Since the white invasion, Ned Kelly is probably the best known Australian. Though we all know of him, not all are clear on his life and story, but none the less his name lives as a symbol of fighting against injustice. Even in his own short life he had a presence larger than life. Let [...]
Recently we reviewed an article by Professor Stuart Macintyre on Gold and the birth of democracy in Victoria, going back to the 1850s. As well as the birth of parliamentary democracy, this time saw the growth of unions. The diggers faced a hard life on the gold fields, and diggings per se. Death and injury [...]
The 1981 Irish hunger strike was the culmination of a five-year protest. It was a showdown between the prisoners and the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. One hunger striker, Bobby Sands, was elected as a Member of Parliament during the strike, prompting media interest from around the world. The strike was called off after ten prisoners [...]
The Kelly House in Beveridge As another December passes us by let’s cast our minds back to colonial Victoria in December 1854, where we had the events at the Eureka Stockade, an episode which helped shape democratic Victoria as we know it, and, in Beveridge not far from Whittlesea, there was the birth of Edward [...]
Once again we commemorate Eureka. We commemorate the brave struggle of the diggers who bonded together under the Southern Cross and struck a blow for a more democratic society. But as well as this epiode, let’s recall this was the culmination of a series of struggles. When Governor Latrobe introduced the licence fee in August [...]
Gold was discovered in Ballarat in August, 1851. The newly-created Victorian government was composed of rural aristocrats who thought that their colony would be an agricultural one. Suddenly tens of thousands of miners arrived in Australia from the Californian goldfields, Britain, China and countries all around the world. By 1854, there were about 25,000 miners [...]
