By 3 am on the first Sunday in December 2002, a small crowd waits outside the huge wrought iron gates the old Ballarat Mining Exchange. Lydiart Street is presently Ballarat's nightclub zone and this small crowd is a quiet eddy in a passing stream of boisterous young drunks who at that hour are in search of good times' dregs.
This crowd is looking for something deeper and more artful for they are early arrivals for the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery's fifth annual Eureka Dawn Walk. A meditation on courage in the face of tyranny is how the pre-publicity has described it.
Soon the gates are open, the hundreds of lanterns lit and, under a lantern Southern Cross suspended from a roof truss, the old Mining Exchange of 1888 is revealed as a cathedral of light, and the launching place for an illumination of the Eureka Story.
For the two weeks previous the magnificent and spacious Mining Exchange has been in the process of this transformation. Master lantern maker, Graeme Dunstan, and event producer, Fraser Mackay, had set up their fifth annual lantern making workshop there. Some 400 candle-lit lanterns had been readied and new banners arrayed. Many volunteers, adults and children in school groups, had helped out.
About 220 Dawn Walkers assemble and at 4 am Graeme leads them out of the rear door of the Mining Exchange and into the newly commissioned Alfred Deakin Place, where the Eureka storyteller, Peter Freund, tells the first part of the story of the events of that fateful morning of 148 years ago. The Dawn Walkers are standing on the place, which in 1854 was called Government Camp.
"Let us walk for peace," Peter says. "Let us leave a place where violence was planned and walk to a place where violent things were done."
"Let us carry these lanterns as tokens of peace, beauty and respect and all those things that peace allows us to know. Let us walk together and turn this path of violence and rule by tyranny into a path of peace and reaffirm again this year that democracy must never be compromised."
The Walkers follow the circuitous path along the Yarrowee Creek taken by the soldiers and police took in their dawn attack on the diggers in the Eureka Stockade. Crossing Mair Street, the Walkers, pass through a pedestrian tunnel under the railway line and enter Eastern Oval. Strung out around the curve of the oval and free from street lighting for the first time the Walkers behold the splendour of the lanterns, a river of light, bobbing with diamonds and stars.
From a balconey of the lovely old grandstand, Peter tells the second part of his story, giving an actor's voice to the actors of that time: Humffray, Carboni, Lalor and Hotham. The Walkers listen in silence, taking the opportunity of the seats to rest their legs, and sipping at the hot toddies that had been offered by Gallery volunteers. Another tradition with roots going back to 1854.
The Dawn Walkers then enter parkland of Black Hill following a Yarrowee now willowed and unguttered, its waters reflecting glimpses of the lanterns, the enchantment of lantern light weaving its spell.
At the places of story telling, Peter is flanked by Eureka standards each made up of a Eureka banner and string of four lanterns hanging side by side on a 4 metre pole. They light up the story teller and give the Walk and the story telling the visual impression of an Italian religious procession.
The standard bearers are volunteers and the standards require strength to hold them steady in the breezes. "Not for everyone this task," Graeme has explained. "You will need forearms and the determination of the Eureka diggers."
Under Black Hill, Peter tells of the breakdown of negotiations and how the stage is set for confrontation. He quotes Carboni: "We can tell our sons and daughters that we raised the Southern Cross on Bakery Hill and that we swore by that Southern Cross to stand together truly and fight side by side to defend our rights and liberties. What ever comes, we know that we are Ôil gente della Croce del Sud', men and women of the Southern Cross."
Leaving the Yarrowee, the Dawn Walkers head north along streets of the suburbs that now over lay the soldiers route. The sky is lightening as they come to Specimen Vale. The first bird calls of dawn are heard where 140 years ago the first shot was fired to warn the diggers of the soldiers' approach.
Just below the cottage where Agnes Frank, as young girl, stood on her veranda and witnessed the attack, Peter tells the fourth and final part of his story. The dawn birds are chorusing as he describes the short but bloody battle.
Peter quotes the Eureka lament from Kenneth Cook's "Stockade":
"Have you drums there?
Let them beat softly.
Have you drums there?
Let them beat slowly.
If you can weep, weep now.
There's thirty good men dead."
"Do Hotham and his gold commissioners triumph at Eureka?" he asks rhetorically. "After the shock of the news, a tide of support swells for the diggers and their cause. Five juries refuse to convict the rebels who are carried in triumph through the streets of Melbourne."
"Eureka has become a potent and bloody symbol of protest against arbitrary use of force, a pulse at the heart of our democratic tradition."
"They walked under the Southern Cross as we have walked this night under the Southern Cross," Peter concludes. "And though other lights seem to outshine the stars, the stars still shine in the sky and are still stitched to the flag."
"If we see through their eyes and feel the strength of their passion, the stars will shine as they did that night when they together, side by side, ready to fight and defend their rights, prepared to die to uphold their liberties."
Approaching the Stockade site, crossing the ground where the redcoats lined up to do murder, the setting crescent moon frees itself from clouds and reveals its splendour.
The Dawn Walkers circumnavigate the Eureka Centre and assemble on the far side of the ornamental lake established 70 years ago by the volunteers of the Eureka Trust. Their contribution to ever renewing remembrance of the Eureka story, as our is art this morning. Between weeping willows in the dawn light, the huge bold Eureka Flag on the leaning mast of the Centre reflects on the water.
Here the Dawn Walk's Leading Light of the Walk, Harry van Moorst is invited to speak. Harry, presently director of the Werribee Environment Centre, has given a lifetime to community based social action in defence of peace, justice and the environment.
"The struggle for peace and justice goes on," says Harry. "It is the people who keep governments honest. Only the people can do this. Only people standing truly together with the courage and determination of the Eureka diggers will protect our liberties and our environment for future generations."
Barry Dickens, Melbourne's everyman author, poet and story teller, comes forward and offers a poem. "Who killed Christ's children?" he asks and leads us into a part prepared, part spontaneous word spiral of grief, wonder and renewal.
Like the feeling of hot pudding in the belly after a good meal, the mood is sweet. Replete.
The previous day had been polling day for the Victorian state elections. A 10% swing to the Greens and the Bracks Labour government re-elected with an 8% swing. The Liberal Party, which only a few years ago under Kennett had ruled riding rough shod over citizen protest (a bloody police baton charge for example against a bunch of parents defending their school from closure, for God's sake!), had been vanquished at the polls. Globalisationists routed.
Amongst the Dawn Walkers were people from Bendigo and Stawell who had opposed Kennett backed pit gold mine developments in their neighbourhoods. Out of gratitude for the support and encouragement Harry had given them in their difficult but ultimately successful campaigns, they had come to bear witness to his role as Leading Light.
For them this morning was especially sweet.
Graeme Dunstan
4 December 2002
