It’s one of Australia’s foundation legends-yet the story has always been told as if half the participants weren’t there. But what if the hot-tempered, free-spirited gold miners we learned about at school were actually husbands and fathers, brothers and sons? What if there were women and children right there beside them, inside the Stockade, when the bullets started to fly? And how do the answers to these questions change what we thought we knew about the so-called ‘birth of Australian democracy’?
Who, in fact, were the midwives to that precious delivery?
Ten years in the research and writing, inimitably bold, entertaining and irreverent in style, Clare Wright’s The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka is a fitting tribute to the unbiddable women of Ballarat-women who made Eureka a story for us all.
‘A rare and irresistible combination of impeccable scholarship with a lively, warm, engaging narrative voice.’ Stella Prize committee
xvii, 539 pages, 12 unnumbered leaves of plates : illustrations (some colour), portraits, photographs ; 24 cm #290722 Includes bibliographical references (page 506-524) and index.
Stella Prize, winner, 2014. The Nib : Waverley Library Award for Literature, 2014
Eureka Stockade, Ballarat, Vic., 1854. | Gold miners — Victoria — Ballarat — History. | Riots — Victoria — Ballarat — History. | Ballarat (Vic.) — History — 1851-1901. | Australian