BATTLE OF VINEGAR HILL, THE (1804) : Australia’s Irish Rebellion

The Battle of Vinegar Hill is the name given to the clash between convicts and soldiers on Monday March 5 1804 following on from the Castle Hill uprising the night before. It was the first battle between Europeans on Australian soil.Convicts, mainly Irish, who were working on the government farm at Toongabbie joined with convicts and settlers in the district.They planned to march to Hawkesbury and team up with other rebels, then on to Parramatta and finally Sydney where they had planned to commandeer a ship home.News of the uprising spread quickly to Sydney and Governor King dispatched soldiers of the NSW Regiment — later to be known as the infamous “Rum Corps” — who after a forced march faced the rebels at the place later known as Vinegar Hill.Vinegar Hill was named after a similar hill in Ireland, which was also the scene of battle in the 1798 United Irishmen’s uprising. Some of the rebels at Sydney’s Vinegar Hill were veterans of the Irish Vinegar Hill.The convicts’ leader, Philip Cunningham, was sent to parley with the commander of the soldiers under a flag of truce, but the soldiers disregarded the flag and fired on the rebels.The result was more of a massacre than a battle, with 11 rebels killed in the hunt that followed and a further nine court-martialed and hanged over the next few days. Cunningham, at first thought to have died during the skirmish, was hanged without trial on the steps of the government store. His grave is located at Windsor, in Sydney’s west.SCARCE.