The blue fragment was in a frame with an accompanying pencil sketch of the flag and the design on the cover of Raffaello Carboni's book, The Eureka Stockade. Also in the frame was a double sided piece of plain paper, written in ink, as follows:. I inquired from Mr Spielvogel, who has charge of, is responsible for, the Historical Museum here.
He showed me a book by a man Raffaello written in , 6 months after the Eureka riots. On the cover was a reproduction of the first flag I have drawn, which Mr S. However, there has been quite a bit of controversy over the whole thing, as another flag, claimed by many to be the real one, is at the Art Gallery I went to Mr Keith who produced it for me.
It is a huge flag, hand-made he said it was supposed to be made from the petticoats of the women, which it easily could be, as this material, which he tore off for me, is similar to what was used then. It is tattered, and also smothered with small holes, lots of which have a slight burnt edge. I would almost certainly say bullets had made them. However Mr K. It has a silk texture and sheen. This is the letter and piece Evelyn gave to Rem McClintock, and never saw again, until, to her amazement, she saw it reproduced in the Sydney Morning Herald of 2 July , with the announcement that it would be auctioned.
This was the piece that Len Fox wrote about in his article on ' Women and the Eureka Flag ' published in Overland in December Evelyn expressed ' deep emotion ' on picking up her newspaper and being confronted with her mother's handwriting after nearly 60 years.
She felt ' the need to rescue it from the mercenary and ironic role of helping sell a piece of the Eureka flag '. Healy took out an injunction against the sale, on the grounds that the letter rightfully belonged to her.
She had carefully kept copies of her mother's letters and was able to produce these as evidence that the handwriting in the letter was indeed her mother's. After lengthy legal proceedings, her claim was recognised. She presented the piece of the flag and her mother's letter to the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery in March In the Gallery's new Eureka Gallery, these pieces are displayed near the flag, with their stories. The Eureka flag and derivatives of it have been used by radical groups since the time of the Stockade, intriguingly by members of the Left and the Right side of politics.
The cause of the Ballarat diggers was taken up by the Victoria Land League, in with its emblem the Southern Cross, and its motto ' Advance Australia '. In this context the use of a flag derived from the Eureka flag at Lambing Flat, New South Wales, in can be understood. The Miners' Protection League was formed to protest against the Chinese infringing their working conditions.
They may have proclaimed the values of 'equality, fraternity and glorious liberty', but their motives were to remove the Chinese from the goldfield so that they had less competition in their gold seeking.
But a tradition had been born, and in Eureka flags were apparently carried at a Seamen's Union strike against the use of cheap Asian labour - again the race card was being played. At the trysting ground of political protest in Melbourne, the Yarra Bank, 30, people gathered in August under a platform decorated with the Eureka flag to demonstrate union solidarity with maritime workers.
Henry Lawson wrote his famous poem Blood on the Wattle about the incident. During the s a Federation flag, white stars on a blue cross against a white ground, with the Union Jack in the top left hand corner, became a de facto Australian flag.
With the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia in , a competition was held by the Commonwealth Government to design a national flag, and the winner incorporated the Southern Cross, but also the Union Jack, an ambiguous symbol of national identity. The right-wing nationalist New Guard adopted it, 40 and it was also adopted by the radical left wing of the Australian Labor Party and the Communist Party. Bob Walshe suggests that the name was linked to a direction from Moscow, that the CPA should form popular fronts, which linked in to national sentiments within particular countries.
At its peak during the war and into the fifties, it was, according to Audrey Blake, the most influential and effective youth organisation in Australia. Blake was the driving force behind the League.
She had been greatly impressed as a young woman by a discussion with Kuusinon, member in charge of youth affairs in the Communist International, while she was in Moscow attending the Sixth Congress of the Young Communist International in He suggested to her that rather than forming a Communists-only organisation, it would be better to develop a broad youth organisation that would include non-Communists.
Blake took this advice to heart, and also the words of George Dimitrov, in building the Eureka Youth League. Because of the League's range of sporting and cultural activities, it had wide appeal, and it also gave excellent opportunities for young women to become organisers.
It was the only socialist youth organisation that became truly national. During the war the League was tireless in supporting the war effort, running campaigns to reduce absenteeism from work, helping bring in the harvests and support Victory loans. It circulated a newspaper Eureka amongst members in the armed services. For this patriotic work the League was praised by members of the Curtin government.
May Day march, Melbourne, EYL members carry their Eureka Flag. University of Melbourne Archives. In 3, members of the Eureka Youth League and fellow unionists marched through the city of Melbourne to mark the 94th anniversary of Eureka. The League brought the flag to popular notice, with a replica of the Eureka flag being carried at the head of the procession. But more than that, the story of Eureka and the symbolism of the flag was used in the campaign leading up to the referendum when Menzies wanted to ban the Communist Party.
The flag was now strongly associated with Left wing political protest. Union members also wore the flag on their hard hats and tee-shirts, making it a popular item of personal clothing.
While people knew little about the historical origins of the flag, it was readily identified as the symbol of the militant wing of the trade union movement. Ken Mansell, a member of the Eureka Youth League from , believed that the League was swamped by a new radical Maoist student organisation, the Australian Independence Movement, which also used the flag as its emblem.
For this movement, the Eureka flag symbolised ' the struggle for Australian independence, raised to stop racism, Nazism and super-power dominance '. These shadowy groups draw on a white Australian historical tradition to link the Eureka Stockade to white-Australian trade union movements of the late nineteenth century, and thence to the anti-immigration movement of the late twentieth century.
For many years the Minerals Council of Australia used to celebrate the Eureka anniversary at its headquarters in Canberra, draping the foyer of their building with Eureka flags. This provided a spectacular foil to the trade unions, but the Council venerated Eureka because the miners objected to an unfair gold licence which they saw as an unwarranted intrusion upon free enterprise.
In a similar way the Small Business Association staged a rally of people at the Stockade monument in , waving Eureka flags as a protest against Federal taxes. It was the spectacle of these very different groups using the flag for such conflicting purposes that led Ballarat's Peter Tobin to re-claim the flag for its original symbolism and for Ballarat when he engineered its re-appearance on Bakery Hill in The historian John Molony made an impassioned plea in for the flag to be freed from political connotations, because it was not a republican symbol, but rather a symbol of hope and liberty, of the quest for human rights.
Ballarat Labor parliamentarian Catherine King raised the issue again in November , introducing a private members' bill seeking the registration of the flag under the official Flags Act, so that it could be flown at Parliament House in Canberra on special occasions. The controversy about the proper home for the flag has been broadly canvassed in Ballarat, and to a lesser extent in Melbourne and in the national press.
The opening of the Eureka Centre in March really focussed the discussion when Premier Jeff Kennett suggested that the original flag should be in the Eureka Centre. Gough Whitlam has also supported this call when he came to Ballarat to receive an honour from the Eureka Stockade Memorial Trust in June The Gallery is able to give the best possible conservation to this precious and beautiful national icon, close to the site where it first flew at Bakery Hill as a symbol of protest.
Whether that protest represented the spirit of democracy, or republicanism, or free enterprise has been disputed. Who was responsible for the design of the symbol, for making it, and whether the flag in the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery is the genuine article are questions that have generated heated arguments.
At the end of the twentieth century, a lively contest has arisen about the appropriate location of the flag, and about whether it should become the Australian national flag. Meanwhile the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery cherishes the flag in its special shrine, where it has displaced the Union Jack that once marked the locality as a British colony. The beautiful, stark and simple design of the flag had been the basis of its enduring appeal, endearing it to the diverse array of organisations who have adopted it as their symbol of unity, passion and Australia's heritage.
There is still much work to be done in clarifying our national identity, but in looking back over years, there is no doubt that the Eureka flag has become the most important symbol of that identity. Hotham quoted in C. On front cover, below the illustration of the flag, the caption reads 'When Ballaarat unfurled the Southern Cross, the bearer was Toronto's Captain Ross. For information on state and territory curricula Go to: State and territory curriculum — Curriculum Corporation.
In , six months after gold was first discovered in New South Wales, gold was found in the recently proclaimed colony of Victoria, first in Ballarat and shortly after in Bendigo. Thousands of immigrants poured into Victoria from around the world to make their fortunes, changing Australia for ever, and hastening the end of convict transportation to the eastern side of the continent. The League affirmed the inalienable right of every citizen to have a voice in making the laws he is called upon to obey.
The League sought abolition of the licence and reform of the goldfields administration, full and fair representation, manhood suffrage, no property qualifications for members, payment of members and short parliaments. Twelve thousand diggers gathered on Bakery Hill on 29 November for its first mass meeting, under the Southern Cross flag. The principles that the miners at Eureka stood for — equality, fair treatment by government, and the right of those governed to take part in the democratic process — have become sacred to Australians, and to large numbers of Australians Eureka is a byword for these concepts.
The Eureka spirit is often invoked as a synonym for democracy, and the Eureka or Southern Cross flag has come to symbolize what Eureka was about and has been used by many to further various causes — from striking Barcaldine shearers in the s to the Builders Labourers Federation in the s.
Eureka is ingrained in Australian culture through its representation in prose, poetry, art and film. It was time to formalise the ownership. The fragment is associated with Evelyn Healy of Sydney, whose mother was sent her the fragment. The fragment had been in dispute with Lex McClintock who claimed the fragment was his fathers.
Final paperwork in a confidential settlement was concluded. Evelyn Healy nee Shaw was born in Ballarat in and played a vital role in rescuing the Eureka Flag from obscutirty through her involvement with the Communist Party.
The parety wanted to make a replica for its May Day Parade in Melbounre, but the party believed the national icon was lost. Mr Keith gave Myrtle Shaw a small fragment of the flag which she sent to her daughter was a couple of rough sketches and a description.
It was shown to her party comrade Rem McClintock. Later Evelyn Healy tried to retieve the letter and flag, Initially she was told it was still needed, then she was told it was lost. This coincided with the th Anniversary of Eureka. Contesting the Flag , by Anne Beggs Sunter. Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka M. Gervasoni talk , 25 May EST. From eurekapedia. Jump to: navigation , search.
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