When the cost of gold licences jumped the diggers were outraged. A mass meeting was held at Bakery Hill in November 1854, where the miners burnt their licences & raised the Eureka flag, their symbol of freedom from repression, in protest of the unfair conditions. They demanded licence abolition & the right of political representation. They were refused
For protection, the miners barricaded themselves into a hastily erected stockade armed with a few guns & pikes. But 300 soldiers & troopers attacked the stockade at dawn on 3 December 1854, killing 28 miners & wounding many more. It was a massacre. Public outrage broke the grip of Australia's pre-gold colonial establishment & led to the founding of a more democratic legislative assembly in Victoria.
The Eureka rebellion was the birth of democracy in Australia
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