Club Meetings
Held on the 2nd Tuesday of the month
7pm - 10pm
at the Miners Museum
James Street, Teralba
Co-Sponsors of the Gulgong Henry Lawson Festival June Long Weekend
Competition and performances held at various locations - e.g. Newcastle, Morisset, Scone, Krambach, 'Ducks Crossing' - Warners Bay and some members compete Australia wide.
Results for 2008 can be found on our Competition page.
Next Competition held 2009
Come along and join us.........perform a poem or two or just sit and be entertained by an evening of great poems and yarns from our members
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.T.S. ElliotPoetry is what gets lost in the translation.Robert Frost
EUREKA
(A Fragment)
Henry Lawson
1889
Roll up, Eureka's heroes, on that grand Old Rush afar,
For Lalor's gone to join you in the big camp where you are;
Roll up and give him welcome such as only diggers can,
For well he battled for the rights of miner and of man.
And there, in that bright, golden land that lies beyond our sight,
The record of his honest life shall be his Miner's Right.
Here many a bearded mouth shall twitch, and many a tear be shed,
And many a grey old digger sigh to hear that Lalor's dead.
But wipe your eyes, old fossickers, o'er worked-out fields that roam,
You need not weep at parting from a digger going home.
Now from the strange wild seasons past, the days of golden strife,
Now from the Roaring Fifties comes a scene from Lalor's life:
All gleaming white amid the shafts o'er gully, hill, and flat
Again I see the tents that form the camp at Ballarat.
I hear the shovels and the picks, and all the air is rife
With the rattle of the cradles and the sounds of digger-life;
The clatter of the windlass-boles, as spinning round they go,
And then the signal to his mate, the digger's cry, "Below!"
From many a busy pointing-forge the sound of labour swells,
The tinkling at the anvils is as clear as silver bells.
I hear the broken English from the mouth at least of one
From every state and nation that is known beneath the sun
The homely tongue of Scotland and the brogue of Ireland blend
With the dialects of England, from Berwick to Land's End;
And to the busy concourse here the West has sent a part,
The land of gulches that has been immortalised by Harte;
The land where long from mining-camps the blue smoke upward curled;
The land that gave that "Partner" true and "Mliss" unto the world;
The men from all the nations in the New World and the Old,
All side by side, like brethren here, are delving after gold;
But suddenly the warning cries are heard on every side
As, closing in around the field, a ring of troopers ride;
Unlicensed diggers are the game, their class and want are sins,
And so, with all its shameful scenes, the digger-hunt begins;
The men are seized who are too poor the heavy tax to pay,
And they are chained, as convicts were, and dragged in gangs away;
While in the eye of many a mate is menace scarcely hid -
The digger's blood was slow to boil, but scalded when it did.
But now another match is held that sure must light the charge,
A digger murdered in the camp! his murderer at large!
Roll up! Roll up! the pregnant cry awakes the evening air,
And angry faces surge like waves around the speakers there.
"What are our sins that we should be an outlawed class?" they say,
"Shall we stand by while mates are seized and dragged, like `lags', away?
Shall insult be on insult heaped? Shall we let these things go?"
And on a roar of voices comes the diggers' answer - "No!"
The day has vanished from the scene, but not the air of night
Can cool the blood that, ebbing back, leaves brows in anger white.
Lo! from the roof of Bentley's inn the flames are leaping high;
They write "Revenge!" in letters red across the smoke-dimmed sky.
Now the oppressed will drink no more humiliation's cup;
Call out the troops! Read martial law! - the diggers' blood is up!
"To arms! To arms!" the cry is out; "To arms if man thou art;
For every pike upon a pole will find a tyrant's heart!"
Now Lalor comes to take the lead, the spirit does not lag,
And down the rough, wild diggers kneel beneath the Diggers' Flag,
And, rising to their feet, they swear, while rugged hearts beat high,
To stand beside their leader and to conquer or to die!
Around Eureka's stockade now the shades of night close fast,
Three hundred sleep beside their arms, and thirty sleep their last.
Around about fair Melbourne town the sounds of bells are borne
That call the citizens to prayer this fateful Sabbath morn;
But there, upon Eureka's hill, a hundred miles away,
The diggers' forms lie white and still above the blood-stained clay.
The bells that ring the diggers' death might also ring a knell
For those few gallant soldiers, dead, who did their duty well.
There's many a "someone's" heart shall ache, and many a someone care,
For many a "someone's darling" lies all cold and pallid there.
And now in smoking ruins lie the huts and tents around,
The diggers' gallant flag is down and trampled in the ground.
The sight of murdered heroes is to hero hearts a goad,
A thousand men are up in arms upon the Creswick road,
And wildest rumours in the air are flying up and down,
'Tis said the men of Ballarat will march upon the town.
But not in vain those diggers died. Their comrades may rejoice,
For o'er the voice of tyranny is heard the people's voice;
It says: "Reform your rotten law, the diggers' wrongs make right,
Or else with them, our brothers now, we'll gather in the fight."
And now before my vision flash the scenes that followed fast -
The trials, and the triumph of the diggers' cause at last.
'Twas of such stuff the men were made who saw our nation born,
And such as Lalor were the men who Ied their footsteps on;
And of such men there'll many be, and of such leaders some,
In the roll-up of Australians on some dark day yet to come.
This is all that is left of the original Eureka flag
For nearly 110 years, the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery has been the home of the original Eureka flag. This flag, with its bold design of white on blue based on the constellation of the Southern Cross, was first flown in Ballarat during the ‘troubles’ of 1854, when the diggers made a concerted effort to resist the despotic and corrupt local arm of the colonial Government.
The flag was made as a banner for the Ballarat Reform League at some point in time after the first meeting of this group on 11 November 1854. It was first raised on public view at the Monster Meeting at Bakery Hill on 29 November 1854 when the diggers protested against the administration of the Gold Licence. On the following day, Peter Lalor swore his famous oath beneath the flag, which was then taken to the site of Eureka Stockade.
On the morning of December 3rd 1854, when the Government troops and police stormed and ransacked the Stockade, a Trooper by the name of John King cut down the flag and it was eventually brought back to the Government Camp (ironically the Gallery itself was built on this site 33 years later.) On that morning, the ‘rebel’ flag was reviled and mocked by the victorious troopers and the first of many souvenir pieces was cut from it. One of the pieces taken that day was instrumental in proving the authenticity of the flag in the Gallery more than 80 years later.
In the 1890’s the founder of the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery James Oddie became aware of the existence of this flag. Oddie had settled in Ballarat in 1852. It was well known that his sympathies at the time were with the diggers. Oddie established contact with Trooper King’s widow, and persuaded her to lend the flag to the Gallery in 1895, where it has been almost continuously ever since. The descendants of Trooper King formally deeded the Eureka Flag to the people of Ballarat in 2001 on the condition that it be kept in the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery where it can be provided with stable display conditions and security.
For years there were many people who doubted that the flag that we now see at the Gallery was authentic. These people thought that the cross design ought to look more like the image on the front cover of a book written by Raffaello Carboni, one of the leaders of the diggers cause in 1855. It is now known that the designer of this cover had never seen the original flag and that the cover of Carboni’s book was only an approximate rendering of his description of it.In the 1940’s a man by the name of Len Fox was able to show that the threads and weave of the Flag in the Gallery match exactly with those of a small fragment that was certainly cut off the flag on the morning of December 3rd 1854.
The final proof of the authenticity of the flag in the Gallery came when previously unknown watercolours by a Swiss/Canadian digger Charles Doudiet came to light in 1996. These watercolours, which were made by an eye-witness just days after the events, clearly show a flag, that matches with the one that you can now see at the Gallery.
The flag is on permanent display in the Selkirk Family Gallery. It is presented at low light levels to ensure that it will not fade any further, and visitors are asked to allow their eyesight to become adjusted upon entering the viewing room. The Gallery also normally displays the Doudiet watercolours and a range of Eureka related images and memorabilia. During 2005 most of this material with the exception of the flag is traveling in the exhibition Eureka Revisited: the contest of memories.
Henry Lawson's Eureka {A Fragment} and its surrounding history fascinates me. I am planning to showcase a different poem and its relevant history every month.
