Remembering early gold miner activism

HISTORIAN Marjorie Theobald will be at the Eureka Centre next month exploring instances of gold miner activism that occurred before the Eureka Stockade.

Despite the events of 1854 often being regarded as the birth of democracy, Ms Theobald said it is important to recognise the efforts of miners’ earlier uprisings.

“There’s been a strong tendency to give all of the credit to the Ballarat miners,” she said.

“I’m going to be going into the details that it was a simmering problem on the goldfields and the first large protest about the licence fee was in December 1851.”

Protests were held in Chewton, near Castlemaine in 1851, and in 1853 in Bendigo, which is now known as the Red Ribbon Rebellion.

Support for the Bendigo protest proved so strong that Governor La Trobe drafted a new Victorian democratic constitution which was on its way to be ratified in Westminster when the Eureka Stockade conflict occurred.

“It was on its way to Westminster to be rubber stamped before Eureka occurred,” said Ms Theobald.

“To say that the Ballarat miners deserve all the credit for the birth of democracy, it really leaves out the miners in Bendigo.”

Ms Theobald comes from Castlemaine and her love for history began with her father.

She has completed a PhD at Monash University and has worked at the University of Melbourne.

“I was born on the goldfields, I was born in Castlemaine and my father was almost extremely interested in the gold rushes,” Ms Theobald said. “Unlike Ballarat or San Francisco, where a lot of it has been obliterated by the city, at Chewton you only have to go for a walk and see evidence of the gold rush.”

The red ribbon activists and the birth of Australian democracy talk will be on Thursday 7 November from 5.30pm.

More information can be found on the Eureka Centre Ballarat website.