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History/Letters from the rush/1854-1855

Under the Southern Cross

Raffaello Carboni was an Italian digger at Ballarat. He stood under the Southern Cross flag when the miners swore their oath, woke to the shooting on 3 December 1854, and was one of the men tried for high treason. He wrote it all down the next year.

7 letters1854-1855In the words of Raffaello Carboni and the Ballaarat Times

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Goudzoekers in Australië, een Australisch meisje met haar broertje, een zendingspost op Nieuw-Zeeland en een bisschop op een slee, Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0)

  1. 01 / 07

    Diggers still paid a monthly licence to dig. At Ballarat the police checked it with raids the diggers called licence hunts.1

    MemoirThe diggings at Ballarat

    Hence the troopers were despatched like bloodhounds, in all directions, to beat the bush; and the traps who had a more confined scent, creeped and crawled among the holes, and sneaked into the sly-grog tents round about, in search of the swarming unlicensed game. In a word, it was a regular hunt.

    Raffaello Carboni, chapter X. The Eureka Stockade: The Consequence of Some Pirates Wanting on Quarter-Deck a Rebellion (1855)

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  2. 02 / 07

    The local paper reported the fines from the police court, with no attempt to hide whose side it was on.

    NewspaperPolice court, Ballarat

    HUNTING THE DIGGER.—Five of these fellows were fined in the mitigated trifle of 5 pounds, for being without licences. The nicest thing imaginable is to see one of these clumsy fellows with great beards, shaggy hair, and oh! such nasty rough hands, stand before a fine gentleman on the bench with hands of shiny whiteness, and the colour of whose cambric rivals the Alpine snow.

    The Ballaarat Times, the Ballaarat Times of 28 October 1854, as reprinted by Carboni in chapter X. The Eureka Stockade: The Consequence of Some Pirates Wanting on Quarter-Deck a Rebellion (1855)

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  3. 03 / 07

    After another licence hunt, about 500 diggers gathered on Bakery Hill under a new flag.1

    MemoirBakery Hill

    The ‘SOUTHERN CROSS’ was hoisted up the flagstaff—a very splendid pole, eighty feet in length, and straight as an arrow. … The flag is silk, blue ground, with a large silver cross, similar to the one in our southern firmament; no device or arms, but all exceedingly chaste and natural.

    Raffaello Carboni, chapter XXXVII, Lalor stump, Bakery-Hill. The Eureka Stockade: The Consequence of Some Pirates Wanting on Quarter-Deck a Rebellion (1855)

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  4. 04 / 07

    Peter Lalor, an Irish digger, climbed on a stump to swear them in.

    MemoirBakery Hill

    Some five hundred armed diggers advanced in real sober earnestness, the captains of each division making the military salute to Lalor, who now knelt down, the head uncovered, and with the right hand pointing to the standard exclaimed a firm measured tone: “WE SWEAR BY THE SOUTHERN CROSS TO STAND TRULY BY EACH OTHER, AND FIGHT TO DEFEND OUR RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES.” An universal well rounded AMEN, was the determined reply; some five hundred right hands stretched towards our flag.

    Raffaello Carboni, chapter XXXVII. The Eureka Stockade: The Consequence of Some Pirates Wanting on Quarter-Deck a Rebellion (1855)

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  5. 05 / 07

    The diggers built a rough stockade of slabs on the Eureka lead. Before dawn on Sunday, police and soldiers attacked it.1

    MemoirThe Eureka Stockade

    I awoke. Sunday morning. It was full dawn, not daylight. A discharge of musketry—then a round from the bugle—the command ‘forward’—and another discharge of musketry was sharply kept on by the red-coats (some 300 strong) advancing on the gully west of the stockade, for a couple of minutes. The shots whizzed by my tent.

    Raffaello Carboni, chapter LVI. The Eureka Stockade: The Consequence of Some Pirates Wanting on Quarter-Deck a Rebellion (1855)

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  6. 06 / 07

    It was over in minutes. Lalor was shot in the shoulder. About 125 diggers were taken prisoner.1

    MemoirThe Eureka Stockade

    A full discharge of musketry from the military, now mowed down all who had their heads above the barricades. … A wild “hurrah!” burst out and ‘the Southern Cross’ was torn down, I should say, among their laughter, such as if it had been a prize from a May-pole.

    Raffaello Carboni, chapter LVI. The Eureka Stockade: The Consequence of Some Pirates Wanting on Quarter-Deck a Rebellion (1855)

    Eureka Stockade

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  7. 07 / 07

    Thirteen of the prisoners were chained and sent to Melbourne to stand trial for high treason. Carboni was one of them.

    MemoirSupreme Court, Melbourne

    The Clerk: “Do you find the prisoner at the bar Guilty or Not Guilty?” Foreman, with a firm voice: “NOT GUILTY!” ‘Magna opera Domini’—(God save the People)—thus my chains sprang asunder.

    Raffaello Carboni, chapter XC. The Eureka Stockade: The Consequence of Some Pirates Wanting on Quarter-Deck a Rebellion (1855)

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The diggers lost the fight and won the argument. A royal commission recommended replacing the licence with a tax on the gold actually found, and miners were given the right to own the ground they worked. Peter Lalor went on into politics.1

Reading this fairly. Carboni was a partisan and says so on every page; he was writing to clear himself and his mates. The Ballaarat Times reporter was on the diggers' side too. The government's case is in the trial records, not here.

A prospector panning for gold, 1899The chapter behind this walkGold fever: the rushes that filled continentsBetween 1848 and 1900 a run of gold strikes pulled people across oceans and continents. They built cities, colonies and states in a few years. They also made some famous names out of people who did not find the gold, and left out some of the people who did.Wood engraving of miners working a silver mineNext walk · Comstock, 1861-76Silver fever in WashoeIn 1861 a young Samuel Clemens went west with his brother to Nevada Territory, caught silver fever, failed as a prospector and became a reporter on the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City. His desk-mate there, Dan De Quille, stayed on and wrote the history of the Comstock Lode.

People, places and events on this walk

Eureka StockadeBallarat goldfieldBallaratVictorian gold rush

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Where the words come from

Every quotation is given as printed, cut only where an ellipsis shows, and was checked word for word against these texts:

  1. Raffaello Carboni, The Eureka Stockade: The Consequence of Some Pirates Wanting on Quarter-Deck a Rebellion, 1855. J. P. Atkinson, Melbourne (Project Gutenberg). Public domain: published 1855, the author died in 1875.

Sources for the narration

  1. Eureka Stockade (Golden Victoria, ErgoSlv) State Library Victoria

Pictures on this page: Goudzoekers in Australië, een Australisch meisje met haar broertje, een zendingspost op Nieuw-Zeeland en een bisschop op een slee, Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Gold prospectors constructing a long box with a filter for panning gold. Process print after H.M. Paget, 1899., Henry Marriott Paget (Public Domain Mark 1.0); A silver mine: miners digging. Wood engraving., Unknown (Wellcome Collection) (Public Domain Mark 1.0).

The narration between the letters is ours and says only what the sources linked here say. Old spellings and the writers' own opinions are left as they wrote them.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Super Pit, Kalgoorlie by Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0.