It wasn't always that way as I understand one of the reasons 31 per cent of it is missing is that the custodians were cutting fragments off and gifting them to visiting dignitaries, and that this was going on in living memory.

I don't think moving the remains to the Eureka Centre is going to do anything for its credibility as a serious institution with a future.

Nor will any amount of redevelopment as an Australian Centre for Democracy, not least because it's an unnecessary piece of duplication as there's a Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House in Canberra where visitors can enquire about this subject.

And, it's not a partisan turnout designed to manufacture support for the ALP.

Eurekaphiles who live in this Disneyland where their "tradition" is deeply rooted in Australian history must find the 1949 movie Eureka Stockade sobering viewing, as the stars of the rebel flag featured are not arrayed on a white cross, for no one knew what it looked like back then as the pattern had been lost to the imagination of the public until radicals started weaving political meanings into events of 1854 in more recent decades.

According to a seldom mentioned report which appeared in the Argus newspaper at the time, the dissidents also hoisted the Union Jack.

I wonder if the interpretative centre which purports to be built on the battle site and which once housed a petition calling for the Eureka flag to be made Australia's pre-eminent national symbol will ever make this inconvenient fact more widely known which, like the politics of Peter Lalor, doesn't fit into their story?

Not likely.

NIGEL MORRIS

Gunnedah