Play to mark 170 years since Red Ribbon

BENDIGO’S rich gold era was in significant part thanks to the miners who laboured across the region’s fields in the 1800s.

However, those miners were subject to a license tax which the majority felt was too expensive, and subsequently a peaceful protest, called the Rid Ribbon Agitation, was staged at Camp Hill.

One-hundred-and-seventy years to the day after the event, on Thursday 27 August, actors from The Bendigo Theatre Company will put on a play showing what historians believe occurred on that day.

“Hopefully the citizens of Bendigo who do come will get a really good idea of what all this was about,” said Euan McGillivray, president of the Bendigo Historical Society.

“Red was thought to be the colour of agitation and revolution and rebellion because there were people from all over the world on the Bendigo minefields.”

Mr McGillivray said as a way of raising money between 1851 to 1853, the Victorian Government applied a license fee for those wishing to dig on the goldfields.

Miners had to pay 30 shillings per month, but pushed for a reduction to 10 so the practice was more affordable.

“Normally it wasn’t a lot, and they wouldn’t have noticed it so much when times were very good and they were getting a lot of gold,” said Mr McGillivray.

“But in late 1852 to 1853, times were a bit tough on the Bendigo fields, so hundreds and thousands of the miners were really quite perturbed about it and thought it was unjust.”

Mr McGillivray said the collection method also angered miners, who had to pay the fee even if they hadn’t found any gold yet.

“Police they were quite brutal about it, and arrested people, chained them up, and did all sorts of gruesome things to many miners at the time,” he said.

“There were 15,000 miners armed to the teeth and it could have got very ugly if it wasn’t controlled properly.”

In 1853, thousands signed a petition for the Crown to reduce the fee by two-thirds, subsequently rejected by Governor Joseph La Trobe, leading to the protest.

Although not immediately, the protest led to the Eureka Rebellion and the eventual end of the goldfield tax in April 1855.

The reenactment will be at Bendigo Piazza in Rosalind Park at 11am on Thursday 27 August, and people are asked to wear a red ribbon like the miners did.