Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution (44 page)

And now, suddenly more troopers on horseback turn up, some 30 of them.

Under normal conditions the sight of this many troopers and traps would encourage some circumspection. But not on this occasion – the diggers’ grievance is large. And Scobie’s ghost is watching his mates, demanding revenge.

There is more shouting and yelling at the police, even as some speakers, as digger Thomas Pierson records it, are ‘preaching Republican principals urging all the people to drive off all the government officers, send the Governor home and to declare their Independence’. Why, one speaker later says, ‘Instead of being oppressed on all hands and hunted down like game for taxes . . . each of you might stand here as Proud as any of the sons of America!’

Then, suddenly, here is Commissioner Rede in his dark blue uniform trimmed with sparkling gold braid, after having raced here from Assistant-Commissioner Gilbert Amos’s camp on the Eureka, with Amos himself in tow.

Now, instead of doing what many of his officers think he should do, which is to read the Riot Act and allow the police and troopers to shoot if necessary – entirely legally – Robert Rede does what he can to calm the mob. He even climbs onto one of the shattered windowsills and tries to restore order with his words alone.

‘I have been a digger myself,’ he says, ‘and I will see justice done for you.’

But he is like one man trying to stop a stampede of cattle.

It is not long before another digger, a Scot by the name of Andrew McIntyre, climbs onto the sill beside Rede to speak on the outrage of the Bentley trial. Then an egg is hurled and sails near the Commissioner’s head, splattering on the wall beside him.

Infuriated, the Commissioner believes he can identify who threw it and orders his men to take the man in hand. Not one trooper moves. Ride into that mob and arrest the offender? It would be easier to pluck out the eye of the devil in hell. In the midst of it all, Commissioner Rede can’t help but notice that he is receiving precious little in the way of support from the man commanding those soldiers, Captain Hans T. Fell White, who . . .

Splat
!
Another egg again narrowly misses the noggin of the outraged Commissioner.

Now who is intimidated? Certainly not the miners. For the first time it is the police who are showing fear, and all the troopers can do is take their horses and fall back, riding around in an effort to protect the hotel.

Thus encouraged – what joy to have the police in fear of
them
for a change – the miners surge forward, close enough to take sticks and start beating on the side of the hotel.

At this point Andrew McIntyre says to Assistant-Commissioner Gilbert Amos, ‘You will not give us justice. We will take the law in our own hands and see if we cannot do better.’ Not long afterwards he is seen pulling weatherboards off the side of the building.

As the madness of the mob takes hold, it is not long before the first of the diggers, including ‘Yorkey’, storm through the front and back doors. To even more cheering, they begin to throw furniture, curtains – anything they can get their hands on – out the windows. For many of the troopers on horseback below, it is all they can do to keep their saddles, let alone stop the crowd. As diggers swarm forward and start to rip more planking from the side of the hotel, one of the Californians inside takes it up another notch by throwing crockery out the windows, which smashes satisfyingly.

Soon enough, it becomes apparent that the diggers really are intent on the total destruction of the hotel, tearing down the Waterford chandeliers. The sound of the shattering of glass is only drowned out by the throaty roar of yet more malcontents pouring in to join the fun.

Should the armed troopers shoot at the diggers . . .?

‘FIRE!’

Inside the hotel, one of the diggers has thrown a match onto some shattered bottles of spirits, and though this time some police rush in to successfully extinguish the flames, both the mathematics and the mood tell against them. What can several dozen terrified troopers and traps do against thousands of angry miners? The truth is soon more than apparent: they can do very little. Two men who try to put the fire out are Commissioner Rede and Andrew McIntyre, the latter of whom would also claim he even burnt himself in the process.

McIntyre expresses his fear to Commissioner Rede that some might think he has been trying to add to the flames, rather than put them out. The Commissioner replies, as McIntyre would later swear under oath, ‘There’s no danger, I can swear you have done your duty like a man.’

Though some of the troopers are able to put the first fire out and establish a partial cordon around the building, they are not quick enough. Even more of the mob swarm into the hotel, while others stave in the water cart to make sure it can’t be used to put the fire out.

And then the shout goes up: ‘The 40th are coming!’

‘Where’s the Redcoats?’

‘There they come, yonder up the hill!’

‘Hurrah! Three cheers.’

Again, there is no fear at the sight of the mounted British forces.

Even when the foot soldiers arrive and form up in front of the hotel and draw their swords, the diggers do not back off.

‘Hurrah, boys!’

‘No use waiting any longer.’

‘Down she comes.’

‘She’, as it turns out, is the bowling alley at the side of the hotel, which is not only made of highly valuable and flammable canvas but, more importantly, is owned by the American who had been so public in his support of Bentley.

Not long after, a digger is seen running into the back of the bowling alley holding a whole pile of paper. It, too, is seen to be properly roaring, its canvas sides falling away in blazing strips.

The police again move to quell the flames, but this time it is as if God Himself has come down on the side of the diggers. The flames catch on to the back corner of the hotel and take hold, to universal cheering, and sudden gusts of wind spring up to fan the flames further.

Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

Amid all the cheering, billowing smoke and sounds of what remains of the windows cracking and breaking in the heat, Raffaello Carboni takes pause to consider what a curious thing it is ‘that a characteristic of the British race is to make fun of the calamity of fire’. He noticed this first while living in London, and now here it is again. The destruction of this hotel is a positively joyous thing, and the diggers are enjoying it hugely.

‘Burn the bloody murderer’s house down,’ an American by the name of Albert Hurd shouts, even as he pauses while ripping palings off the back wall to throw burning rags through the shattered windows. ‘Come on my boy and we will have plenty wood – let us tear it down!’ he is heard to cry. And yet he is only one of many others who start to tear the side of the house down to feed the flames. It is even possible that some of the men supposed to be stopping this destruction are actually loving it, as
The Ballarat Times
would report: ‘The police all this time were riding round and round the hotel, but did not take any vigorous measures to deter the people from the sport they appeared to enjoy so much.’

Not that some care isn’t taken, for all that. Before the stables are burnt down, the horses are ushered out and the sheep and pigs are taken from the yard. Many of the servants are allowed to save their own property, just as the musicians save their instruments. After a dray is run into the flames, on the reckoning it is Bentley’s, a sudden cry goes up – maybe it is
not
Bentley’s!

‘[The dray] was at some risk rescued; but on further enquiry it was ascertained to be his property, and immediately run into the burning mass and totally consumed.’

When a maid then cries out that her dowry box is inside and will be burnt, one valiant young digger charges in and retrieves it for her. (This proves doubly useful, as he would later marry her.)

And now, as if the gods themselves are angry, and complicit in fuelling the fury, those first gusts of wind have now turned into a full-blown gale, coming from exactly the right direction to stoke the flames higher. Soon the entire hotel is ablaze, something that would surely please the departed spirit of the murdered miner, James Scobie. Yes, there is a sudden burst of rain from the heavens, accompanied by booming thunder that rolls like a dirty ball across the goldfields, but neither lasts long.

As the roof of the main building catches alight, it is the shingles, being very thin and flammable, that roar into flame first, ‘leaving the joists and ridge-pole glowing vividly in the sky. To the onlookers at a distance it seemed for a few moments like ribs of fire supporting a fiery keel.’

In the face of the inferno, the order is given and the forces of law and order suddenly make their move. They perform an about-face and march back to their Camp. And though they try to arrest Andrew McIntyre, such is the weight of numbers that when other diggers move to free him they are powerless to resist, happy just to get away from the mob.

As it happens, the backs of them are still in sight when the roof at the back of the hotel falls in with a thunderous roar, followed by flames shooting ever higher . . .

And now some of the rioters have got their hands on the bottles in the bar stores of the hotel not yet burnt down. No matter that the bottles are burning hot, it is still grog. In short order they are handed out, their necks clashed together to knock the tops off, and the liquid swigged directly from there – a uniquely colonial way of doing it.

And look out! Even as the mass of diggers drink deeply, the rest of the hotel is collapsing as the roof and sides fall in upon themselves. More flames, more billowing smoke, more trails of sparks roaring high into the smoke-filled sky. Oh, it was grand, I tell you. Within minutes, what had been the Eureka Hotel is well on its way to what it will be – an enormous, twisted mess of a bonfire, the memory of which will warm everyone’s souls.

———

Back at the Camp, things are starkly different. There is no animated conversation, no-one doing drills, no clip-clop of horses, no clipped orders to underlings, not even a hint of the usual chaff and laughter between the men.

Instead, as recorded by Commissioner Rede’s Canadian chief clerk, Samuel Huyghue, there is ‘a strange silence. There was none of the usual loitering about, and what of speech was heard in the tents was reserved and low. The general feeling amongst us was one of angry humiliation, for it was believed that instead of making conciliatory speeches to an infuriated crowd, had those in command made prompt use of the force at hand, the hotel might have been saved.’

The humiliation is compounded shortly afterwards when word spreads at teatime that the diggers are about to attack the Camp en masse in order to get their dirty hands on Bentley. It takes only minutes and the whole garrison is under arms, with no fewer than ‘1000 rounds of ball cartridge . . . issued to the police’ and double guards posted on several approaches. No-one is allowed to enter or leave the Camp without a password. A dispatch is sent to Melbourne at all speed, asking for reinforcements, while the wives and children of those serving in the Camp – of whom there is a good sprinkling – are asked to leave. It is no longer considered safe.

Mercifully, no attack proves forthcoming. Smoke continues to fill the air as the remains of the Eureka Hotel burn into the night, little flickers of flame in the darkness around which the drunken diggers are still cavorting. (Nothing better than a good public fire!)

———

Later that evening, Magistrate Dewes is returning from Buninyong, where he has been presiding over a legal matter, when he suddenly looks up to see one of his servants, Edward, rushing towards him, holding a pair of his finest pistols. Advising his master what has happened, it is his earnest advice that the Magistrate should make a detour on his way home, so as to avoid going past the Eureka.

Dewes will have none of it and – outraged almost in the manner of a man who has lost a hotel in which he is a part-owner – gallops towards it. He arrives in time to see the last of the timber framework of the once fine hotel crash into no more than flaming embers, the whole thing totally uninsured, and . . .

And there he is! The Magistrate is well known to many diggers, particularly the ill-behaved ones who have appeared before him so many times, and it is no coincidence that a fair measure of these last are still there, enjoying the flames of redemption. And yet, such is their joy that they greet him cheerily in the manner of men who have changed shoes to their other foot – how does the magistrate like it
now
? Some of them are even so bold as to quietly point to the smoking ruins and say openly to him that, given the law had not dealt justly with the murder of Scobie, they had been obliged to take the law into their own hands.

For his part, Dewes is so apoplectic with rage (and perhaps grief at the loss of such an asset) that all he can do is snarl back, ‘Some of you will have no reason to congratulate yourself on today’s work.’

And then he gallops off, still fuming. It is his strong view that, ‘If the inspector of police and chief magistrates on the spot had behaved with firmness and judgement, this catastrophe would never have ensued . . . but nothing of this sort was done, and merely useless remonstrance used, which only gave the rioters an additional consciouness of their power.’

As it is, not even wild horses could drag the remaining diggers away from the carnage. It is the most fun they’ve had in months.

‘The entire diggings, in a state of extreme excitement,’ Carboni would recount. ‘The diggers are lords and masters of Ballarat; and the prestige of the Camp is gone for ever.’

This exultation does not last long, however. On receipt of the news concerning this open revolt against the law, Sir Charles Hotham is also enraged and insistent that the law immediately strike back hard.

On the instant, he sends every trooper and policeman the colony can muster to Ballarat, and within four days the roads leading into those diggings begin to fill with the first detachments of what will eventually amount to a local force of no fewer than 450. Sir Charles’s instructions to Commissioner Rede could not be more clear: ‘Use force whenever legally called upon to do so, without regard to the consequences which might ensue.’ This instruction fits Rede’s mood. He and his forces have been humiliated by the burning down of the Eureka Hotel, and now the diggers must be held to account.