Description

BENDIGO GOLDFIELDS PETITION

ePUB format, 87 pages, illustrated in colour, map, timeline

22.5 MB

“Drawn up in 1853, the Petition was signed by 1000s of diggers on the Victorian goldfields. The formulation of the Bendigo Goldfields Petition was amongst the earliest organised expressions of dissatisfaction with the conditions of the Victorian goldfields and could be placed in a context reflective of Chartist political culture, American republican rhetoric and Continental revolutions of 1830 and 1848.”

“The stories of organisers George Thomson, Dr David Griffith Jones and Irish-born American, ‘Captain’ Edward Brown, who presented the Petition to Lieutenant Governor LaTrobe and whose demands were totally rejected, are not as well known in Australian national mythology as that of the notorious bushranger Ned Kelly”

“The agitations on the Victorian goldfields from the very first discoveries in 1851 are almost forgotten in our national pyche but they are of great importance to the emergence of qualities that Australians pride themselves on; those qualities of free thinking, equality and mateship. ‘Australian Democracy’ began early on the goldfields of Victoria, acknowledged by the resistance shown by men (and women), especially those at the Eureka Lead on 3 December 1854.”