23 October 1854 to discuss indemnifying Andrew McIntyre and Thomas Fletcher, who had both been arrested and committed for trial over the burning of the Eureka Hotel. The correspondent for the Melbourne Herald stated: "Mr. Kennedy suggested that a tall flag pole should be erected on some conspicuous site, the hoisting of the diggers' flag on which should be the signal for calling together a meeting on any subject which might require immediate consideration."In 1885, John Wilson, whom the Victorian Works Department employed at Ballarat as a foreman, claimed that he had originally conceptualised the Eureka Flag after becoming sympathetic to the rebel cause. He then recalls that it was constructed from bunting by a tarpaulin maker. There is another popular tradition where the flag design is credited to a member of the Ballarat Reform League, "Captain" Henry Ross of Toronto, in Ontario, Canada. A. W. Crowe recounted in 1893 that "it was Ross who gave the order for the insurgents' flag at Darton and Walker's". Crowe's story is confirmed in that there were advertisements in the Ballarat Times dating from October–November 1854 for Darton and Walker, manufacturers of tents, tarpaulin and flags, situated at the Gravel Pits.
It has long been said that women were involved in constructing the Eureka Flag. In a letter to the editor published in the Melbourne Age, 15 January 1855 edition, Fredrick Vern states that he "fought for freedom's cause, under a banner made and wrought by English ladies". According to some of their descendants, Anastasia Withers, Anne Duke and Anastasia Hayes were all involved in sewing the flag. The stars are made of delicate material, consistent with the story they were made out of their petticoats. The blue woollen fabric "certainly bears a marked resemblance to the standard dressmaker's length of material for making up one of the voluminous dresses of the 1850s" and also the blue shirts worn by the miners.
In his seminal Flag of Stars, Frank Cayley published two sketches he discovered on a visit to the soon-to-be headquarters of the Ballarat Historical Society in 1963, which may be the original plans for the Eureka Flag. One is a two-dimensional drawing of a flag bearing the words "blue" and "white" to denote the colour scheme. Cayley has concluded: "It looks like a rough design of the so-called King Flag." The other sketch was "pasted on the same piece of card shows the flag being carried by a bearded man" that Cayley believes may have been intended as a representation of Henry Ross. Federation University history professor Anne Beggs-Sunter refers to an article reportedly published in the Ballarat Times "shortly after the Stockade referring to two women making the flag from an original drawing by a digger named Ross. Unfortunately no complete set of the Ballarat Times exists, and it is impossible to locate this intriguing reference."
The theory that the Eureka Flag is based on the Australian Federation Flag has precedents in that "borrowing the general flag design of the country one is revolting against can be found in many instances of colonial liberation, including Haiti, Venezuela, Iceland, and Guinea". Some resemblance to the modern Flag of Quebec has been noted, that was based on a design used by the French-speaking majority of the colony of the Province of Canada at the time Ross emigrated. Ballarat local historian Father Tom Linane thought women from the St Aliphius chapel on the goldfields might have made the flag. This theory is supported by St Aliphius raising a blue and white ecclesiastical flag featuring a couped cross to signal that mass was about to commence. Professor Geoffrey Blainey believed that the white cross on which the stars are arrayed is "really an Irish cross rather than being configuration of the Southern Cross".
Cayley has stated that the field "may have been inspired by the sky, but was more probably intended to match the blue shirts worn by the diggers". Norm D'Angri theorises that the Eureka Flag was hastily manufactured, and the number of points on the stars is a mere convenience as eight was "the easiest to construct without using normal drawing instruments".