VIC: Dawn march starts campaign for national Eureka Day

AAP General News (Australia)
12-06-1998
VIC: Dawn march starts campaign for national Eureka Day

By Ilsa Colson

MELBOURNE, Dec 6 AAP - A dawn lantern-lit walk through the streets of a country Victorian
town today marked the start of a campaign to annually celebrate one of Australias most
renowned historical events - the Eureka stockade.

Today was the anniversary of the day in 1854 when 276 police raided the stockade set up on
the central Victorian Ballarat goldfields by about 150 miners.

The miners - representing 17 nationalities - were angry over unfair treatment, high gold
taxes and their lack of status because they owned no land.

Though some 22 miners died at the stockade in a brief but bloody dawn clash compared with
five troopers, the event has come to symbolise Australians support for a "fair go" and
rejection of British and state authority.

Coordinator of todays walk and Ballarat Fine Art Gallery director, Margaret Rich, said the
Eureka stockade miners were arguably Australias first republic - making their actions all the
more significant in light of current debates on the issue.

Historians, local community members and former politicians joined about 300 people on
todays march to celebrate the anniversary, walking some 3.5km from Ballarats Mining Exchange
to the Eureka Stockade memorial, Ms Rich said.

"I think participant numbers say a lot about how the awareness of the significance of
Eureka has grown in everybodys mind," Ms Rich told AAP.

With a similar celebration planned for the first Sunday of December next year, the City of
Ballarat wanted to make it an annual event.

"We want to see this nationally recognised," she said.

AAP imc/ra/bjm

KEYWORD: EUREKA

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