THE SIGNIFICANCE OF EUREKA
VIEWPOINTS OF EUREKA: Historians, Politicians and Academics.
“As we reflect on our nation’s heritage, we should also celebrate the traditions and values that identify us as Australians such as optimism; tolerance; perseverance and mateship: the importance of family and a fair go and our willingness to pull together in times of hardship and adversity. We also renowned for our good sense, good will and hard work; and our sense of humour. Most of these qualities can be readily found in the story of the Eureka Stockade.
"The events at Eureka 150 years ago played a part in the development of Australia. As a pioneer of democracy amongst free nations, Australia is one of the few countries to have been continuously democratic throughout the course of the twentieth century.”
Extract of a Eureka 150 message written by Hon John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia published in ‘The Eureka Echo’, Volume 23 No 4, December 2004.
“ ….the Eureka revolution was an earnest attempt at democratic government”
Sir Robert Menzies – Former Prime Minister of Australia. Extract quoted from ‘EUREKA – REBELLION BENEATH THE SOUTHERN CROSS’, edited by Geoffrey Gold, (Rigby Limited)Melbourne, 1977.
“The importance of a historical event lies not in what happened but what later generations believed to have happened”
Gough Whitlam – Former Prime Minister of Australia.
“Australian Democracy was born at Eureka”
Dr.H.V.Evatt – former Leader of the Australian Labor Party. Dr Evatt’s article in the Golden Jubilee Souvenir of the Australian Labor Party -1890-1940, bears the title ‘Australian Democracy was Born at Eureka’.
“I believe Eureka was a catalyst for the rapid evolution of democratic government in this country and it remains a national symbol of the right of the people to have a say in how they are governed.
“This means Eureka is not just a story - it is a responsibility. A calling to ensure we stay true to the Stockade’s democratic principles and build on its multicultural heritage – because Eureka was thoroughly multicultural.
“Many believe that the events of Eureka were responsible for, or at least hastened, significant democratic reforms for the people of Australia.
“The principles for which the diggers, fought are universal – human rights, justice and tolerance. These priorities are as relevant today as 150 years ago”
Steve Bracks, Premier of Victoria. ‘The Age’ 3 December, 2004.
“The Bakery Hill Charter demanded representative and accountable governance and its practical and just application. The Charter demanded that those who exercised power did so with fairness and equality – in other words a fair go for all.
“On the 3rd of December 1854 over 30 miners lost their lives fighting for the kind of democracy we now take, not for granted, but as a right.”
Robert Doyle, Leader of the Opposition State of Victoria 2004. Extract recorded in Hansard, Legislative Assembly, Parliament of Victoria, 11 November 2004.
“It is great irony, as is the case so often around the world, that out of the conflict of the Eureka Stockade some of our great democratic systems were born”. Peter Ryan, Leader of the Nationals, State of Victoria 2004. Extract recorded in Hansard, Legislative Assembly, Parliament of Victoria, 11 November 2004.
"The Eureka Flag remains a living symbol of an event which had an enormous influence on the development of a truly Australian democracy and our sense of nationhood.
"The battle over which it was raised was the trigger for some significant political changes which are part of the foundations of our democratic process today.
"The continuing relevance of the event and the flag all these years later only makes its preservation all the more important.
Jeff Kennett, Premier of Victoria, 24 November 1995
"I think it might be called the finest thing in Australian history. It was a revolution – small in size, but great politically ….. the people know it and are proud of it. They keep green the memory of the men who fell at the Eureka Stockade.”
Mark Twain - Author. Extract quoted from ‘EUREKA – REBELLION BENEATH THE SOUTHERN CROSS’. Edited by Geoffrey Gold,(Rigby Limited), Melbourne 1977.
“History is a flowing stream from the past to the present, and beyond into the future. Eureka for all Australians, is a vital element in the stream of our national consciousness.
“Whenever Australians to this day enjoy the rights and freedoms granted to them by their Constitutions, they can look back to Eureka, to the Ballarat Reform League and to the Charter of Bakery Hill as the wellsprings of their democracy”.
Professor John Molony – Academic and Historian.
“Next to Gallipoli, Eureka is probably the most debated military event in our history. Of course it happened six decades before Gallipoli. Curiously the leader of the Eureka rebellion lost a grandson at Gallipoli.
"What happened? Ballarat in 1854 was one of the most populous goldfields the world had seen. A metropolis of tents and churches , it was pockmarked with mining holes and shafts, shallow and deep.
"But the miners were hit by outdated regulations and taxes. Everybody had to buy an expensive licence, even if he had no income. And the police who hunted for the unlicenced miners – they were not the salt of the earth.
"In the end there were massive meetings of protest the symbolic burning of licences, the designing of a revolutionary flag, angry talk of a republic, the collecting of guns and ammunition, and the building of a simple wooden fort or stockade. It was the only serious rebellion in our history.
"We should celebrate Eureka and its democratic protests as a landmark event in Australian history. But we should not go too far in celebrating the battle itself, exciting and tragic as it was. To me the main lesson of Eureka is that argument and compromise are more effective than an appeal to arms”.
Geoffrey Blainey, The Significance of Eureka. Extract published in ‘The Eureka Echo’ Volume 23 No 4, December 2004.
“It seems to me that Rede and Hotham were determined to push protest into a resistance that be called rebellion and justify suppression.
“Tragedies like Eureka have occurred and will be repeated across time and throughout the world when governments fail to heed the voice of the people and ignore their needs and rights.”
Professor Weston Bate – Author and Historian.
“As students of history we should decide whether the facts support the arguments, and even if they do, whether they have been selected with integrity and good judgement.
“The important process is to reflect, judge, consider and evaluate explanations about historical situations. Such a process will indeed make you aware that gold mining in the 1850’s and 1860’s had many consequences for Victoria and Australia.”
Willis, Prior, Close and Castle – ‘Issues in Australian History’ (Longman Cheshire). Melbourne, 1983.
“Both historians and propagandists have produced a bewildering variety of explanations for the causes and significance of Eureka which have often been characterized by over simplification and biased distortions.
“No final conclusions can be drawn on the controversial subject of Eureka’s immediate effects…….All or almost all of the reforms which followed Eureka must in any case soon have occurred.”
Geoffrey Serle – ‘The Golden Age’ (Melbourne University Press)Melbourne, 1968.
“First of all, Eureka does stand for a sort of ‘bolshie’ approach to authority, which is an Australian characteristic, and which I for one would not change. Secondly, I think you can regard Eureka as being symbolic of early moves towards independence and important for that reason, and very important in the context of the current constitutional debate. Thirdly I would suggest that Eureka symbolizes, perhaps even foreshadows, Ballarat’s importance in the constitutional debate on Australia’s constitutional development."
Professor Cheryl Saunders A.O. (Academic) Extract from “The Legacy of Eureka” – Anne Beggs Sunter and Kevin.T.Livingstone, Australian Studies Centre, University of Ballarat 1998.
“It is difficult for people today to comprehend how the slaughter of 3 December 1854 could have occurred on Australian soil, but we must remember that Victoria in 1854 was not a democracy. The Victorian miners were being ruled brutally like the convicts of earlier years.
"The attack on the miners at Eureka was something like the slaughter carried out by the Chinese regime on human rights demonstrators in and around Tien An Men Square in 1989.
"In a sense the slaughter at Eureka was a riot by administrators, soldiers and police representing the old order of privilege and patronage. They were making a last-ditch attack on the gold-rush immigrants who foreshadowed a new order in which human dignity would be respected. Eureka is ultimately about human rights.”
Bernard Barrett (State Historian of Victoria) Extract from ‘Massacre at Eureka – The Untold Story’ – Bob O’Brien (Australian Scholarly Publishing)Melbourne, 1992.
“The Eureka Stockade has often been regarded as a great symbolic event in Australian labour history. In fact it was not a revolt of wage earners against organized capital, but of small capitalists against official authority.
“If the diggers as such ceased to take active part in political life after Eureka, the diggings were nevertheless a training ground in democratic attitudes. Here people of all types and stations rubbed shoulders in an equal pursuit of fortune, and this experience bred an assertion or rather assumption of equality, if not in possessions, at least in title to consideration and respect.”
R.M.Crawford - ‘Australia’ (Hutchison University Library)London, 7th Impression, 1961.
“Of the places in Australian history Eureka is eminent. It symbolises the beginning of our early struggles for political equality….Eureka was more than an incident or passing phase. It was greater in significance than the short-lived revolt against tyrannical authority would suggest. The permanency of Eureka in its impact on our development was that it was the first real affirmation of our determination to be the master of our own political destiny.”
J.B.Chifley, former Prime Minister of Australia. Extract from HISTORICAL STUDIES, Eureka Centenary Supplement (University of Melbourne)Melbourne, 1954.
“Eureka is a word that has become significant in the Australian tradition. The events before and following the fatal collision between miners and the military and police resources of the Colony on Sunday morning, 3 December 1854, are themselves noteworthy, but they have also an attractive colour and drama that seized the imagination of the people then and since.”
Hugh Anderson - Extract from EUREKA Victorian Parliamentary Papers, Votes and Proceedings 1854 – 1867 (Hill of Content)Melbourne,1969.
“In particular, nations need certain legends and symbols around which to construct a coherent national story and which implicitly instruct the nation about its deeper civic values. Australia needs a new ‘civic nationalism’, where we fashion a relevant national story and make our national symbols unambiguously Australian to reflect and celebrate Australian independence. In this context we propose that the Eureka uprising be made the centre piece of the new Australian national story: the birthplace of Australian democracy, the earliest exemplar Australian multiculturism and witness to the first stirrings of Australian republicanism.”
Duncan, Leigh, Madden and Tynan – ‘Imagining Australia – Ideas For Our Future’ (Allen&Unwin)Sydney, 2004.
“Eureka’s ideals are hard to impugh for their integrity and bipartism appeal Independence. Freedom. Unity. Hope.”
Dr Clare Wright, Post Doctoral Fellow, La Trobe University, ‘The Age’ 3 December 2004.
“Eureka has been used as a rallying cry whenever people have been oppressed.”
Dr Anne Beggs Sunter, Lecturer in Education, University of Ballarat, ‘The Age’ 3 December 2004