We Are the Rebels
Authors: Clare Wright
WE ARE THE REBELS
THE WOMEN AND MEN WHO MADE EUREKA
Winner of the 2014 Stella Prize,
The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka
is the most talked-about
work of Australian history in recent years.
We Are the Rebels
is a new, concise edition of Clare Wright's groundbreaking study
of the women who made the rebellion.
Teaching notes are available at
textpublishing.com.au/education
.
âExhilarating.' Brenda Niall
âFull of colour.'
Books+Publishing
âImmediately entrancing.'
Guardian Australia
âFascinating.'
Irish Echo
âA great story.'
Courier-Mail
âBeautifully told.' Peter FitzSimons
âWonderful.' Chris Masters
âSomething for everyone.' NZ
Listener
âFills an enormous gap.'
Australian
âFast-paced, racy.'
Otago Daily Times
âRefreshing.'
Age
âEngrossing.'
The Hoopla
ALSO BY CLARE WRIGHT
Beyond the Ladies Lounge
The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka
Clare Wright is a historian who has worked as an academic and broadcaster. She is
a writer and presenter for television, with the ABC TV documentary series
Utopia
Girls
and
The War That Changed Us
among her credits. She lives in Melbourne with
her husband, three children and too many pets.
@clareawright
The Text Publishing Company
Swann House
22 William Street
Melbourne Victoria 3000
Australia
Copyright © 2015 by Clare Wright
The moral right of Clare Wright to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of
this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner
and the publisher of this book.
First published in 2015 by The Text Publishing Company
Page design and typesetting by Jessica Horrocks
Maps by Guy Holt
Index by Karen Gillen
Cover design by WH Chong
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Creator:
Wright,
Clare Alice, author.
Title:
We are the rebels : the women and men who made Eureka / by Clare Wright.
ISBN:
9781922182784 (paperback)
9781925095708 (ebook)
Target Audience: For secondary school age.
Subjects:
Eureka Stockade, Ballarat, Vic., 1854.
WomenâAustraliaâHistoryâ19th century.
Gold minersâVictoriaâBallaratâHistory.
RiotsâVictoriaâBallaratâHistory.
Ballarat (Vic.)âHistoryâ1851â1901.
Dewey Number: 994.57031
TO ESTHER
my own little rebel
CONTENTS
Everything That Could Be Wanted
Getting Spliced, Getting Licked
The Diggers âDemand' and Hotham Cracks It
Bringing the Matter to a Crisis
Where you see
italics
in the text, you are reading a direct quote from a primary
source. This includes letters, diaries, newspapers, poetry, songs, official reports
and other documents written at the time by the people who were there.
Primary sources, also known as âarchives' or âhistorical records', are kept in public
places like libraries, museums and government records offices. Sometimes they are
also found in private hands: for example, family collections.
This book is based on my book
The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka
, first published in
2013.
Forgotten Rebels
includes an extensive bibliography and endnotes, for much
more detail on quotes and sources. You can also go back to that book if you want
further information about a particular character, or deeper historical context for
events depicted in
We Are the Rebels
.
It's Monday morning, 4 December 1854. The tent city of Ballarat has woken to a strange
dawn.
A Monday morning on the richest goldfield in the world would usually be humming:
a busy start to an energetic week. There are 32,000 people on the Ballarat diggings,
and normally they would be hard at it.
Miners from every continent on the globe working their claims. Cartloads of goods
arriving from Melbourne and Geelong to fill the stores with food and merchandise.
To be sure, in 1854 most of the businesses are still not buildings at all, just simple
canvas structures of every size imaginable. But they serve their purpose. Restaurants
are dishing up food, grog shops are selling illicit booze; there are even theatres
getting ready for the evening's performance.