THE FORGOTTEN REBELS OF EUREKA

AUTHOR: CLARE WRIGHT PUBLISHER: Text Publishing RRP: $45 REVIEWER: Mary Ann Elliott

HERE is a completely different account of what happened at the Eureka Stockade to the one we learned at school.

Like most Australians we enjoyed this fascinating era in our history lessons, but where were the women?

Clare Wright casts the usually portrayed hot-tempered, free-wheeling macho gold miners in a different light; as husbands, fathers, brothers and sons and also brings their wives and families vividly to life.

As Professor Laurel Ulrich of Harvard University says, “Well-behaved women seldom make history”.

Far from the Australian goldfields being an exclusively male domain, for the first time Clare Wright uncovers the reality of social and economic life on the gold fields, focusing on women’s participation which included paid childcare, sewing, washing, hoteliers, shop-keepers, miners, theatre entertainers and “ladies of the night”.

The Eureka legend has its share of controversy to this day, one that still polarises political opinion.

“From Eureka came the crusading spirit against injustice,” intoned Victorian Premier John Cain (senior) at the Ballarat centenary celebrations in 1954. Or was it just a parochial tax revolt?

From interviews with descendents, letters, documents and diaries of hundreds of women, it emerges that a thrilling adventure had turned into an odyssey of despair.

Victoria’s reputed rivers of gold beckoned the fortune hunters; were it not for their feisty womenfolk who sustained them through thick and thin, many more would have fallen by the wayside in the harshest of environments.

In beautiful prose, Wright’s remarkably researched book pays outstanding tribute to the legacy of Australian women and to their hitherto ignored role.

On the goldfields were 32,000 people, of which 11,500 were women and children; in her epic story, Wright has returned them to their rightful place in history, with their efforts, resilience and sacrifices at last recorded.