We Are the Rebels (25 page)

SWEARING AN OATH

Peter Lalor led his war council—carrying their flag—past the teams of diggers still
drilling on the flat ground beside their new stringybark citadel, and back up to
Bakery Hill. The Southern Cross was once more unfurled.

The new stronghold at Eureka could be glimpsed from the Camp, but the Bakery Hill
rise was more prominent. It would attract the attention of potential recruits as
well as the wide-eyed glare of the authorities.

A division of Americans who called themselves the Independent Californian Rangers
fell in behind Captain Henry Ross. Frederick Vern rallied a troupe of European freedom
fighters. There is no evidence of any Chinese being recruited, but it is not impossible
that someone like John Alloo, who ran a popular restaurant on the diggings, acted
as an interpreter, just as Carboni did for the Italians, French and Prussians. Local
Indigenous inhabitants may have been there too. (They were certainly present at the
public meetings in Bendigo for the Red Ribbon Rebellion.)

This was the pointy end of a momentous day, and those still standing beneath the
flag—now flapping wildly in the hot late-afternoon wind—were here to pledge allegiance
to a cause that had escalated rapidly. What had started as a lawful outpouring of
communal grievance was now a calculated show of armed resistance. Humble petitioners
were suddenly rebels.

Lalor kneeled. He removed his hat and raised his hand towards the flag.
We swear
by the Southern Cross to stand truly by
each other, and fight to defend our rights
and liberties
. A chorus of five hundred true believers chanted
Amen
.

Then they moved back down the hill to Eureka. Once more they brought the flag with
them. This time, it would not return.

A SPY AND SOME WET SOLDIERS

On that afternoon of Thursday 30 November, storm clouds were building. Police Constable
Henry Goodenough, a government spy embedded with the rebels, started a rumour that
the Camp would be attacked at 4am. (Henry's 26-year-old wife, Elizabeth, and their
six-month-old baby, Mary Anne, had no doubt been sent away from the Camp with the
other government wives.)

Goodenough prowled the various scattered diggers' meetings dressed in miner's clothing,
swearing loudly and pretending to be drunk. At one gathering Raffaello Carboni gave
the mouthy oaf a kick in the privates to shut him up. When
Judas Iscariot Goodenough
,
as Carboni later called him, planted the story that the Camp was soon to be attacked,
there was every reason to think it might be true. The eight men arrested at the Gravel
Pits that morning were considered political prisoners, just as Fletcher, McIntyre
and Westoby had been for the burning of the Eureka Hotel.

And if the rebels were to start something? That would suit the Camp just fine.
We
shall be ready to receive them
, wrote Captain Pasley.
I am more convinced than ever
that…sedition must be put down by force…before many days have passed, it will be
necessary for us to sweep the whole goldfield
.

Had somebody instructed Goodenough to bring matters to a crisis, even if none truly
existed?

That evening a violent thunderstorm shook the night sky. It rained for three hours
solid, a great drenching of fat summer rain. During the whole night, the
police troopers
were exposed to the downpour
, waiting beside their horses, saddled and ready for
action.

Fortifications were made to various sections of the Camp, including Rede's and Johnston's
quarters (
a particularly exposed locality
) and the military barracks. It was the
job of the police to guard these vulnerable targets. So the exhausted and no doubt
frightened young men
lay wrapped in their cloaks on the saturated ground
or crouching
under their horses for shelter. To kill time, recounted Samuel Huyghue, the lads
sat
spinning yarns of former service in the field
. For some, there would have been
an element of truth to their tales. For most, the one-upmanship was pure bravado.

Robert Rede, dry and fortified in his quarters, scratched out a letter to Melbourne
by candlelight.
The absolute necessity of putting down all meeting Public/Private
I think should now be apparent
, he wrote,
for the abolition of the Licence Fee is
merely a watchword.
The real agenda, suggested Rede, was revolt.

A LATE-NIGHT DEPUTATION

But the diggers were still not sticking to Commissioner Rede's script. Late that
night, with the dust settled by hours of soaking rain, Lalor decided to send a deputation
to Rede. These go-betweens would speak with him in a gentlemanly manner to negotiate
for the release of the prisoners. Lalor chose George Black—one of the men who so
recently had been on a similar mission to see Hotham—along with Raffaello Carboni
and the Catholic priest Father Smyth.

When the trio reached the Yarrowee River below the Camp, the police stopped them.
Only Smyth was allowed to proceed. He was taken directly to Rede. Flanked by his
deputies, Rede accompanied Smyth back to where Black and Carboni waited in the company
of the police. Black immediately repeated the mistake he'd made with Hotham. He
demanded
the release of the prisoners, and for good measure added his opinion that the soldiers
were bullies and that Britons would not stand for such brutal treatment.

The situation was hopeless. Rede expected the obedience and submission that his office
vested in him. Black represented diggers who would no longer submit to tyranny,
men who were desperate to have a voice after months of humiliation and neglect.
The new codes smacked up against the old like waves against a cliff face.

Rede knew the licensing system was unworkable and must be replaced. Like Ellen Young,
he had written directly to Hotham, on 7 November, suggesting other ways of raising
revenue. His letter stated baldly:
I look at all direct taxation now
as impolitic
.
He must also have known that ordering a full-scale licence hunt on the morning after
the impulsive licence-burning protest at Bakery Hill was sure to cause trouble. But
he was not prepared to risk giving the impression he was not in complete control.

Black now offered him a solution. Stop the licence hunts until the people had once
more had the opportunity to put their case to Hotham. In return for such consideration,
the people would lay down their weapons and pick up their shovels. They would cease
their armed resistance if they were sure they would not need to defend themselves
and their families against actions such as the morning's digger hunt.

But Rede smelled a rat. Or perhaps the acrid stench of his own reputation going up
in smoke. Was this a trick? He already believed that the protest against the licence
tax was merely the thin end of the wedge. The leaders of this agitation were revolutionaries,
he was convinced: nothing short of self-government would appease them and he didn't
want to be the one who rolled out the red carpet for them. He could not afford to
be the one who stepped cautiously back from the brink. He would have to stand firm.

He could not promise that there would be no more digger hunts, he told the deputation.
Then he dismissed them: they could go now.

I can only say that things look as bad as they almost possibly can
, lamented the
Geelong Advertiser after the deputation's second failed attempt to broker a truce.
Is there no peacemaker?
Martha Clendinning wondered the same thing.
Things must come
to a violent ending
, she predicted,
and that very soon
.

1 DECEMBER—FRIDAY

On the first day of summer, Friday 1 December 1854, the Ballarat diggings ground
to a halt. Miners downed tools. Storekeepers closed their doors. Families regrouped.
Mates gathered in furtive clumps. Blacksmiths began fashioning pikes, the traditional
weapon of peasant rebellion.

Teams of diggers swept through the city, first requesting, then insisting, that the
occupants hand over their guns and ammunition. (All requisitioned arms, it was promised,
would be returned when they were no longer needed.) The hotels and shanties were
humming with rumour, but there was a surprising lack of drunkenness. An eerie hush
fell over the festive season as a community held its breath.

That night at the Adelphi Theatre, Sarah Hanmer held a benefit performance. It was
a tribute to herself, under the patronage of Resident Commissioner Robert Rede and
the American consul, James Tarleton. During the evening she was presented with a
gold watch and chain, as a
mark of respect for her private worth and public character
.
The watch was purchased with funds raised from the benefit Mrs Hanmer had previously
held to free the alleged sly-grogger Frank Carey. (Carey, after being reprieved by
Hotham, had refused to take the money.)

Owing to the circumstances
, neither Tarleton nor Rede was present to see Mrs Hanmer
receive her gift. If they had been, they might have wondered what sort of game this
formidable woman was playing at.

Earlier that evening, the Americans had held a meeting at the Adelphi to determine
what their position would be in the looming crisis. The atmosphere was tense. Tarleton
had warned his countrymen to stay out of any impending conflict, but, as American
Charles Ferguson reported from the meeting,
others complained that we were doing
nothing, while it was a matter of as much interest to us as to them, and began to
accuse us of cowardice
. If Thomas and Frances Pierson joined their fellow Americans
at the meeting, Thomas wasn't prepared to write it in his diary.

Publicly, the Americans voted to stay out of it. They would not be seen as instigators.
We regarded ourselves as foreigners
, recounted Ferguson,
and had no right to be foremost
in an open outbreak against the government.

Privately, it was obvious that many Americans, notably Mrs Hanmer's friend Captain
McGill, were right in the thick of it. The diggers could count on their support.
Like other foreign nationals who were joining the drilling corps at the Stockade,
they believed they were defending themselves. They were taking a stand against a
government that had proved at the Gravel Pits that it had no hesitation in
firing
on the people
.

Sarah Hanmer was directing the proceeds of all her benefits to the Diggers Defence
Fund. She was the war chest's principal contributor. Yet the shrewd theatre manager
was still able to play it both ways, counting Ballarat's highest official and the
honorary consul of the most influential immigrant group in the colony among her patrons.
Rede and Tarleton sponsored a benefit in her honour, despite the fact that within
two days her theatre would be used to host the Ballarat Reform League's most important
meeting yet.

Why would these men flatter her with their sponsorship and affirm her prestige? Did
they think this leading lady,
who commanded the respect and affection of the American
diggers, would use her influence to act as a go-between? Did Commissioner Rede court
Sarah Hanmer's power, hoping it would be used to his benefit? Or fearing it would
be used against him?

Peacemaker or firebrand? Sarah Hanmer kept everyone guessing. Sometimes it pays to
have one foot in both camps.

2 DECEMBER—SATURDAY

Saturday morning.

Business is entirely suspended
, wrote Charles Evans,
but one topic of conversation
engrosses the attention of diggers and storekeepers
. Those who could afford it were
sending their families away while others whom poverty compels to keep their wives
and families amidst the scene of threatening danger were filled with dread.
Evans
thanked his lucky stars he was a single man.

For months—in some cases years—shamefaced men had been struggling to put food in
the mouths of their children. Now these same men had to worry about how to protect
their loved ones from an army that would fire bullets among anonymous tents.

They had faced the deaths of people they loved at sea or in childbirth. There was
nothing anyone could do about that. But, lord knew, a man could stand up to another
man.

Peter Lalor wrote as much to his fiancée, Alicia Dunne, two days earlier.
I would
be unworthy of being called a man. I would be unworthy of myself, and, above all,
I would be unworthy of you and your love, were I base enough to desert my companions
in danger
.

Some people had spent Friday night in the Stockade but most had slept in their own
tents. The purpose of the Stockade, after all, was to prevent the arrest of unlicensed
diggers. There had never been a licence hunt at night.

But throughout Saturday more diggers kept rolling up, many coming from other goldfields,
eager to help the resistance. The numbers were swelled by women who brought food
into the Stockade and at least one female sly-grog seller, who knew a captive market
when she saw one and set up shop on the fringe of the palisade.

Alexander Dick had only been in Ballarat for two weeks but he could immediately see
that the place was
rife
[his word]
for an explosion
. Peter Lalor, whose tent was
inside the Stockade, could read the mood too. He needed to corral the energy or his
‘army' would disintegrate into a violent mob, as had happened at Bentley's Hotel.

Already there had been reports that looters were taking advantage of the situation,
roaming the Flat demanding cash, firearms and provisions from frightened diggers
and their wives. Martha Clendinning was alone in her store that day when a group
of eight miners marched up in military fashion and demanded any firearms she possessed.
She escaped harm, but fetched her brother to stay with her that night when Dr Clendinning
was called away.