What is the Eureka Stockade?

The Eureka Stockade was an armed uprising of gold miners against colonial authority that took place at Eureka Lead, near Ballarat in Victoria, on Sunday 3 December 1854. About 120 miners, mostly from the Ballarat goldfields, fortified a rough timber stockade beneath the Eureka flag and were stormed at dawn by 276 colonial soldiers and police. The battle lasted about fifteen minutes and ended with 22 to 30 miners and six soldiers dead.

The rebellion was triggered by anger over the gold mining licence, a flat fee that had to be paid monthly regardless of whether a miner found gold. The licence was enforced harshly by police who carried out frequent and aggressive checks. After the unsolved murder of a Scottish miner James Scobie at the Eureka Hotel, the acquittal of the hotel's owner James Bentley by a court many believed to be corrupt, and the violent dispersal of subsequent protest meetings, discontent boiled over. The miners formed the Ballarat Reform League and demanded the abolition of the licence, manhood suffrage, and the right to elect representatives.

The rebellion was quickly suppressed but its political consequences were transformative. Of the 13 miners charged with high treason, every one was acquitted by Melbourne juries. By early 1855 the licence system had been scrapped, with the new Miner's Right also carrying the vote. The Victoria Constitution Act 1855 created responsible government and a Legislative Assembly, and Peter Lalor, the Irish-born leader of the Stockade who lost an arm in the fighting, was elected to that Assembly in 1856 and later became its Speaker.

The Eureka Stockade is widely seen as the moment Australian democracy was born. Mark Twain, who visited Ballarat in 1895, wrote that the rebellion was 'the finest thing in Australasian history... a strike for liberty, a struggle for principle, a stand against injustice and oppression'. The site at Bakery Hill and the Eureka Stockade Memorial Gardens in Ballarat now commemorate the events, and the annual Eureka Day on 3 December marks the anniversary.