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Bearing Light of the Eureka Story
The 2002 Eureka Dawn Walk will assemble:
at 3.30 am for a 4.00 am departure
on Sunday 1 December 2002
at the Ballarat Gold Exchange, Lydiard Street
Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
of a lantern lit, story telling walk that remembers the Victorian Colonial Government's dawn attack on the diggers at the Eureka Stockade on Sunday 3 December 1854.
The Walk follows the 3.5 km route taken by the soldiers and police in 1854 and arrives at the Eureka Memorial at dawn for participation in the Eureka Dawn Oration.
These are just two of a program of events with which the City of Ballarat celebrates Eureka Sunday as a moment of great significance in the building of democracy in Australia. For more information about the Eureka Sunday program, click here.
For the past 5 years Graeme Dunstan has been employed by the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery as the master lantern maker to make the lanterns and prepare the event. The Mining Exchange is transformed into a lantern factory and children from local primary schools come and help.
For Graeme the blood sacrifice of the Eureka stockade is significant because it spelled the end of the penal era of colonial rule in Australia. The public reaction to the massacre of the diggers set off earnest democratic reform and the Australian colonies soon become world leaders in the reforms of enlightened goverment.
The victory of Eureka was a victory for liberalism when a liberal was someone who wanted to liberate him/herself and society from tyranny. In those times the word "liberal" was spoken by the ruling elites and their servants with the same kind of distain and contempt as is accorded to "commies" and "greenies" today.
Thus the Eureka flag became the symbol of the Australian people's resistance to corrupt and oppressive government and ever since the Eureka flag has flown whenever Australians have gathered "to defend their rights and liberties".
Graeme conspires with local events maestro, Fraser Mackay, another grey haired wizard, to create enchantment and the Dawn Walk is a seriously beautiful and deeply moving experience.
And there is another angle of delight. School groups come in to help make the lanterns and Graeme gets to tell the Eureka story as a story of courage in the face of tyranny. So Graeme not only teaches the school children the skills of lantern making, as a Eureka Stockade story teller he also teaches them life skills for dealing with tyrants.
Graeme wants friends of Peacebus.com to know that remembering the courage and sacrifice of the ancestors and making their story vivid for another generation of defenders of rights and liberties is soul food of the finest quality. He feels blessed and deeply honoured to be bearing light for the Eureka story.
If you want to come and help make lanterns, call Graeme on 0412 609 373 or email him.
Media Release 28 November 2002
Harry van Moorst leading light for Eureka Dawn Walk
Community activist Harry van Moorst will lead the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery's fifth annual Eureka Dawn Walk this Sunday morning 1 December.
"We are honoured to have Harry lead the Walk," said gallery director Margaret Rich.
"Harry van Moorst has been a long time community based activist around the issues of environment, social justice and peace in Victoria, and we recognise him as a leading light in the defence of rights and liberties in our times," she said.
Harry is currently the Director of the Western Region Environment Centre and a part time lecturer in Social Research, Sociology and Community Development at Victoria University.
He is probably best known to Victorians for his role in the successful campaign of 1996Ð9 to prevent a toxic dump being established by CSR in Werribee. The broad based citizen campaign by Werribee residents caused the pro-dump Kennett government to back down. Harry was subsequently appointed to the government's Hazardous Waste Consultative Committee and has since worked to establish policies and consultative processes that will help to avoid future conflicts of this type.
Harry's exemplary courage and determination in the fight against oppression and tyranny were first made plain in the late 60s and early 70s when he was directly involved in organising anti-war and draft resistance activities. Harry was the Vice-Chairperson of the Vietnam Moratorium Campaign. As a result of his activities during this time he spent many nights in police cells, and several stints inside Pentridge.
Later in the Ô70s he was involved with anti-uranium activities and with a range of social justice and civil liberties actions.
During the 1980s he was the convenor of the Coalition Against Poverty and Unemployment and he organised many activities to highlight the problems of unemployment and child poverty. He was the primary organiser of the Children and Poverty Campaign as well as the "People's Tax Summit" and the author of the People's Budget in 1984-85.
The Dawn Walk is an artful and enchanting telling of the Eureka story. As a meditation on courage in the face of tyranny it is a perennially pertinent theme
The Walk will assemble at 3.30 am Sunday 1 December at the Mining Exchange. It follows the route taken by the soldiers and police in their attack on the Eureka Stockade on Sunday 3 December 1854 and arrives at the Stockade site at dawn.
Enquiries
Ballarat Fine Art Gallery 03 5320 5858
Harry van Moorst 03 9731 0288 (w) harryvm@21century.com.au
Media Release 21 November 2002
Bearing Light for the Eureka story
Lantern making is underway in the Ballarat Mining Exchange for the fifth Eureka Dawn Walk, which will take place Sunday 1 December as part of the annual Eureka Sunday commemorations.
An artful and enchanting telling of the Eureka story, the Dawn Walk is produced on behalf of the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery as a collaboration between itinerant lantern maker Graeme Dunstan, local events maestro Fraser Mackay and playwright Peter Freund.
Assembling at 3.30 am at the Mining Exchange, the Walk follows the Yarrowee Creek and arrives at the Stockade site at dawn. At intervals along the way Peter Freund, using the words of the diggers, the soldiers and the government officials involved, tells the story and so that the Dawn Walkers may reflect on the motives and circumstances of the participants as they follow the route taken by the soldiers for their dawn attack.
Combining the visual splendour of a mass lantern display with skilful storytelling about an event which shaped Australia as a nation, the Dawn Walk is a truly magical and deeply moving experience for participants.
Each year the Walk attracts about 250 participants most of them Ballarat families, many of them coming back for the second and third time.
"As a meditation on courage in the face of tyranny it is a perennially pertinent theme, illuminated in this uniquely Ballarat event and not to be missed." says lantern maker Graeme Dunstan.
In preparation for the Dawn Walk volunteers and school groups assist make the lanterns in the Mining Exchange. All help welcomed.
Enquiries
Ballareat Fine Art Gallery 03 5320 5858
Graeme Dunstan 0412 609 373
Recommended Eureka Readings
Massacre at Eureka - The Untold Story by Bob O'Brien, Australian Scholarly Publishing 1992. Good writing and excellent source documents. The late Bob O'Brien was a popular radio journalist who had retired to the gold era town of Clunes, Victoria, and devoted himself to researching gold fields history.
Eureka by John Molony, Viking 1984. Molony is professor of History at Australian National University. The research is thorough but the writing is flat and tendentious. The point he makes the Eureka stockade was no rebellion. The diggers had gathered to defend themselves from a massacre which had been planned and was executed by the colonial government of Governor Charles Hotham to intimidate the miners and the demands for liberal democratic reforms.
Six Australian Battlefields - The black resistance to invasion and the white struggle against colonial oppression by Al Grassby and Marji Hill, Angus and Robertson Publishers 1988. Here the Eureka stockade is set in the context of other battles that have taken place on Australian soil, bloody suppressions of people seeking respect for human rights by the regiments and colonial auxilaries of the British super rich.
Eureka Stockade by Richard Butler, Angus and Robertson 1983. This is written as a novel based on the screen play of a TV mini series of Crawford production. Peter Lalor as sensitive hero. Readable and interesting to observe how the fragments from historical source documents had become a script.
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