Since 1997 it has been part of the migratory pattern of Peacebus.com to be in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, during November to contribute art to the preparations for the annual celebration of the goldfields rebellion, which although quickly and violently suppressed by soldiers and police, led the Victorian colony to become a world leader in democratic reform for the rest of the nineteenth century and more.
Here an account of the significance of the Eureka rebellion in the radical tradition of Australian history.
In 1997 aGraeme Dunstan, a one time festivals consultant to the Cain government, now an itinerant lantern maker and captain of the legendary, journeying for justice, Peacebus.com, met the then director of the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Margaret Rich, also a cousin.
She told him about her Eureka celebrations work and a dawn story telling walk which had started well but was dwindling fast. To turn it around, Graeme, a master of mass lantern spectacles, suggested introducing the enchantment of lantern light and lead up lantern making workshops.
Margaret got him some funding and an assistant, Fraser Mackay, and together they set up a community access lantern factory in the old Mining Exchange. The education officers of the Gallery brought in school excursion groups, adult volunteers came in by day and night and, over two weeks at the end of November, Graeme and Fraser had overseen the production of some 300 lanterns.
Right from the first, the event was embraced by the good people of Ballarat as an artful, appropriate and deeply moving public ritual for the commemoration of Eureka. Some 250 Walkers turned up at 3 am to be part of that first lantern lit Eureka Dawn Walk.
In November 1997, such was the interest generated by the lantern making preparations that the City of Ballarat was moved to declare the first Sunday in December, Eureka Sunday, thus officially recognising Eureka as a civic celebration for the first time. Praise and gratitude to Ms Janet Dore, the then CEO.
The walk is billed as lantern lit story telling and meditation on courage in the face of tyranny. To get the flavour of a Dawn Walk, see the report of the 2002 Eureka Dawn Walk.
Not everyone valued the event however. Indeed there were competing factions amongst Eurekaphiles and some derided the event as the "traitors' march" and the "murders' walk" because it follows the route the soldiers took in their dawn attack. Things got so heated that in 1999 intervention orders had to be issued to restrain the threats and abuse of the most vocal of these.
In 2003, the year before the 150th anniversary, the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery withdrew its funding support saying five years funding support was enough, the Gallery had other projects to do. But the Eureka Committee of Ballarat City Council showed how little it valued the event (or how much it was influenced by knockers) by refusing it funding. Graeme did it anyway.
Here reports and correspondence between Ballarat City Council and Graeme Dunstan in the lead up to the 2003 Eureka Dawn Walk, go to It's a sad story of cultural incompetence and misunderstandings.
Hera a report of the 2003 Eureka Dawn Walk.
The 150th anniversary of the Eureka rebellion was funded by the Victorian State Government to the tune of $1.4 million. With money in the City purse, the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery received $10K to host the Dawn Walk again. Fraser Mackay was again funded as events manager and Graeme once again funded as lantern maker and storyteller. Plus we had another assistant, local artist, Ms Jo Foley.
The Eureka150 Dawn Walk was the biggest ever: the biggest crowd (950) and the biggest media attention. Of all the Eureka150 events, it was the one that got the headlines. The decision of the Dawn Walk producers Fraser and Graeme, to invite Terry Hicks, father of Guantanamo Bay prisoner David, to be honoured as Leading Light proved most fruitful.
Graeme had introduced the honorific Leading Light in 2002. The idea is to give the Dawn Walk contemporary relevance by honouring someone conspicuous in the defence of rights and liberties in these times. In 2002 it was Harry van Moorst, long time peace activist and citizen's champion in the successful fight to prevent a toxic dump facility in Werribee. In 2003 it was Dr Joe Toscano, long time anarchist activist for his Defend and Extend Medicare campaign.
Here is Graeme's account of his work for the Eureka150 commemoration. It's a big one: 10,000 words plus photos.
For Eureka150 Graeme also collaborated with his friends, William Brugman and Graham Bird of Culture Lab International to animate the Eureka150 celebrations with a program of performances and events called the Eureka Rising Rebel Festival project project.
The Culture Lab/Peacebus.com collaboration included a bush Dharma retreat at Snake Valley Culture Camp 19-21 November, led by German born Buddhist monk, the Venerable Santitthito of Wat Buddhalavarn, Wedderburn, NSW. The theme was: what does it mean to stand together truly?
Graeme also collaborated with Frank Williams of the Eureka Stockade Memorial Association Inc. to conduct a Eureka Women's Sewing Circle which produced 50 Eureka banners with which to dress the Diggers March and other Eureka150 events. They were spectacular.
Furthermore in solidarity with the Melbourne based, Anarchist Media Institute Eureka150 celebration, Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion - celebrating the past by reclaiming the present, he helped by supplying Eureka banners and lanterns to dress their Eureka dawn commemoration and their 10 km history walk of Friday 3 December. It looked as if Dr Joe was leading a religious procession through Ballarat.
All this work had the effect of lifting and evolving the commemoration of Eureka in the City of Ballarat as visual spectacle, as community participation, as public rite, as public art and as an event of national significance. Graeme was just one of many contributing but the public presence of his art and his media engagement gave him high profile and even won him emailed words of gratitude from the Mayor of Ballarat, David Vendy. "Sincerely, thanks."
Not that this guarantees Graeme future paid Eureka work from the City. To the contrary, there are echelons of cultural managers who fear him as a loose cannon and there are conservative City burghers who would choose PM John Howard as a Leading Light an bury Graeme in oblivion.
Graeme reckons keeping the annual Eureka commemorations connected to the present day fights for rights and liberties is the way to keep them fresh, engaging and growing. This makes good cultural tourism sense to him.
But he recognises that this is difficult in practice for people in suits. Managerialism is based on saying the right things, knowing the right people and covering one's arse. The David Hicks affair took some of them (the CEO and the Gallery Director in particular) way out of their comfort zones and now they want to control future choices of the Hicks kind. Success will not weary them.
So negotiations are in progress. Or not in progress as the case may be. Who knows where the path may lead?
Having put in the vision, the skill, the effort to create and consolidate the Eureka Dawn Walk as an artful rite, having been so vociferous and energetic in the events defence, Graeme considers himself a custodian of the Eureka Dawn Walk.
But not a custodian for ever. Soon enough there will be a last Dawn Walk for Graeme,; that much is certain. When is uncertain.
All things being well with the world of gods and humans, Graeme will return to Ballarat in Spring and work on the preparation of the Eureka151 commemoration whether he is funded by the City of not.
And proudly and publicly public liability insurance free if needs be.
Making art that makes community.
In a time of tyranny, honouring the ancestors who fought tyranny.
Ever a Eureka rebel!
