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Frederick Vern was a German who was one of the leaders in the Eureka Rebellion. [1] He helped form the Ballarat Reform League. Vern went into hiding after the rebellion and spent a number of months on the run. [2] [3]
The Eureka Rebellion was a series of events involving gold miners who revolted against the British administration of the colony of Victoria, Australia during the Victorian gold rush. It culminated in the Battle of the Eureka Stockade, which took place on 3 December 1854 at Ballarat between the rebels and the colonial forces of Australia. The fighting left at least 27 dead and many injured, most of the casualties being rebels. There was a preceding period beginning in 1851 of peaceful demonstrations and civil disobedience on the Victorian goldfields. The miners had various grievances, chiefly the cost of mining permits and the officious way the system was enforced.
The Victorian gold rush was a period in the history of Victoria, Australia, approximately between 1851 and the late 1860s. It led to a period of extreme prosperity for the Australian colony, and an influx of population growth and financial capital for Melbourne, which was dubbed "Marvellous Melbourne" as a result of the procurement of wealth.
The Eureka Flag was flown at the Battle of the Eureka Stockade, which took place on 3 December 1854 at Ballarat in Victoria, Australia. It was the culmination of the 1851–1854 Eureka Rebellion on the Victorian goldfields. Gold miners protested the cost of mining permits, the officious way the colonial authorities enforced the system, and other grievances. An estimated crowd of over 10,000 demonstrators swore allegiance to the flag as a symbol of defiance at Bakery Hill on 29 November 1854. It was then flown over the Eureka Stockade during the battle that resulted in at least 27 deaths. Around 120 miners were arrested, and many others were badly wounded.
Peter Fintan Lalor was an Irish-Australian rebel and, later, politician who rose to fame for his leading role in the Eureka Rebellion, an event identified with the "birth of democracy" in Australia.
John Basson Humffray was a leading advocate in the movement of miner reform process in the British colony of Victoria, and later a member of parliament.
Henry Erle Seekamp was a journalist, owner and editor of the Ballarat Times during the 1854 Eureka Rebellion in Victoria, Australia. The newspaper was fiercely pro-miner, and he was responsible for a series of articles and several editorials that supported the Ballarat Reform League while condemning the government and police harassment of the diggers. After the Rebellion was put down, he was charged, found guilty of seditious libel, and imprisoned, becoming the only participant to receive gaol time.
Eureka Stockade is a 1949 British film of the story surrounding Irish-Australian rebel and politician Peter Lalor and the gold miners' rebellion of 1854 at the Eureka Stockade in Ballarat, Victoria, in the Australian Western genre.
The Anti-Gold Licence Association, was formed in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia on 6 June 1853. The Association's protest became known as the Red Ribbon Rebellion, since at meetings in June and July thousands of miners gathered, wearing red ribbons around their hats, to show their solidarity in opposing the conditions imposed upon them by the government.
The Ballarat Reform League came into being in October 1853 and was officially constituted on 11 November 1854 at a mass meeting of miners in Ballarat, Victoria to protest against the Victorian government's mining policy and administration of the goldfields.
Eureka Stockade is a 1984 Australian miniseries based on the battle of Eureka Stockade. It reunited the producer, writer and star of A Town Like Alice.
William Bramwell Withers was a journalist and novelist best known for writing the first history of Ballarat, Victoria. Born in England, Withers moved to Natal, South Africa, in 1949 and contributed to local newspapers. He moved to Victoria in 1952, working odd jobs before becoming a reporter for the Argus and the Herald in Melbourne.
The Battle of the Eureka Stockade was fought in Ballarat, Victoria, on 3 December 1854, between gold miners and the colonial forces of Australia. It was the culmination of the 1851–1854 Eureka Rebellion during the Victorian gold rush. The fighting resulted in at least 27 deaths and many injuries, the majority of casualties being rebels. The miners had various grievances, chiefly the cost of mining permits and the officious way the system was enforced.
Nathan Frederick Spielvogel was an Australian author of Jewish origin, whose work has been compared to that of Judah Waten.
John Rodger Greville was an Irish-born comic actor, singer, songwriter and stage manager who had a long career in Australia.
The following bibliography includes notable sources concerning the Eureka Rebellion. This article is currently being expanded and revised.
The political significance of the Eureka Rebellion is contested ground. It may be seen simply as a rebellion by miners against burdensome taxation or, as some authors suggest, the first expression of republican sentiment in Australia. Some would suggest the importance of the event has been exaggerated because Australian history does not include a major armed rebellion equivalent to the French Revolution or the American War of Independence. Others maintain that Eureka was a seminal event that marked a major change in the course of Australian history.
The 1854 mining revolt in Australia, Eureka Rebellion inspired numerous novels, poems, films, songs, plays and artworks. Much of Eureka folklore relies heavily on Raffaello Carboni's 1855 book, The Eureka Stockade, which was the first and only comprehensive eyewitness account of the Eureka rebellion. The poet Henry Lawson wrote about Eureka, as have many novelists.
The following is a timeline of the Eureka Rebellion.
There were key people involved in the Eureka Rebellion who subscribed to the ideals of Chartism and saw the struggle on the Victorian goldfields as a continuation of the activism in Britain in the 1840s and "the centuries of heroic struggles in England which preceded the Australian Federation" such as the 1688 Glorious Revolution, that resulted in the enactment of the English Bill of Rights. From 1837 to 1848, 129,607 incomers to Australia arrived from the British mainland, with at least 80 "physical force" chartists sentenced to penal servitude in Van Diemens Land. Currey agrees that the population at the time would have been sufficiently politically awake such that: "it may be fairly assumed that the aims of the Anti-Corn-Law League and the Chartists were very familiar to many of the Victorian miners."
The Victorian gold rush led to an influx of foreign nationals, increasing the colony's population from 77,000 in 1851 to 198,496 in 1853. Many like Raffaello Carboni had experienced the Revolutions of 1848. They supported the protest movement that formed on the goldfields in opposition to the administration of the mining tax system, ultimately leading to the armed uprising in Ballarat. It is currently known that the rebel garrison that defended the Eureka Stockade when government forces attacked on 3 December 1854 came from at least 23 different nations, including Australia, Canada, the United States of America, Jamaica, Mauritius, Russia, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, The Netherlands, Scotland, Ireland, England, Wales, Germany, France, Portugal and Spain. Carboni recalled that "We were of all nations and colours." During the 1855 Victorian High Treason trials The Argus court reporter observed that of "the first batch of prisoners brought up for examination, the four examined consisted of one Englishman, one Dane, one Italian, and one negro, and if that is not a foreign collection, we do not know what is." However, according to Professor Anne Beggs-Sunter's figures, in her sample of 44 rebels, only one hailed from a non-European country.
After the trials held in melbourne he came clean and served three months in prison.