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Series Code: TIJ
Program Code: TIJ001129A
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00:28 This is the flag that inspired a rebellion, that inspired those
00:34 at Eureka. It was sewn in secret. 00:36 The people sheltering in the Eureka Stockade 00:40 didn't want to change the system of government, 00:43 they wanted to be included in it. They weren't insurgents, 00:47 they were not revolutionaries, they rebelled against vicious 00:52 treatment by police when all peaceful means of protest 00:55 had failed. They sewed a flag and built a fence, 01:00 they fought back and today all of us are the beneficiaries 01:07 of their fight. 01:10 The story of the Eureka Stockade is more than a famous 01:15 battle in our history, it's a fundamental milestone 01:19 on Australia's road to Democracy. In today's episode 01:23 we will travel back to the 1850's and walk with 01:27 the gold miners and their families from Bakery Hill 01:30 to the Eureka Stockade. 01:57 This is Peter Lalor, he was elected as a Victorian member of 02:01 Parliament in 1856 and served as the speaker of the house here 02:05 for seven years from 1880 to 1887. 02:09 But in 1854 after leading a rebellion of gold miners 02:14 at Eureka, 27-year-old Peter Lalor was the most wanted man 02:19 in Australia with a reward of over $25,000 for anyone 02:25 who handed him in to the police. 02:27 How Peter Lalor went from rebellious fugitive to a long- 02:32 standing member of Parliament in only two years, 02:35 is just one small part of the fascinating story of 02:39 Democracy in Australia. 02:41 The Eureka Stockade is often referred to the Eureka Legend 02:48 or a Revolution. The reality is just a sad story of violent 02:54 bloodshed, it's the events before and after Eureka 02:59 that are legendary in their own right. 03:01 And with a foundation for a freedom, 03:03 we take for granted today. 03:10 Over 270 soldiers were instructed to attack the 03:14 Stockade built at the Eureka mining site at 4:00 a.m. 03:18 on Sunday morning. They silently surrounded the sleeping miners 03:23 in the Stockade, there was a 15 minute battle. 03:26 The diggers in the stockade at the time were asleep, 03:30 outnumbered, outgunned, and unskilled fighters. 03:34 The tragedy happened after the battle, it was bayonets 03:40 not bullets that did the most damage. 03:42 Crazed soldiers and police thrust their blades into the 03:46 dead and dying, others surrounded tents and sliced 03:50 and jabbed at the bullet riddled canvas. Then the order was given 03:54 to burn to the ground all the tents in the stockade and 03:58 vicinity. Tents were set afire with people sleeping in them 04:02 or still containing bodies of wounded or dead. 04:06 By the time the sun was up, it was all over, the troops and 04:12 police returned to their camp cheering, meanwhile the people 04:16 of the Ballarat woke to the smell of burning canvas 04:20 and the sounds of weeping. 04:21 A local man wrote in his diary: The brave Nobel hearts did not 04:27 turn their swords on armed men, but galloped among the tents 04:33 shooting at women and cutting down defenseless men. 04:36 New widows recognizing the bloody remains of their 04:40 slaughtered husband, children screaming, and crying around 04:45 the dead father. Cowardly and the monstrous cruelties, 04:49 it is a dark indelible stain on a British Government. 04:58 Just seven days after Victoria declared its independence from 05:02 New South Wales, gold was found in central Victoria. 05:06 When gold was discovered, it seemed that overnight 05:11 the workers of Australia had gone AWOL, farms, 05:14 building sites, ships, police barracks, government offices, 05:18 shearing sheds all were deserted. 05:21 News of Victoria supposedly infinite supply of gold 05:26 were shared in Newspapers and letters in London, Edenborough, 05:30 Dublin, Paris, Warsaw, Munich, Washington, Toronto, and Shanghai 05:36 and the people rushed to Victoria. 05:39 The early diggers of the 1850s were not the professional miners 05:45 of the 1860s, a decade later, they were individual speculators 05:50 anxious about their families living conditions, 05:52 eager to make their fortune with gold and go home. 05:57 Gold mining was back breaking hard work with no guarantee of 06:02 a find. For every family that did well, two or three lived in 06:07 complete poverty. In order to dig each miner had to purchase 06:15 a monthly gold license like this one which cost the 06:19 equivalent of one week's wages. The license fee was a head tax 06:24 not an income tax and it was instantly detested by all the 06:29 miners. You could sink a shaft next to your neighbor 06:34 you could both wallow in the dark and wet earth for five/six, 06:38 nine months bailing out the constant seeping water 06:43 and your neighbor might find the gold infused riverbed 06:47 while your hole only leads to a bend in the underground river 06:51 missing the gold completely. 06:53 He wins you lose but you still have to pay your license fee, 06:58 month in, month out gold or no gold. 07:04 Bigger hunts were conducted five days a week, 07:07 16 bullies on horseback, their muskets loaded and swords drawn 07:12 would descend on the diggings accompanied by 50 soldiers on foot 07:17 bound with clubs, they would demand each digger show their 07:23 even if it was left in a tent, would be chained to tree logs 07:29 once the tiny lock-up was full. 07:31 Honest but poor license defaulters were chained together 07:36 with hardened thieves and assorted ex-convicts from 07:39 Van Diemen's Land, women were incarcerated with men. 07:44 This is Bakery Hill in Ballarat, it's at a junction of several 07:52 key roads in the city, today it's filled with shops and 07:57 restaurants. In 1954 Bakery Hill was much the same, 08:03 it was the natural hub of Goldfield's activity because 08:08 all roads met in this natural gulley. It was here that the 08:13 hotel's gold buyers and merchants congregated. 08:17 On the 11th of November, 1854 a scorching hot Sunday 08:22 10,000 people met here at Bakery Hill to complain about 08:27 the police and the license hunts. The Ballarat Community 08:31 wanted to express outrage that their license fees were used 08:35 to support a police force that did not prevent crime 08:39 and was mostly corrupt. At this meeting the Ballarat Reform 08:44 League was established. They drafted a document 08:48 The Ballarat Reform League Charter, we can easily read this 08:53 document today at the old Treasury Building in Melbourne. 08:57 Anyone can freely visit the Old Treasury Building here in 09:02 Melbourne and wander into this room, here under-glass 09:07 is the faded blue paper of an original copy of the 09:10 Ballarat Reform League Charter. 09:12 In this quiet room, it can be easy to forget the angst and 09:17 frustration that resulted in the drafting of the document. 09:21 The Bakery Hill Meeting on the 11th of November 1854 09:27 is now considered the first formal step on the march through 09:31 Australian Democracy. 09:33 What did the diggers wright in their Charter? 09:36 The Charter laid out five basic demands: Free and fair 09:41 representation for all in Parliament. Votes for all men 09:45 without any property conditions. Ability of any person to stand 09:51 for election to the legislative council. Salaries for those 09:54 elected. And fixed terms for those elected. 09:58 Sound familiar? Each of these five points we take for granted 10:04 today, each of them are vital to the operation of Australia's 10:08 Federal Elections. The members of the Ballarat Formal League 10:13 didn't just pull these requests from thin air, to understand why 10:17 they made these requests, we need to look at the background 10:20 of the members themselves. 10:29 This is a map that is part of the Eureka Memorial in 10:33 Ballarat, those who immigrated into their thousands to the 10:38 Victorian gold fields, aspired to something different from 10:42 the old power structures they knew at home. 10:46 These dates on the memorial are a code for understanding 10:50 the demands in the Ballarat Reform League Charter, 1776 10:57 was the American War of Independence. Many miners 11:00 in Ballarat came from California bringing with them 11:04 values of personal freedom and independence. 1789 was the 11:11 French Revolution which shocked Europe when it deposed a 11:15 monarchy and established a French Republic. 11:18 1798 was the Irish War of Independence and many miners 11:23 were Irish. 1848 saw the formation of Italy as a country, 11:29 in 1854 all of these global forces for change and 11:34 revolution are not just our history lessons, for the miners 11:39 the dig is here in Ballarat. 11:40 They are lived experiences topics for newspaper articles 11:45 and debate, the very fabric of the social structure of the 11:49 world was being tested and changed through these events. 11:54 This was the melting pot of Eureka, every single miner 11:59 was aware of some kind of cultural struggle or change 12:03 in their home countries. 12:05 On the 29 of November, at another monster meeting 12:10 on Bakery Hill, of 15,000 people almost a half the total 12:15 population of Ballarat at the time. Many diggers lined up 12:20 to throw their licenses on a bonfire, an act of communal 12:24 protest. A flag was hoisted, not a national flag, 12:29 but a purpose made flag. This is the flag that we now know 12:35 as the Eureka flag, the people of Ballarat called it the 12:40 Australian flag, it was inspired by the one thing that united 12:46 each and every resident of Ballarat, the constellation 12:50 of the Southern Cross. 12:51 Those five bright stars were the first thing that immigrants 12:57 saw when they crossed the invisible line in the ocean 13:00 into the southern hemisphere. 13:06 The Victorian Governor had rejected the charter 13:09 presented by the Ballarat Reform League, the diggers felt 13:13 under siege ignored by the governor, now elected leader 13:17 to represent them and persecuted by the local authorities. 13:21 They burned their licenses in protest under a flag that 13:26 united them and then went home. 13:28 The next day, the soldiers and police decided to show 13:35 force by instigating a massive license hunt. 13:38 The mounted police began to gallop among the tents 13:42 firing shots into the crowded tents where women and children 13:46 were sheltering. The confused crowd tried to scatter, 13:50 police were pelted with mud, stones, and broken bottles, 13:54 soldiers dropped to one knee and aimed their guns at the 13:58 people. Miners jumped down holes and women and men 14:02 tried to disappear behind tents. 14:07 As news of the chaos and random firing of the crowd, including 14:11 women and children spread, other sympathetic diggers 14:15 downed tools to seek information. 14:18 From all directions on the diggings, people walked in the 14:22 direction of Bakery Hill, the Australian flag was once again 14:27 flying, those who came had lost faith in the government 14:31 through hunger, grief, shame, disappointment, harassment, 14:37 indignity, humiliation and powerlessness, the object was 14:42 now self-defense. The leaders of Ballarat had shown 14:47 that they would fire upon a civilian crowd, 14:50 this was the way masters treated servants and dogs. 14:54 The people looked for a leader and from the crowds 14:58 the 27-year-old Irishman Peter Lalor, his father was an Irish 15:02 MP and his eldest brother fought in the young Irish movement 15:07 in Ireland. 15:08 Peter Lalor stepped from the crowd and led the assembled 15:11 group of 1,000 diggers wives and children on a march from 15:16 Bakery Hill to Eureka, they took the flag with them. 15:21 The group now led by Peter Lalor decided to throw up 15:26 a hasty barricade. There needed to be a place of shelter to 15:30 protect those diggers who had burned their licenses. 15:33 They grabbed any suitable material they could find 15:37 to build a barricade, overturned carts, empty barrels 15:42 felled trees, thick slabs used to line mine shaft. 15:47 When it was finished, Peter Lalor led the group back to 15:52 Bakery Hill and raised the Australia flag, he then kneeled, 15:56 removed his hat and raised his hand towards the flag and made 16:02 this oath. We swear by the flag of the seven crafts to stand 16:09 truly by each other and fight to defend our rights 16:14 and liberties. The group moved back down the hill to the 16:19 stockade, it was sunset Thursday evening, there would be a 16:24 standoff until just before dawn Sunday morning. 16:28 Twice over the next two days Peter Lalor sent representatives 16:35 to the government camp to try to negotiate a suspension 16:38 of the license hunts until the people had the opportunity 16:42 to put their case against the licensing system to the governor 16:46 their representatives were ignored. 16:50 During the day there were at least 1,500 people 16:56 crammed into the stockade, most slept in their own tents 17:00 at night as the stockade was to prevent the arrest of unlicensed 17:04 diggers and there had never been a license hunt at night. 17:07 The diggers expected that Sunday would be the customary 17:11 day of rest and many of them left the stockade on 17:15 Saturday evening to do thing with their families. 17:17 The stockade emptied out, even the local priest encouraged 17:22 everyone in the stockade to come to church on Sunday. 17:26 Many of the soldiers at Ballarat had been on 24-hour century duty 17:32 for days without sleep, washing or changing clothes 17:36 and it had been pouring rain overnight. 17:39 The soldiers and police were badly paid and living in crammed 17:43 conditions. Over 540 weary soldiers were kept on constant 17:49 alert by the military captain fed on rumors of an imminent 17:54 attack. The order was given to march on the stockade 17:58 at 2:00 a.m., the soldiers eagerly made their way here 18:02 to this ground. 18:06 Today Eureka is a lovely park, tall trees and a playground 18:13 that's constructed to look like a stockade with soldiers out 18:17 the front, in fact, it's so peaceful, we have to try 18:22 very very hard to imagine the chaos, panic, fear, and death 18:28 that happened here. 18:31 Following the battle many miner and soldiers lay dead. 18:36 Later that day, most of the dead miners were carried in 18:41 rough coffins on drays here to Ballarat' s old cemetery 18:45 and buried in a common grave. 18:47 This monument marks the location and lists their names. 18:58 This is it, the flag that inspired a rebellion, 19:02 that inspired those who were down-trodden to take a stand. 19:07 There were squares missing because the soldiers cut out 19:11 souvenirs, but it's still beautiful isn't it? 19:14 It was sewn in secret, such a massive flag to sew secretly. 19:21 The people in Ballarat were not disloyal to the queen, 19:25 they didn't want to change the system of government, 19:28 they just wanted to be included in it. 19:30 At no time did they launch an assault on authorities, 19:34 they were not insurgents, they were not revolutionaries, 19:38 they rebelled against an unpopular and viciously policed 19:42 tax when all peaceful means of protest had been rebuffed. 19:46 They fought back when attacked by the military in a preemptive 19:51 strike intended to restore government authority 19:54 without listening to the people, they sewed a flag and built 19:59 a fence. Thirteen miners were selected to face charges of 20:06 high treason, the trials dissolved in fast making a 20:11 laughingstock of the government, no jury would convict the miners 20:15 and there was no evidence of treason. 20:17 A royal commission investigating the gold fields recommending 20:23 that the licensing laws be replaced with a system 20:26 where miners paid a tax on gold they found rather than on the 20:31 possibility of finding gold. 20:33 The mining license was replaced by a one pound yearly 20:38 miners right. Peter Lalor came out of hiding and in 1855, 20:44 he was one of the two diggers leaders voted into the 20:48 legislative assembly to represent Ballarat. 20:51 So, one year after the Eureka violence, the miners had 20:57 representation in Parliament, within three years, 21:00 the right to vote was given to all male British subjects 21:04 over the age of 21, this is the legendary result of Eureka. 21:10 But equality wasn't given to all, Australia had to wait 21:14 another 48 years before the passing of the Commonwealth 21:18 Franchise Act in 1902 gave white women full political 21:23 equality with men and made Australia the most 21:26 Democratic Nation in the world. 21:28 Aboriginal men and women would not receive these rights until 21:33 the 1960's. Many of the issues simmering in Ballarat during 21:40 1854, were the results of poor actions by the leaders in 21:44 government, police, and military. 21:46 Corrupt leaders, selfish leaders, power-hungry leaders, 21:50 leaders greedy for money and prestige. 21:53 Today, we have the right to choose our political leaders 21:57 who then regulate the laws that govern our police and 22:01 military. It's a right we take for granted today but in 1854 22:07 a bonfire of injustice and violence burned many 22:11 who had been suffering in poverty without the right 22:14 of representation. So, how can we show that we appreciate the 22:19 Legacy of Eureka? How can we show that we value the gift of 22:23 being able to have a say in the selection of our 22:26 representatives in government? Well, while in prison 22:30 the Apostle Paul wrote many letters, in one letter to 22:34 Timothy, Paul reminded him about the power of prayer 22:38 in supporting leaders. Here's what Paul wrote. 23:06 So, we are encouraged to pray for our government leaders 23:09 pray that they will govern justly and honorably 23:12 and in the best interest of our society. 23:15 Pray that they will govern with wisdom and that they 23:19 concern will be for the well- being of all, and pray that God 23:23 will accomplish his purpose through them. 23:26 Let's ensure that we don't take our Democracy and freedom 23:29 for granted. We need to remember that this freedom was paid for 23:34 in blood at Eureka Stockade. 23:37 Eureka is a reminder of the eternal human dream for liberty, 23:42 equality and freedom, a dream that belongs to everyone, 23:46 a dream that will never parish from the earth, Why? 23:50 Because God has placed the desire for freedom in our hearts. 23:54 We weren't made to be slaves, we were designed to be free 23:59 and we cannot be satisfied or find peace until we are free 24:03 and this is true in a spiritual sense as well. 24:06 True freedom, freedom from guilt and sin can only be found in 24:12 Jesus. You see, being a slave to sin is the ultimate bondage 24:17 the freedom that Jesus offers is a spiritual freedom 24:21 from the guilt and bondage of sin. Listen to what it says 24:25 in John 8:32-36. 24:41 Jesus is the truth, knowing the truth, knowing Jesus 24:45 sets us free from sin, free from guilt, and free from 24:49 condemnation. Wouldn't you like to experience that freedom? 24:53 True freedom, well, you can, why not ask for it right now 24:58 as we pray. 25:02 Dear heavenly Father, Today we have been reminded 25:06 of the importance of freedom and just how precious it is. 25:09 We admire those who have championed the cause of 25:12 liberty and democracy. Today we want to recognize the greatest 25:17 of liberators, Jesus Christ, and thank you for the freedom 25:20 that He brings to our lives. Thank you for setting us free 25:25 from sin and guilt. In Jesus name we pray. Amen! 25:34 The story of Eureka Stockade and the struggle for democracy 25:37 and freedom is certainly inspiring and has influenced 25:41 the history of our country. 25:42 If you've enjoyed this Eureka Stockade program and would 25:46 like to know more about the freedom from guilt and sin 25:49 that Jesus offers be sure to order 25:52 the FREE gift we have for all our viewers 25:54 today, it's a book entitled "The Secrets of Freedom." 25:59 It's an insightful guide that will help you overcome the 26:03 paralysis we sometimes feel when we are tied down by guilt, 26:08 anger, failures, and the past. This book is our gift to you 26:13 and is absolutely free, there are no costs or obligations. 26:17 Order your free book now. 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Call or text us now. 27:24 If you've enjoyed today's journey, 27:28 be sure to join us again next week when we will share 27:32 another of life's journey's together and experience another 27:36 new and thought-provoking perspective on the peace, 27:39 insight, understanding, and hope that only the Bible can give us. 27:44 The Incredible Journey truly is television that changes lives. 27:49 Until next week, remember the ultimate destination 27:54 of life's journey. 27:55 Now I saw a new heaven and earth and God will wipe away 28:00 every tear from their eyes, there shall be no more death 28:03 nor sorrow, nor crying, there shall be no more pain, 28:06 for the former things have passed away. |
Revised 2021-05-05