THE EUREKA STOCKADE - PART 2
The diggers and soldiers traded insults and abuse.
The thought of "government by artillery" pushed the diggers to breaking point. They were barely making a living and being continually asked to climb out 160 ft holes to show licences to armed police.
They surged to a monster meeting at Bakery Point on 29 November. They raised their own flag, the Southern Cross. All the arguments for and against armed revolt were thrown up again.
An Irishman, Peter Lalor, was elected as their leader. Lalor, was the a son of an Irish Member of the House of Commons and an educated man. He didn't really see himself as a revolutionary, but any ordinary man for whom time had come to stand and fight for justice.
At close of the meeting the diggers threw their licences into the fire. Next day, Commissioner Rede came with armed soldiers to inspect their licences, they declared they didn't have them.
Rather than be arrested for not having them, they marched to Eureka behind Captain Ross, a Canadian bearing the Eureka flag. That night they sworn solemnly "We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other, and fight to defend our rights and liberties".
In Melbourne wild rumours were gripping the town that the diggers were marching on Melbourne with the intention of armed rebellion against the government and the light of revolution in their eyes.
Over the next two days the diggers worked feverishly building a wooden stockade, behind which they gathered rifles and pistols and fashioned pikes and other weapons. The diggings were quiet, all waited to see what the end would be.
Most of the two thousand who had sworn allegiance to the Southern Cross drifted away and on the night of 2 December only 150 were left in the stockade. The leaders of the watching soldiers waited for their moment to attack the stockade.
Early on the morning of 3 December the fighting erupted. No-one is sure who fired the first shots but it was all over in less than thirty minutes. Five soldiers and twenty-four miners lay dead and many more wounded on both sides.
Peter Lalor was wounded in the arm but he and the other leaders, Vern, Carboni, Humffray of the rebellion escaped capture.
The news of the uprising caused shockwaves around Australia and fears that radical, socialist foreigners would overthrow the British way of life.
In the end though many lost their lives, the diggers had a
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