Dear Rainbow friends, dear friends of freedom all,
I am in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, working to prepare for the 150th anniversary celebrations of the Eureka rebellion.
Back in 1854 when Ballarat was less than 3 years old, the gold fields ferment for democratic reform of the British colonial government of those times gave rise to armed resistance at the Eureka stockade and that people's agitation in defence of rights and liberties now marks Ballarat as the cradle of democracy in this land.
The colonial government marched two regiments of redcoats into the goldfields to suppress the democratic movement and the diggers organised to defend themselves: they took up arms, sewed up a rebel flag and swore a rebel oath "by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and defend our rights and liberties."
A battle lost, a cause won. Big changes followed. Land reform for example: the Miners Right introduced in the next year gave every man (and soon woman) the right to own land, build a house, plant a garden, dig a hole called a mine and vote! No mortgages or banks involved!
Eureka stands for direct democracy, solidarity and internationalism and is in every way as significant to those who strive for justice and equality in this land as the Paris Commune of 1871 was to Europe. Courage in the face of tyranny: here begins the uniquely Australian ethos of the "Fair go". Core story.
The Eureka Stockade was not always celebrated in Ballarat. Indeed for the first fifty years the colonial government suppressed the story and Union Jack flying conservatives to this day deny its significance. The diggers, they say, were impatient hotheads and democracy came, as it was always coming, bestowed courtesy of the kindness and manifest moral responsibility that is ever a characteristic of the rich and privileged.
After Federation, more interest. In 1904 the first reunion of Stockaders took place and with this began the first earnest historical research and the formation of volunteer committees to establish a people's park and a monument on the site of the Stockade. Eureka Park once had its own rail station and it served 1920-60 as a venue for huge festivals of Ballarat's working class families and their huge volunteer funding raising efforts.
But the royalist elite of the City of Ballarat continued to ignore and deny Eureka until very recently. Now the Eureka story serves tourism, and the Eureka Southern Cross, the once forbidden rebel flag, the original of which hangs as prize exhibit in the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, flies everywhere in the City: in the streets, on the Town Hall of gold era grandeur, proudly from the 30 metre steel mast of the Council managed Eureka Centre and in the logos of many local businesses, Eureka Pizza, Eureka Tiles, Eureka Storage and so on.
The Bracks Labor government of Victoria is putting up $1.4 million for the Eureka150 celebrations and most of the organising is coming from the Department of Premier and Cabinet. Solidarity! Bracks, you see, now the sleek corporate courtier, is a former Ballarat boy.
But there is something strained and against the grain for a government to be organising the celebration of a rebellion. So the Peacebus.com crew, Jennifer the Maremma, Happy Wheels and myself, together with my friends from Culture Lab International are in town to organise a Eureka Rising Rebel Festival. See www.culturelab.org.au
Our first project took its inspiration from the Tyagarah Women's Peace Flag Sewing Circle. (See www.peacebus.com/PeaceFlags/2004SewingCircle.html)We set up a Eureka Women's Sewing Circle as a poetic tribute to the digger's wives who supposedly sewed up the first Eureka flag. See www.peacebus.com/Eureka/SewingCircle2004.html
The Circle gathered 10 regulars who met over four Mondays in the Eureka Memorial Hall and sewed up 50 Eureka banners to dress the celebrations. But the Circle was about more than sewing of course; it was also about uplifting friendship and story telling. The sewing ladies, youngest 47 oldest 82, took breaks to share show and tell, bringing in wedding dresses and pics from the 50s and antiques sewing machines. Good feeling, good media.
Our second collaboration took its inspiration from the bush Dharma retreats organised at Wat Buddhalavarn in Wedderburn NSW. See www.peacebus.com/SacredThread/ Buddhism meets Eureka! We hosted a visit to Ballarat by the Venerable Santitthito and organised at bush Dharma retreat called Standing Together Truly at Snake Valley Culture Camp. See www.peacebus.com/StandingTruly/
I am also back on the payroll as Master Lantern Maker for the Eureka150 Dawn Walk - my seventh year. This is a lantern lit, storytelling pilgrimage that gathers at 3.30 am on Eureka Sunday (this year 5 December) and follows the circuitous route taken by the redcoats and mounted police along the Yarrowee Creek in their surprise Sunday dawn attack on the rebel stockade.
Each year we lantern makers honour as Leading Light an Australian who has shown conspicuous courage and determination in the defence and rights and liberties in these times. As Eureka150 Leading Light we are honoured to have Terry Hicks, father of Guantanamo Bay, David. Father of the century, we reckon.
The official program touted a major democracy conference to be hosted by the University of Ballarat. Releasing the Spirit of Democracy it was called; participation fee $660. In the belief that democracy would be better served and serving if it was assessable to and responsive to the poor, we Eureka150 rebels are organising a series of Alternative Democracy Forums. (See www.culturelab.org.au)
Starting outside the University of Ballarat Conference Centre and in parallel with the big bucks academic affair, it was soapbox democracy under a gum tree. Six anarchists and a dog. But great theatre and great visuals, the new Reinvent Democacry banner on display, plus the Eureka banners. And the black of anarchy and the proud flag of the Shearers Union. See www.peacebus.com/Eureka/Soapbox2004.html
The 19th century inventors of democracy thought that a vote for all adults would protect the common people from tyrannous government, by which they meant government by liars, war mongers, secret police, jailers, torturers and agents for the greed and piracy of the rich and privileged.
But the recent re-elections of Howard and Bush have clearly demonstrated that democracy has
become the best government that corporate money can buy.
REINVENT DEMOCRACY! we say. And if we say no more than that at the Eureka150 celebrations, it is plenty ... and true to the Eureka Spirit.
Let me urge my Rainbow Region friends and friends of freedom everywhere to commemorate Eurkea150. For the week 29 November to 5 December fly a Eureka flag, light a lantern, speak up and speak out for justice and so honour the ancestors and their courage in the face of tyranny.
In solidarity!
Graeme Dunstan
Peacebus.com
