Celebrating Humanity on Eureka Day, 2015 t Bakery Hill - St Paul's, 305 Humffray Street - 5.30 to 7pm - an afterwork venue

We are celebrating at Saint Paul's, Bakery Hill in #Ballarat this evening. To-day, December 3, is the day we celebrate...
Posted by Brigid O'Carroll Walsh on Wednesday, 2 December 2015

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Remembering - the war to end all wars : the Charter of Rights at Bakery Hill, the first document of participatory democracy in Australia

Cross posted with permission  from Advocacy @ St Paul's

To-night at 6.30pm at St Paul's Anglican Church, 3-5 Humffray Street, Bakery Hill, Ballarat, Advocacy@ St Paul's is joining with the Ballarat Trades & Labour Council to celebrate the Charter of Rights, drafted by the English chartist John Basson Humffray who was a leading figure in the events leading up to and surrounding the Eureka Rebellion. Members of the modern-day Ballarat Reform League are interested too.  The site on which St Paul's is located is believed to be the site of the "Monster Meeting" of 10,000 miners who gathered to hear the Charter of Rights.  Hedley Thomson, Chair of Advocacy @ St Paul's, will read the Charter of Rights. Brett Edgington, Secretary of the Ballarat Trades & Labour Council, will speak.  The Charter of Rights is Australia's first document relating to the concept of participatory democracy.

To-day is not only the anniversary of the Charter of Rights. It is Remembrance Day, the day when we commemorate "the war to end all wars".  Below is a letter written earlier this year by Hedley Thomson with reference to the idea of 'nation building' in which he references the events of Eureka. If you want to let us know that you are coming, please go here.

14^th May 2015

The Editor

‘Ballarat Courier’

PO Box 21

Ballarat, 3353

Dear sir,

In the lead up to the 100^th Anniversary of the Gallipoli landing, the ‘nation building’ significance of the event was often mentioned. This assertion needs to be challenged. Aside from the disaster that was Gallipoli, for three quarters of a century prior, European settlers had a clear-eyed view that the Australian landmass would one day comprise one nation. For example:

1840s – colonial governments agreed that there should be one railway gauge to facilitate trade and transport throughout what would one day be a single nation. The fact that the one gauge objective was not achieved was to do with subsequent technical decisions, not a change of vision.

• 1854 – the Eureka rising – no civil war was required to affirm the commitment to establishing a parliamentary democracy; the death of two-dozen people was enough. What’s more, Eureka was a multi-cultural event at a time when Australia was the most multi cultural ‘nation’ on Earth.

• 1860s onwards - the Australian Constitution was developed over 40 years by the ‘founding fathers’, including Ballarat’s own Alfred Deakin. Here was true leadership, providing us with a parliamentary and electoral system with a sensible pragmatic structure to ensure representative democratic government.

• 1880s – the works of Henry Lawson and other writers, with their strong references to a sense of being Australian, independent of spirit, the mother country left behind.

• 1901 – Federation – the culmination of the past 60 years’ work.

On the basis of this history of Australia, it is arguable that our ‘nation’ was more independent, self-supporting and self-assured then than we are now! 

Hedley Thomson

The Charter of Rights - Eureka's founding document : Australia's first document of participatory democracy : an event to celebrate

As we lead up to the Eureka anniversaries here is an event to put in your diaries.

Posted by Ballarat Reform League Inc. on Wednesday, 7 October 2015

Eureka Day, 3 December - Geraldine Robertson gives insight into women and Eureka - Susan Kruss in Calico Ceilings expresses her respect for women at Eureka in history poetry, and drawings - and women are involved in M.A.D.E.

Picture from here

From Geraldine Robertson at Women's Web

wmnsweb@iprimus.com.au

Dear All,

3rd December is the 159th anniversary of the Eureka Stockade. 

Are those of our foremothers who were on the goldfields to be remembered just as token 'them' who were 'assisted to find a job' as the Australian Government website on Eureka states?

Are not we 'the people' too?

I think it is outrageous, so have been busy compiling a response.
I hope you like and find good use for EUREKA? We Were There.

It is on a new page called Eureka on www.womensweb.com.au Eureka page.

I hope you have a joyful and relaxing holiday season,
Geraldine

'The peoples, as well as the Governments, have sown the wind of misunderstanding and of hate and are reaping the whirlwind ...
'We MUST not, DARE not, be idle.'
Woman Voter 18 December 1919
‘History will proclaim you false if you are silent now. “Come out and be separate” from all that makes for war.’
Woman Voter 29 September 1914

Geraldine Robertson
Tel: 03 9486 1808 Mobile: 0410 514 034wmnsweb@iprimus.com.au
Women's Web - Women's Stories, Women's Actions www.womensweb.com.au
Prejudice and Reasonwww.prejudiceandreason.com.au
Women Working Together suffrage and onwardswww.womenworkingtogether.com.au
Vasculitis the Disease that Deceiveshttp://www.vasculitis.net.au
Betrayal women's paid work 1874-1974http://home.vicnet.net.au/~betrayal
Our Foremothershttp://home.vicnet.net.au/~mothers

Calico Ceilings by Susan Kruss

A wonderful look at women at Eureka

Beautifully illustrated.

Insightful poems.

Picture from here

Postscript:

Women are still at Eureka.

This year the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka (M.A.D.E.) opened in Ballarat on the historic Eureka site.  It is a wonderful small museum.  It is not limited to the Eureka story and the events surrounding Australia's famous rebellion.

As well as Eureka, M.A.D.E. also centres on social justice, democracy, and human rights which topics were seminal to the idea of the Eureka Rebellion even if they were not fully articulated at the time.  These ideas took hold in the Australian psyche through workers rights, universal suffrage, and a fair go for everyone.  And a woman is in charge at M.A.D.E.  

M.A.D.E Director Jane Smith interviews 
the M.A.D.E Project Director, Katherine Armstrong of Lateral Projects, 
and M.A.D.E Curator, Eithne Owens, 
on the thinking and process that led to the birth of Australia's newest museum.

Museum of Democracy at Eureka (M.A.D.E)
http://www.made.org