WHEN the recreated Eureka Flag was flown in Ballarat on the morning of December 3, 2014, our eyes looked again upon this story across the passage of 160 years.
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Here is a stitch, a rhythm, a picking over and pulling together. History takes hold of a thread and with a deft
twist it can expose an underbelly, repackage a perspective or reveal a new truth.
Restitching the Eureka Flag put the yarn in my hand, the hand of the present, and offered the chance to remake some fabric of a story. The flag has been made to its original proportions and using the same techniques (though perhaps not the same skills), as the original seamstresses.
Val D’Angri, whose ancestor was one of the original creators of the flag, was at hand at M.A.D.E Ballarat to keep our stitches on track and tell of the intricacies of fabric and thread.
Stitching this flag was about family and history for me. My ancestor, Charles Sublet de Bougy, arrived in Ballarat in July 1853. He was carrying a broken heart and searching for his fortune. They say money doesn’t buy happiness, but in Charles’ case, he dreamed that by striking it rich with gold, his future would be mapped out for him back home in Switzerland. He wanted simply one vineyard, in his home town of Bougy and the heart of a girl called Henriette.
His diary records his early thoughts on arriving in Ballarat: "Now that we had arrived at our destination – after over four months of travelling, of storms, of shipwreck, and a week of fighting our way through that sea of mud known locally as the Geelong Road – we all hoped and trusted most fervently that our fi rst hole at the diggings at Ballarat would be one that was just full of golden nuggets and golden dust. Yes, all that anyof us now wanted was one – just one – golden hole, so that we could ride back to Melbourne in style on the mail-coach, and catch the first available ship back to Europe with enough gold in our pockets to buy that vineyard – yes, just one vineyard, and not the several that I had once imagined – back in our native land.”
Yet Charles never did go “home”, and his fortune lay in the toil of the diggings and the turmoil of the Eureka Stockade. The pursuit of justice, the right to representation and the call for democracy enveloped the diggings in 1854.
Beneath the beautiful Flag of the Southern Cross, my ancestor fought at the Stockade alongside Peter Lalor and men from many nations. It is said that 27 were killed that day, including a woman and others who subsequently died. This movement for rights and liberties was snuffed out in an early morning slaughter by the colonial administration, but the image of Eureka as the birthplace of Australian democracy resonates strongly across the country.
The Eureka Flag carries with it the sound of a call for democracy, a voice for those “diggers” who were brutalised by colonial officialdom.
It speaks of slaughter in a canvas camp, where the flag flew above the screams of an early morning injustice. Unfurled, fluttering, standing to attention above the hill. This flag of the Southern Cross staked a claim in history, in ownership of a story. Though the miners’ licences might have ostensibly given them the right to dig some dirt, the flag and the oath sworn beneath it staked a claim for a certain form of citizenship until then denied the men who worked their lots and the women who worked with them.
What can our present stitching together tell us of this nation, this citizenry? Are we a proud nation these days? Our sporting triumphs may meld some sort of pride in Commonwealth and Olympic medals, but when we look at our country, what do many of us see about our Australia Fair?
What rights and liberties now need defending? The rights of the less advantaged in society to fairness and compassion, human rights of asylum seekers, a sense of equity in education, the “common good” as opposed to the demands of interest groups and lobbyists and ideologues?
We wave the flag of family and history across oceans and generations. Emigrants that never returned to homelands as planned.
They planted their feet and grew old here. This flag of the Southern Cross has a beauty that goes beyond our borders.
I stitched across time. I wondered about the land that Australia has become and the people who now call this land “home”. And I wondered about the ideals and the lives of those who stood under the Flag of the Southern Cross 160 years ago in Ballarat.
The remaking of the Eureka Flag took place at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka, M.A.D.E Ballarat.
Eureka 160th anniversary events are being staged across
