The Knowledge Solution: Australian History

What place does history have in a post-truth world?

Anna Clark

• Publisher: Melbourne University Press Digital
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780522875430
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Australian & Oceanian History
• Index: History

What can we learn from recurring events across the recent history of Australia, of colonisation, nationalism, racism, fighting on foreign shores, land booms, industrial campaigns and culture wars? Arguments about the discipline of Australian History, from thinkers across the ideological and historical spectrum, are distilled in these extracts and essays. The Knowledge Solution: Australian History is the second collection in a series that draws from the remarkable books published by Australia's oldest university press.Contributors include: Bain Attwood, Geoffrey Blainey, Michael Cannon, Raffaello Carboni, Manning Clark, Peter Cochrane, James Curran, Mark Davis, Alexandra Dellios, Richard Evans, Michele Grossman, Marcia Langton, Helen MacDonald, Stuart Macintyre, Janet McCalman, Mark McKenna, Lisa Palmer, Ray Parkin, Rachel Perkins, Robert Reynolds, John Rickard, Kathryn Shain, Peter Spearritt, Peter Sutton, Rebe Taylor, Maureen Tehan, David Unaipon, Jo Wainer, Stuart Ward, Ellen Warne, Myra Willard and Alexis Wright.

1

EPIPHANY WEEK AT EUREKA

Raffaello Carboni, an active participant at the Eureka Stockade, relates the story behind the myth, evoking the build up, drama and horror of the event

From The Eureka Stockade, published 2004, first published in 1855

III

Jupiter Tonans

One fine morning (Epiphany week). I was hard at work (excuse old chum, if I said hard: though my hand had been scores of times compelled in London to drop the quill through sheer fatigue, yet I never before handled a pick and shovel), I hear a rattling noise among the brush. My faithful dog, Bonaparte, would not keep under my control. ‘What’s up?’ ‘Your licence, mate,’ was the peremptory question from a six-foot fellow in blue shirt, thick boots, the face of a ruffian armed with a carabine and fixed bayonet. The old ‘all right’ being exchanged, I lost sight of that specimen of colonial brutedom and his similars, called, as I then learned, ‘traps’ and ‘troopers’.¹ I left off work, and was unable to do a stroke more that day.

‘I came, then, 16,000 miles [26,000 kilometres] in vain to get away from the law of the sword!’ was my sad reflection. My sorrow was not mitigated by my mates and neighbours informing me that Australia was a penal settlement. Inveterate murderers, audacious burglars, bloodthirsty bushrangers, were the ruling triumvirate, the scour of old Europe, called Vandemonians, in this bullock-drivers’ land. Of course I felt tamed, and felt less angry, at the following search for licence. At the latter end of the month, one hundred and seventy seven pounds troy, in two superb masses of gold, were discovered at the depth of sixty feet [18 metres], on the hill opposite where I was working. The talk was soon Vulcanish through the land. Canadian Gully was as rich in lumps as other goldfields are in dust. Diggers, whom the gold fever had rendered stark blind, so as to desert Ballaarat for Mount Alexander and Bendigo, now returned as ravens to the old spot; and towards the end of February ’53, Canadian Gully was in its full glory.

IV

Incipit lamentatio

The search for licences, or ‘the traps are out to-day’—their name at the time—happened once a month. The strong population now on this goldfield had perhaps rendered it necessary twice a month. Only in October, I recollect they had come out three times. Yet, ‘the traps are out’ was annoying, but not exasperating. Not exasperating, because John Bull, ab initio et ante secula, was born for law, order, and safe money-making on land and sea. They were annoying, because, said John, not that he likes his money more than his belly, but he hates the bayonet: I mean, of course, he does not want to be bullied with the bayonet. To this honest grumbling of John, the drunkard, that is the lazy, which make the incapables, joined their cant, and the Vandemonians pulled up with wonted audacity. In a word, the thirty shillings a month for the gold licence became a nuisance.

A public meeting was announced on Bakery-hill. It was in November 1853. Four hundred diggers were present. I recollect I heard a ‘Doctor Carr’ poking about among the heaps of empty bottles all round the Camp, and asked who paid for the good stuff that was in them, and whither was it gone. Of course, Doctor Carr did not mention that one of those bottles, corked and sealed with the ‘Crown’, was forced open with Mr Hetherington’s corkscrew; and that said Dr Carr had then to confess that the bottle aforesaid contained a nobbler some £250 worth for himself. Great works already at Toorak. Tout cela soit dit en passant. Mr Hetherington, then a storekeeper on the Ballaarat Flat, and now of the Cladendon Hotel, Ballaarat Township, is a living witness. For the fun of the thing, I spoke a few words which merited me a compliment from the practitioner, who also honoured me with a private precious piece of information—‘Nous allons bientot avoir la Republique Australienne! Signore.’ ‘Quelle farce! repondis je.’ The specimen of man before me impressed me with such a decided opinion of his ability for destroying sugar sticks, that at once I gave him credit as the founder of a republic for babies to suck their thumbs.

In short, here dates the Victorian system of ‘memorialising’. The diggers of Ballaarat sympathised with those of Bendigo in their common grievances, and prayed the governor that the gold licence be reduced to thirty shillings a month. There was further a great waste of yabber-yabber about the diggers not being represented in the Legislative Council, and a deal of fustian was spun against the squatters. I understood very little of those matters at the time: the shoe had not pinched my toe yet.

Every one returned to his work; some perhaps not very peacefully, on account of a nobbler or two over the usual allowance.

IX

Abyssus, abyssum invocate

‘Joe, Joe!’ No one in the world can properly understand and describe this shouting of ‘Joe’, unless he were on this El Dorado of Ballaarat at the time.

It was a horrible day, plagued by the hot winds. A blast of the hurricane winding through gravel pits whirled towards the Eureka this shouting of ‘Joe’. It was the howl of a wolf for the shepherds, who bolted at once towards the bush: it was the yell of bull-dogs for the fossickers who floundered among the deep holes, and thus dodged the hounds: it was a scarecrow for the miners, who now scrambled down to the deep, and left a licensed mate or two at the windlass. By this time, a regiment of troopers, in full gallop, had besieged the whole Eureka, and the traps under their protection ventured among the holes. An attempt to give an idea of such disgusting and contemptible campaigns for the search of licences is really odious to an honest man. Some of the traps were civil enough; aye, they felt the shame of their duty; but there were among them devils at heart, who enjoyed the fun, because their cupidity could not bear the sight of the zig-zag uninterrupted muster of piles of rich-looking washing stuff, and the envy which blinded their eyes prevented them from taking into account the overwhelming number of shicers close by, round about, all along. Hence they looked upon the ragged muddy blue shirt as an object of their contempt.

Are diggers dogs or savages, that they are to be hunted on the diggings, commanded, in Pellissier’s African style, to come out of their holes, and summoned from their tents by these hounds of the executive? Is the garb of a digger a mark of inferiority? ‘In sudore vultus lue vesceris panem’² is then an infamy now-a-days!

Give us facts, and spare us your bosh, says my good reader.—Very well.

I, CARBONI RAFFAELLO, da Roma, and late of No. 4, Castle-court, Cornhill, City of London, had my rattling ‘Jenny Lind’ (the cradle) at a water-hole down the Eureka Gully. Must stop my work to shew my licence. ‘All right.’ I had then to go a quarter of a mile up the hill to my hole, and fetch the washing stuff. There again—‘Got your licence?’ ‘All serene, governor.’ On crossing the holes, up to the knees in mullock, and loaded like a dromedary, ‘Got your licence?’ was again the cheer-up from a third trooper or trap. Now, what answer would you have given, sir?

I assert, as a matter of fact, that I was often compelled to produce my licence twice at each and the same licence hunt. Any one who knows me personally, will readily believe that the accursed game worried me to death.

XII

Sufficit diei sua vexatio

Either this chapter must be very short, or I had better give it up without starting it at all.

Up to the middle of September 1854, the search for licences happened once a month; at most twice: perhaps once a week on the Gravel Pits, owing to the near neighbourhood of the Camp. Now, licence-hunting became the order of the day. Twice a week on every line; and the more the diggers felt annoyed at it, the more our Camp officials persisted in goading us, to render our yoke palatable by habit. I assert, as an eyewitness and a sufferer, that both in October and November, when the weather allowed it, the Camp rode out for the hunt every alternate day. True, one day they would hunt their game on Gravel-pits; another day, they pounced on the foxes of the Eureka; and a third day, on the Redhill: but, though working on different leads, are we not all fellow diggers? Did not several of us meet again in the evening, under the same tent, belonging to the same party? It is useless to ask further questions.

Towards the latter end of October and the beginning of November we had such a set of scoundrels camped among us, in the shape of troopers and traps, that I had better shut up this chapter at once, or else whirl the whole manuscript bang down a shicer.

‘Hold hard, though, take your time, old man: don’t let your Roman blood hurry you off like the hurricane, and thus damage the merits of your case. Answer this question first,’ says my good reader.

‘If it be a fair one, I will.’

‘Was, then, the obnoxious mode of collecting the tax the sole cause of discontent: or was the tax itself (two pounds for three months) objected to at the same time?’

‘I think the practical miner, who had been hard at work, night and day, for the last four or six months, and, after all, had just bottomed a shicer, objected to the tax itself, because he could not possibly afford to pay it. And was it not atrocious to confine this man in the lousy lock-up at the Camp, because he had no luck?’

Allow me, now, in return, to put a very important question, of the old Roman stamp, Cui bono? that is, Where did our licence money go to? That’s a nut which will be positively cracked by-and-bye.

XLIV

Accingere gladio tuo super femur tuum

On Friday, December 1st, the sun rose as usual. The diggers came in armed, voluntarily, and from all directions: and soon they were under drill, as the day before. So far as I know, not one digger had turned to work. It may have happened, that certain Cornishmen, well known for their peculiar propensity, of which they make a boast to themselves, to pounce within an inch of their neighbour’s shaft, were not allowed to indulge in ‘encroaching’. This, however, I assert as a matter of fact, that the Council of the Eureka Stockade never gave or hinted at any order to stop the usual work on the goldfield.

Towards ten o’clock, news reached our camp that the red coats were under arms, and there would be another licence-hunting.

The flames did not devour the Eureka Hotel with the same impetuosity as we got up our stockade. Peter Lalor gave the order: Vern had the charge, and was all there with his tremendous sword. ‘Wo ist der Raffaello! Du, Baricaden bauen,’ and all heaps of slabs, all available timber was soon higgledy-piggledy thrown all round our camp.

We learned from this Creswick leg...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Epiphany Week at Eureka
• 2 The Policy Believed to be in the Interests of the British Empire
• 3 Aboriginal Folklore and Traditions
• 4 A Kind of Earthquake
• 5 Uncovering the Filed and Forgotten
• 6 Talking History
• 7 How Do We Approach Public History?
• 8 The Private and the Public
• 9 The Ship
• 10 Those Who Dared
• 11 Issues Confronting Indigenous Australians
• 12 Words that Changed Everything
• 13 The Idea of a Treaty
• 14 Amy’s Choice
• 15 Legislating Liberty
• 16 Crafting New Narratives
• 17 A World of Alternatives
• 18 After Consensus
• 19 Why Were We Fighting?
• 20 The Kulin’s Treaty
• 21 Remaking Australia
• 22 Lessons in Two Bodies
• 23 Lost in a Strange Land
• 24 Other People’s Subject Matter
• 25 Family Separations and Refugees
• 26 Poisoning the Race
• 27 Genetic Connections
• Contributors
• Index