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Peter Lalor
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With Lalor as their leader the men armed themselves with guns and pikes. They marched to the Eureka field and built a stockade (укрепление, форт). They swore to defend the stockade against any attack. There were only about 150 men at the stockade at dawn on Sunday, 4 December 1854. A lot of them were asleep when about three hundred soldiers charged. Ten minutes later about thirty miners and six soldiers lay dead or dying. The soldiers rounded up the surviving diggers who had not fled and marched them off to jail. Peter Lalor was wounded in the battle but managed to escape. That night he hid in the house of a priest and his wounded arm was amputated.
The miners at Eureka had lost the battle but most people in Victoria were on their side. The newspapers condemned the soldiers' brutality and said the governor should not have ordered the attack.
The miners who had been arrested and charged with high treason were found not guilty. Outside the courts crowds gathered and cheered when the verdicts were announced. A new government was elected in 1855. The license fee was abolished. In future miners would pay just one pound a year for a 'miner's right' - the right to dig for gold and the right to vote.
... I think [Eureka] may be called the finest thing in Australasian history. It was a revolution – small in size, but great politically; it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for a principle, a stand against injustice and oppression. It was another instance of a victory won by a lost battle.
Mark Twain, American author
The diggers were subjected to the most unheard of insults and cruelties in the collection of this tax, being in many instances chained to logs if they could not produce their license.
Peter Lalor
Peter Lalor, who lost an arm in the Eureka Stockade rebellion that he led, later went on to become a Member of Parliament.
“Foreign devils”
There were about two thousand Chinese people in Australia when the gold rush started. They had been brought out by squatters to work on their runs (фермы) as shepherds and laborers. Others worked as cooks and household servants.
Thousands more Chinese came when news of the gold discoveries reached them. A lot of Chinese who sailed for Australia never saw the goldfields. Conditions on the ships from the Chinese ports were as bad as any convict ship. Hundreds died on the voyage. White settlers in the colonies were amused by the Chinese migrants. They joked about the pigtails (косичка) they wore. The Chinese all seemed to dress in the same blue jumpers and trousers, shoes made of silk with wooden soles, and wide straw (соломенные) hats.
The Chinese worked very hard on the goldfields. A very large Chinese camp was established at Guildford in Victoria. At one time there were more than five thousand Chinese there, all of them working over an abandoned (заброшенная) mine which the European miners had given up. At first the Europeans did not mind the Chinese coming. But as the gold ran out (истощилось) they started to resent (ненавидеть) them - particularly as they seemed to be able to find gold where Europeans could not. The Europeans began to say that the colonies of Australia should only be open to other Europeans.
The Chinese were described as a threat to British civilization in Australia. It was said that they were opium smokers. They were portrayed as dirty and disease-ridden (зараженные болезнями). Newspapers had pictures of Chinese men looking like hideous fiends (ужасные злодеи). Readers were told that they made a habit of stealing European women. In Victoria a special tax was put on the Chinese. They were made to pay a fee when they arrived in the hope that this would stop them coming.
In some places the Europeans attacked the Chinese and beat them viciously. The tents of the Chinese were pulled down and burnt. Some Chinese were killed. The worst attack was at Lambing Flat in New South Wales in 1861.
Hatred for the Chinese became a way of thinking in Australia. Eventually all the colonies passed laws to keep them out.
