#21 Australia - Colonial Uprisings, Race Riots and a Military Coup

For a special Aussie edition of Putschcast, all four hosts come together to review some rebellious periods in Australian colonial history, hardly known even to most Aussies.

First up, the 1808 Rum Rebellion, Australia's only military coup. When Governor William Bligh (yes, that Bligh from the Mutiny on the Bounty) tried to shut down the New South Wales Corps' booze fuelled monopoly, the military marched on Government House and arrested him.

Next, the Eureka Stockade of 1854, a makeshift rebellion of gold miners sick of unfair licences and heavy handed authority. It lasted minutes, but its flag became a lasting symbol of resistance and workers' rights.

But not every rebellion is remembered with pride. The Lambing Flat riots of 1861 exposed a darker side: organised mobs of European miners driving thousands of Chinese diggers off the goldfields, fuelled by racism and resentment. That ugly moment helped shape the White Australia policy that followed.

From mutiny to martyrdom to racial violence, this episode asks: why do we celebrate some uprisings and bury others? Revolutionary, revealing, and unflinching, this is Australian history.

Check out Putschcast as video on our new Youtube channel. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and share with your friends and foes. 

Send us an email to putschcast@gmail.com and visit our website.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to yet another Pudgecast episode. I'm your host, Oliver Heute. This is your favorite revolutionary podcast. Today you might have seen uh with a special topic uh being Australia, which is where this very podcast is recorded. And the good news for me is I don't have anyone online today, so I can take those off and just speak to my co-hosts in person who've come all the way to the interrogation room to tell us stories about revolutionary Australia. Now you might think Australia Revolution, that just doesn't happen. Is that right? Hello everyone. Dave Sloan?

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Oliver, thank you for having us. Uh yeah, absolutely, that's right. There's a lot of revolution, rebellion, riots, and uh fist fights in Australia, and we'll tell you all about it.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

But people don't seem to know about it. James, you're an immigrant, just like myself. Before you came to Australia, were you aware of any coups or revolutions, riots in Australia? Did you ever learn any any of that?

SPEAKER_04 0:58

No. I think the only thing I was aware of was neighbours and home and away.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Yeah, Crocodile Dundee. Crocodile Dundee. Um he was uh a cinema revolutionary, still is, uh Paul Hogan. But I I have to agree with you, James. I I don't remember any stories about revolution riots. Uh I think from abroad, Australia is always perceived as a very peaceful country, very stable political country. We've had um Federation, which is sort of the Australian form of independence in 1901. Ever since then, have there been coups or not? I think some people might argue that. But today we dig a little deeper. We go, what, into the 19th century exclusively. I think all three topics that you brought along are from the 19th century. And uh let's give us a little sneak peek in preview.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

All right, we're working backwards. So mine is in 1861, the Lambing Flat riots. You would never have heard of Lambing Flat, and I'll tell you about that in a minute.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

I have no idea, by the way. At this time, usually I do a bit of research um to have an idea of who the expert is and what they're talking about. Lemming flats means nothing to me, so I'm I'm very excited. Uh James, what did you bring for us? Okay, guys and girls.

SPEAKER_04 2:08

So today I'm gonna be talking about the Eureka Stockade, which its genesis was in 1851, and its conclusion was in 1854.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Oh, so it went on for a while then? Well, not really, but I'll explain about that in a minute. Okay, great. But the topic we're starting with today, David Shields.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

Hi. Uh, we're looking at the Rum Rebellion. So this is the fledgling colony in New South Wales, 20 years after the arrival of the first fleet. And the first, and up until this point only, military coup in Australian history.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

I'm so glad to hear the word coup because that's what putsch means in German, and this is the coup cast. So Yeah, it is. Um in order to have a coup, you need a political system that is either overthrown or attempted to be overthrown. Yes. So what is the political system at the time in Australia? So give us an idea.

SPEAKER_03 2:57

Small colony um overseen by a governor who uh at his disposal has a um military or the New South Wales Corps as they were called. Basically, there are still very few free settlers in this colony. Uh, it wasn't well developed. There were a number of convicts, so there was free labor um that existed. The governors uh they took their orders ultimately from the UK. Governors were replaced um intermittently. And this story starts with um another figure of history, someone that you're very fond of, um, or his story at least. It is um when the f the governor Philip King, who was overwhelmed by his duties in dealing with renegade members of the New South Wales military, um, was replaced by William Bly. So William Bly I know that name. Um what can you tell me about William Bly?

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Mutiny on the bounty. So um it's a story I always loved. Um uh there's a there's a black and white, there's many uh film adaptation, I think. Uh there's probably one every decade as well. But um the one that I remember best, and I have a look if we can find some footage because we are now also on YouTube for everyone who's missed that. So um, if you're on YouTube, you might be seeing some ships sailing across the screen right now. But um, there's one from the 60s where Marlon Brando plays I can't believe that Fletcher Christian. Um and I can't, I think Howard something was the name who played Captain Bly. And he's such such a perfect villain, and that's why I think I liked him. He's like because you sort of sympathize with him because they are in those extreme challenging circumstances. They're on the other side of the world, you can't just stop and get supplies or anything. The Pacific is vast, obviously, and uh uncharted territory, um, quite literally, because this is only a few decades after Captain Cook, right?

SPEAKER_03 5:02

So um 20 years old, the colony. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

So it's no one would have a clue where they actually are on you know, um, on the map. And and and the people who were manning those ships were quite questionable characters themselves. It's not like today where we talk about a professional navy with people who do this for a living. This is people that were, you know, um gang pressed into uh staying months and months on a ship, um, no matter what circumstances was. So you got health challenges, you got psychological challenges, you got criminals on there. And and I I envy, I don't envy anyone who has to uh enforce any form of discipline. And Bly did this, but he crosses the line and becomes a bit of a sadistic character, and I think that's what the story lives off. Um and then you you sympathize with um Fletcher Christian, who is this young upstart, honest, righteous man, but then in the end it's like, is he? And and the amazing thing is, without giving away too much, but obviously he puts him on a little tugboat, is that the word?

SPEAKER_03 6:05

Uh a launch, yeah. So a small open boat. And uh Bly managed to navigate. Obviously finding places to stop in um and you know, take on supplies, etc. But he made it back uh to the Australian mainland.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

And this is where our story starts.

SPEAKER_03 6:24

Well, um there is a there is a gap in time between him returning and becoming governor. He's appointed governor because he has a reputation as a hard man. So uh it it wasn't like he was tainted in the eyes of the British um government uh based on what happened on the bounty. And he was sent to Sydney to clean up this mess um that had sort of taken root uh in the in the fledgling colony due to a number of reasons. It was an English colony at the time. Uh so basically, due to the fact the distance, etc., this colony was short on most things. Um and currency was one of those. So the primary form of currency uh and what was used within a barter economy was rum. I think rum was used as a generic term for any distilled liquor. The New South Wales Corps had a monopoly on the importation of rum, and they also began to import um stills, and they were creating or they were distilling their own rum, so effectively printing money. So this group, this military group, um referred to as a gang, or you could call it a cartel almost, had complete control over this industry, and they were also um not a better by, but another prominent Sydney um resident, a free settler and the wealthiest man in the colony, James MacArthur, had an interest in the uh the rum trade as well. Bly was sent in and given the explicit order to basically shut this down. And um we know how he went on the bounty in terms of his interpersonal skills, and um he made enemies very, very quickly in the colony because, as you can imagine, people who have had the run of the green for 15 years do not want to give up um any of that power or influence uh that they had accrued. And so William Bly, he um replaced Rum uh with uh a different form of hard currency, which was very unpopular with members of the New South Wales Corps. And also what he did was he challenged MacArthur in terms of the um the land grants that this man was getting from the United Kingdom. He was getting some of the biggest land grants um for grazing um uh uh in in the colony, and he was very, very wealthy. So Bly is taking on the wealthiest man in the colony and the military as well. He is very, very, very unpopular. The head of the New South Wales Corps was a man called Johnson, and so the three characters in this story are Bly, Johnson, and MacArthur.

SPEAKER_04 9:14

The New South Wales Corps, were they sort of akin to like the East India Company? Were they like a private?

SPEAKER_03 9:20

No, they were lit there was literally just the garrison. It was a garrison um colony, um, and these were the men who were in charge of keeping order, um pushing the convicts around, telling them what to do. And they had the they had the run of it. So it's like a almost like a military junta in a way that they ran this. And the governor, Philip King Pride Bly was almost impotent in in their in in the face of them.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Just because you you did you did use my favorite word coup at the start, and I'm still trying to understand the political system. You've described it a bit, but so this is the this is George and England we're talking about, right? 1808. So it's 1808, it's basically the Napoleonic Wars.

SPEAKER_03 9:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

England is under siege, more or less, during that time, I would say, all the way up till 1815 when things started calming down in Europe. And is that one of the reasons why people had a free fall down here that England was just distracted on the continent? And number two, was the English society replicated down here? So was there nobility, were there different um levels in society, class differences, and they just replicated it here? Or was it like a new world idea where people just started and anyone could become a governor? And you mentioned the most powerful person, rich person, was he a a nobleman as well?

SPEAKER_03 10:36

Uh no, I think it's more of the new world. It's uh it is a bit of a free-for-all. And a lot of these people are um taking every any opportunity that they can to make money. And the two ways to make money uh is to one, to if you're a free settler, to receive a um a land grant and to start a farm and hopefully successful, because at this stage a lot of the farming was st still failing. Um and it was. It was only 20 years old. Um the population wasn't huge. And I I think that the way that the economy was controlled by the New South Wales Corps, they became known as the Rum Corps, probably inhibited the actual growth of the colony because it was um corruption from the top. The corruption was just every every segment of society was completely corrupted. Um and I think it was still it's a small colony, it's an outlier. I'm not sure how much interest Britain at that time really would have had on they obviously didn't want this colony to fail. Um, but I don't think they it's not um as if they had the same concern vis-a-vis like America and um the 18th century, for example. This is a tiny outpost. It's the only colony on the Australian mainland. Um there are people in Van Diemen's Land, but there's basically that's not even that hasn't even been declared a colony yet. So it's just this little outpost um with a bunch of uh rowdy military types who've stitched up the yeah, the the black market in terms of everything.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

When you look at a map these days, um it is uh in and around what we call now Sydney.

SPEAKER_03 12:13

Correct. Yeah. So probably East, what we'd call the eastern suburbs around that part of Sydney. As a penal colony, there were strict rules regarding if you abetted or aided the escape or were connected to an escape of a convict, you could face um significant sanction. And because the real really the only way in and out, because you're not escaping into the hinterland, is via a boat, all of the merchants had to pay significant deposits. I think the equivalent of per boat, a deposit of $85,000 if they wanted the boat to leave Sydney Harbour to go anywhere. Um and that deposit was only returned when it was when the boat returned and it was proved that no uh convict had used it to escape or um had been helped in in getting out of the colony. What happened is one of MacArthur's boats, the Parramatta, someone, managed to sneak on board and get out of get out of get out of Sydney. And on return, um Bly decided to turn the screws on MacArthur. He um confiscated his boat, he summoned him to court, and MacArthur flatly refused. So these guys had a standoff, basically. The next step in terms of the escalation of this is that MacArthur um was arrested and imprisoned by Bly, and um he was supported, MacArthur was supported by a number of military officers, and Bly then he made a decision to frame this as an attempted mutiny and he called Johnson, the head of the Rum Corps or the New South Wales Corps. Um he he said he needed this man and his um the military that he's in command of to come to Government House to um like deal with the situation, to um crush the mutiny and and probably imprison those officers. But uh Johnson decided, again, someone who was not a fan of Bly, he um he went and released MacArthur. He got all of the Rum Corps together, we're talking maybe three to four hundred men. They marched with the full band playing um in a in parade style through the streets of Sydney to Government House and arrested Bly. And they they basically said, We're we're we're taking over.

SPEAKER_02 14:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:40

Um they Johnson became I suppose the quasi leader, the the governor um in situ, and basically undid all of the reforms that Bly had attempted to bring in. So, in that sense, technically speaking, yeah, a military coup. So the governor has been arrested, detained, and and removed from power um by the military that is supposed to serve and protect him.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

It seems to be a theme in Bly's life, right? This is the second time almost the identical thing has happened to him that the people he was meant to command rebel against him and he doesn't get away with it.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Yeah. He he's got this formal power, but what I take it is that there are very few people in New South Wales that are his sort of supporters or um very few.

SPEAKER_03 15:22

He had a couple uh there were a couple in the judiciary, uh, but again, he'd he'd he'd gotten MacArthur offside, and that's yeah, the richest man in town, and then those with all the military power. Not a not a smart political operator, Bly.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Um Maybe he's just not a nice guy.

SPEAKER_03 15:39

I don't think he was.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

There's another instance prior to the film he's not paid him off. That's a movie. You always watch the movie. Yeah. But let's talk communication then. You can't just pick up the phone Westminster Abbey or anything, right?

SPEAKER_03 15:51

So How would that be communicated? Uh letters on other ships. It would take six weeks. How long would that have been? Eight to twelve? No, longer. Remember, there was months.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

There was no Suez Canal, nothing. So you had to go all the way um around Africa at least. Yeah. Um would have taken a long time. But again, you you mentioned the East India company, so I assume there was maybe some communication that way. But I think through yeah, Cape Town and then up to England would have been a long time.

SPEAKER_03 16:16

Well the turnaround would be six months then, right? That they need to get there and then orders to return. Yeah, I would say so.

SPEAKER_04 16:21

Do you reckon that they would have had in the UK I mean it wouldn't have been that long. It would have been within a lifetime, right? Of the American War for Independence. Whatever. Do you reckon they had that in mind?

SPEAKER_03 16:35

Like when they overthrew Blyang?

SPEAKER_04 16:38

No, but I just wonder like like the UK government, if in London, if they'd be a bit paralyzed because you don't want to overstep the mark, right? Or like and then set something the equivalent of like the Boston Tea Party off or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 16:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:52

I mean, I know it's different. It's probably too small.

SPEAKER_03 16:54

Like it sounds like Yeah, I suppose the difference is that I don't think there are any free I don't think there are any private citizens who are involved in this. It was just simply this military group wanting to re get their hands back in the in the in the trough, basically. They wanted to start making money again.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

I think the other thing here is um the colony of Australia at the time had a purpose, and that was a place to put all the convicts. That's right. So from England's point of view, do they really care as long as they can keep filling it on with the bigger?

SPEAKER_03 17:23

Yeah, we were not producing really anything for export. They, you know, there was no wool big wool industry. I did MacArthur became the biggest sort of um became that guy. He became that guy. Uh but at this stage it was still, you know, still small fry, I think. Okay. Did he become Governor MacArthur, is that right? Um subsequent to Bly's arrest, the British couldn't quite figure out what to do, and no one really wanted to take responsibility and then, you know, try to rein in the um the the New South Wales Corps. But eventually an interim governor, um uh Fravog was sent out uh and he arrived in, I think, about June. So this rum rebellion took place on the 26th of January, 1808, and Favreau, he arrived um a few months later. Johnson and MacArthur were sent to um the UK on trial. Bly were he went back to the UK and he became he was promoted and became an admiral. Um MacArthur, he would the there was no sanction on him. He just was not allowed to return to New South Wales until 1817. So he had about he had to sit and cool his heels in the UK for you know six or seven years. And Johnson was basically kicked out of the Navy, but he was permitted to return as a private citizen, and he had a substantial estate here from all of the nefarious stuff he was doing.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Um, it was such a just country. Like anywhere else, they would have lost their heads, right? Like in those days, trying to overthrow the guy, actively being successful in overthrowing government. It's like, oh, okay, you're suspended from duties for a little while, but then you can live on.

SPEAKER_03 18:56

Yeah. And I look the I mean it makes sense, obviously, looking at it, the way they solved the problem was they just recalled the New South Whale Corps and they they replaced them with a different regiment. And Macquarie was sent and became the new governor of New South Wales.

SPEAKER_04 19:13

So presumably MacArthur in Sydney is named after this chap, right?

SPEAKER_03 19:17

Aaron Powell Yes. So there's a lot of um yeah, a lot of names that are re recognizable, uh whether they be electorates or um other other sections of um yeah, it's a lot of sheep. Yeah, he was a grazier and did wool. Wool was his thing.

SPEAKER_04 19:34

Well, since the World Cup's on, there is a football team called MacArthur Rams.

SPEAKER_03 19:38

Yeah. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Yeah, well, that's part of Sydney, and um yeah, that's exactly how that worked out.

SPEAKER_03 19:43

Yeah. Uh and I think, yeah, if you look at the history of the New South Wales colony under Macquarie, that's when it sort of um yeah, established itself, but it was also Sydney's expansion, um, increasing numbers of sort of clashes with the uh local indigenous population, etc. Um Macquarie is celebrated, but also I think he was probably celebrated for the first hundred and seventy years after um the establishment of the Sydney colony, but again, more recent um investigations into how he dealt with um and engaged with the local population. The local indigenous population have kind of complicated that legacy somewhat. So yeah, a lot of big a lot of big character, main character energy in this Rum Rebellion going on. These guys were Yeah, they were they were pitted against each other. Bly, interesting character, um, picked the fight with the wrong people, basically, and had no friends to back him up.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

So Yeah, because authority only goes so far, yeah. If if and that this is what we learn on this podcast all the time. Like you can't overthrow a government if you've got people backing you. No matter what titles you have, whatever armies you or regiments you think back you, if they don't actually do it when it matters, then it's all just nil and void.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

And it's just a title. Yeah, what do they really care about? Um Did Bly get another job once he got back to the Trevor Burrus.

SPEAKER_03 21:02

He became an admiral, so yeah, he was he he served in the Navy. He died in 1817, I think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

Just keeps coming back.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Interesting period. So that was the first uh decade of the 19th century.

SPEAKER_03 21:15

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Rum Rebellion.

SPEAKER_03 21:17

Rum Rebellion.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

For everyone who started listening a little late, why was it called Rum Rebellion again? Were they all on Rum?

SPEAKER_03 21:22

No, it's an interesting one. Um I think it was reframed. They used the name Rum Rebellion to try to suggest that the reason these people um mounted this military coup was that they were depraved alcoholics. And that reframing of this narrative came during the peak of the temperance movement. So people were alcohol was seen as, you know, the devil's liquid. And this was just one way of proving that this was something that you needed to abstain from because it would drive people to commit crazy acts of treason. Um, but I don't know, I think we've held on to it because it Is rum was, you know, it was significant in terms of um the economy and yeah, it it it's an engaging it's an engaging handle for uh for a it's catchy. Yeah, it's catchy. It got minded catchy.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

Um so we we put that in the in the reels to promote this podcast. Rum and then did that actually happen? It did. New South Wales, as we call it nowadays, but the New South Wales was a lot different to what it was.

SPEAKER_03 22:22

One last thing that I've written big letters here that I would like to add um it also the Rum Rebellion also spawned Australia's first ever political cartoon. So there was a a picture of Bly or a cartoon of Bly um being dragged out from under the servants' beds in um Government House that was published in a public forum, not in the newspapers, it was also like the first art exhibition in Sydney was basically humiliating this guy and trying to depict him as a coward. So that was the narrative that was run with immediately after the yeah, after his overthrow.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

I I I want to read a book about Bly. I'm really fascinated now. What a liar. Interesting character.

SPEAKER_03 23:06

There's other stuff too. But he has this consistent, it's just consistently belligerent and he's consistently like getting people offside. The more he fails, the more successfully becomes.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

He would have grown up the most I mean, pretty brutal. Brutal living circumstances. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:35

Well, like the only person that actually tried to defend him and prevent the overthrow.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

There's actually a boy as well that plays one of the key roles on the on the mutiny as well, and that would have been been him, like 30, 40 years earlier or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 23:50

Well, apparently the only person that stood up for Bly and tried to prevent the overthrow from happening was his daughter, who met the New South Wales Corps at the gates of Government House with an umbrella and was like swinging it at them and saying, like, get out of here, what are you doing? Well they pushed past. So, like there were yeah, there was no there was no blood spilled, so bloodless coup. Um, and then it just became an administrative nightmare for the for Britain. So I think they were very happy to recall the New South Wales Corps to have Macquarie in place and just like okay, yeah, just get on with it. No more headaches, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yeah, and just confirming all on the backs of indigenous people who would have called us home uh only a few decades earlier, displaced, driven off their land, and then there's white men fighting each other over that land, money and power already, just a few decades in. So it wasn't really a an a new paradise, new world sort of spirit anymore. Because we haven't done that episode. I want to do it one day, but it does remind me a fair bit of Christopher Columbus when he became governor of Hispaniola, and then he was the poses was overthrown as well because even the Spanish uh crown thought he went a bit overboard. Yeah, the way he he behaved and and treated uh indigenous people as well. That's it. Thanks. Uh topic number one on our special. Um again, we've got three topics today, all Australian topics. Um many people in the world think there was never a rebellious soul in this country, but there have been, and we changed.

SPEAKER_03 25:14

We are like very, very obedient.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Oh, absolutely. Very, very obedient. Compared to Russia, France, South American countries. Um But there's attempts, and that's what it's about today. But you said officially that's the only military coup in our state.

SPEAKER_03 25:33

Well, which call it one you want, coup d'etat, military coup, overthrow of a government. 1808 Rum Rebellion. Official, you can you can say that there are others which were coups, but well, that's that's a topic for another podcast.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Excellent. Now that brings us to a second guest here today, uh co-host James Bennett. James, you've you're in the middle of this, still in the 19th century, and I claim that your topic is probably the most known one, at least in Australia. So if you ask anyone on the streets, especially of a certain generation, they've probably heard of today's topic. However, most of uh Putchka's followers are now overseas. By the way, we're in over 70 countries. Can you believe it? Pretty exciting. So we cracked that not a few weeks ago. Um, so just give us a bit of context. What's your topic?

SPEAKER_04 26:18

Okay, guys and girls. This is for all the people out there who haven't followed Australian history pretty closely. Um, and it's not something that I actually knew about at all. But like Oliver says it, it probably is the most sort of, I guess, well-known. What's renowned, yeah. Particularly with the Eureka flag, which I will explain about in a moment. But basically, I'll set the scene. So 1851, um, gold was discovered in Victoria, which is in the west, I believe. Ballarat.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

So it's south of the continent, but in the South of the continent, okay.

SPEAKER_04 26:50

So yeah, west of Victoria. I had to look this word up because I didn't understand it. Apparently the gold was alluvial. Does anyone know what that means? Oliver, do you know what that means as the host? Extremely pure? Yeah, who knows what it means.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Doesn't that mean it's kind of sitting close to the surface and you can just dig it up?

SPEAKER_04 27:08

Ah, well done.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

That's why there's a lot of panning going on, it's floating around.

SPEAKER_04 27:12

Yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

Alluvial means near the surface.

SPEAKER_04 27:15

So basically alluvial means that it's very like easy to access. So there's uh, I suppose not there's not a high barrier to entry into the bigger. You don't have to freelance a deep mind.

SPEAKER_03 27:28

Freelancers can can get at it. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 27:30

Which is exactly what happens. Um so this is about in 18, yeah, 1851. So as a consequence, what happened was that they had they actually had a problem. I was reading about this, a lot of people just quit their jobs, even in Victoria, and just went up there to like chance their arm at getting it. Get rich very quick, right? Yeah, get rich very quickly. As long as you can work a shovel. Pretty much. As normally happens, a lot of people came to Australia. So you had a lot of Americans, Canadians, British, Irish, uh, a lot of Chinese came as well to to get the gold. Um and so, I mean, Australia was obviously still a very new colony at the moment, country, you know, it was before Federation. So you had a whole load of people go into a relatively small area very, very quickly. So one of the consequences was that infrastructure really struggled. Okay, a lot of these guys were living in tents in shacks on these mines. And so the colonial authorities wanted to sort this out. They obviously wanted a cut of all of this gold. What the colonial authorities did was they issued what was called mining licenses. So this was basically a mining license was basically saying, you know, in order to mine for gold, you have to pay us money to give us these, and we'll give you a mining license. But the only difference is is that normally these licenses or licenses would be considered sort of like if you get gold, then you would give us a cut. But the only difference is with these mining licenses, you had to pay for them, regardless of if you found them.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

So you pay up front for the right to go and dig, as opposed to paying a commission on what you find.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

Here's an analogy. It's like a fishing license. You have to pay for it no matter if you catch a fish or not. Pretty much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

Sounds like my way of fishing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:16

That's how I fish as well.

unknown 29:18

Good.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

It's the best. I don't even get a license.

SPEAKER_04 29:20

But anyway, well, I don't catch anything, so it doesn't matter. Let's take that out. Thank you. Authorities are watching. Victoria Police take note. The mining license was um imposed. This was really unpopular amongst everybody. It was kind of like a poll tax. Um, so a lot of these guys weren't very happy about it. And apparently the colonial authorities were not very nice about enforcing it. So there was a governor called Charles Hotham. Um he came in in about 1954. And like I think William Bly, he seemed to have like a sort of a unique combination of uh lack of people skills, bit of a dictator, not very good, basically. He was basically incompetent and failed upwards. Now, leading up to that, there were a few um, I guess, miscarriages of justice. There was a bloke called James Scobie, who was a Scottish miner, and he was killed by a publican called Bentley. Um who the Bentley Hotel up there. Anyway, went to trial, Bentley got off, and this caused like a massive ruction, um, a fair amount of trouble. And there was this hotel was burnt down um as a consequence. I guess a febrile atmosphere, you would call it. Weird. Um, and like one of the things that struck me when I was reading it was that a lot of these miners that came across, they were saying that they were quite um politically engaged. You know, they weren't just like forced labour. These were guys that had seen an opportunity and had came over. They reckon there was a lot of um, I suppose, influence from sort of like particularly from the Irish miners because they had come over from colonial Ireland, they weren't too keen, obviously, on the British colonial authorities.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

Yeah, and then simultaneously have people from the US, so they they have free-spirited people, they they used to not having a They said about the US and like the Republican movement and stuff like that as well.

SPEAKER_04 31:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

How does this work timing-wise compared to the California gold rush? Like have you got people who are experienced in that sense coming from America to Australia? I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 31:28

When was the gold game?

SPEAKER_00 31:29

There was a gold rush.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Um we looked that up. We would drop the number on the screen.

SPEAKER_04 31:34

We have a YouTube channel. The miners weren't happy about this. They felt there had been a miscarriage of justice, the mining licenses came into it. So they called what was called the Ballarat Reform League. So it's sort of like organized labor. Okay. So anyway, the Eureka flag is Does anyone know, able to describe the Eureka flag? Dave, you seem to know a bit.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

It's blue. Blue. It's got a white cross on it. Yeah. Alright. It's got like five stars on it. Five stars. Is that meant to resemble the Southern Cross in a way? Yes. That's the Southern Cross constellation.

SPEAKER_04 32:07

In a more kind of geometric arrangement rather than the true sense of the one of the things I read about it is it doesn't have the British flag on there. Like that was taken out.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

Doesn't have the Union Jack. But um I I thought uh when I came here, because I saw it a lot. I don't think it's as prominent anymore as it used to be a few decades ago. But I thought it had a Scottish connection just because of the colours, the blue and the white.

SPEAKER_04 32:30

Um but you talked about Irish minors and it doesn't seem to have like any type of ethnic like ethnic origin in terms of like it came from a particular place. Yeah. Like obviously what we were talking about earlier, like the Eureka moment. Does anyone want to talk tell me where the Eureka moment came from?

SPEAKER_01 32:48

I know the word eureka. It's like what you're meant to yell out when you find something you've been looking for. Yeah. It's a good word.

SPEAKER_04 32:54

I actually couldn't find anything as to why it's called the Eureka flag. Does anyone else know?

SPEAKER_03 32:59

Not sure why it is. Is it the one it was hoisted above the the barricades at this particular incident? Did it take the name from that particular incident? Is that where the flag got its name? I don't know. That's the question I'm asking.

SPEAKER_04 33:15

Aaron Ross Powell So the flag was created by what was called the Ballarat Reform League.

SPEAKER_03 33:19

So this was before like the Trevor Burrus So it was the Ballarat Reform League flag, which then took on the significance as the Eureka flag after this incident.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Which explains why it's still very prominent on Australian building sites because unions are still using that very flag.

SPEAKER_04 33:35

But I don't think I don't think it was it wasn't called the Eureka flag when it was probably something that's sort of come about from that. What happened after this was that the miners built what was called a stockade, which is why it's called a Eureka stockade. My reading of it, it was kind of almost like a bit of a shack. So it was like a fortification. So like a um barricade. Yeah, a barricade. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Was it intended to be like a defensive structure or was it just like a clubhouse? I think it was like a meeting place. Yeah. From what I can gather.

SPEAKER_04 34:08

The colonial authorities decided that this wasn't gonna um fly. So they attacked in the morning of um let me see, it was the 3rd of December 1854. So they attacked before dawn. They reckon they did this because they wanted the miners to not be prepared. Apparently the miners weren't very well uh armed. Twenty-two miners were killed. Four soldiers were killed. Why not? What are the um probably mythologies about it is that there was this massive battle, this massive fight. Um from what I've read, it took about 15 minutes. Yeah. So they didn't put up much of a fight.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

And 170 years later, we're still talking about which probably gives us all some context of Australia being a very conservative Pacific country. Passive.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

Passive, yeah. So there's relatively small events, uh quite significant in the history of Australia.

SPEAKER_00 35:06

Yeah. Yeah. Which is a good thing, yeah. For context, it's a good thing that we don't have much more bloodshed um in in those early days. But just in summary, it's all about taxes in the end, right? That's what it sounds like. So there's a gold rush. Yep. And again, in in David's episode, we talked about it's still a very colonial structure. Um, it's it's you know, you got a governor as well, so that's representing the the the king at the time here. Yeah. Um but the people here don't want to borrow it. They're like, no, we want to live our own way the way we think because we're not in England and that's probably why we left.

SPEAKER_04 35:42

Well, no, so in actual fact, one of the things I read was that this wasn't like a war of like independence. Like the miners, the miners weren't sort of thinking that they wanted to separate from like the UK or whatever. It was more like you say, it was more like a rebellion. Like a mini Boston Tea Party, right? Kind of. Very, very, very miniature. Yeah, okay. So um, but this wasn't a uh I guess a rebellion in the way that you may like in terms of like a coup or anything like that. It was more like you say, it was like things to do like workers' rights, it was lots to do with this mining license. Sort of like government overreach as well. Yeah. Um but one of the interesting things is that the miners were caught, the miners that were arrested that didn't die were charged with high treason. Um subsequent trials, they were all acquitted by jury. So there was a lot of public support for the miners, and there was also um, I guess, a lot of concern about the overreach of the authorities at that time.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Which again blows my mind. It's so reflective of what you just what you just said, right? So I mean simultaneously we've got indigenous rights trampled, right? Like there's massacres happening, human rights don't play a role, even though they're also subjects of the crown. Um but then Dave, you and I we did an episode on the Paris Commune, France, middle of Europe, 20 odd years later, and thousands of people just get slaughtered by the authorities, no trials, no questions asked, and they build a church on top, problems solve. Here we are on the other side of the world, in in the wilderness, really. Like we're talking effectively. You know, there would have been a few houses, it it's nothing like we think of Australia today. I don't know what the population was, a few thousand people, I would say, in Belarus.

SPEAKER_04 37:35

It wouldn't have been much.

SPEAKER_00 37:36

And and very temporary, because in Australia we do have those deserted mining towns that are now just a couple of ruins in the bush and they're left. But then still you have that sense of English judicial system and justice, and they actually bothered putting a jury together. And everywhere else they would have just been hung and that's it.

SPEAKER_04 37:56

Well, they were charged with high treason, which was uh It's a political thing, right? Yeah, sure. But like capital punishment would have followed had they been found guilty. Oh, okay, they would have been hanged, yeah. Yeah, they would have been hanged. Yeah, okay. An interesting thing that in 1855 was that the mining licenses were revoked and a more sort of equitable uh system was put in place. Also, one of the guys that was part of, I suppose, the rebellion was a guy called uh Peter Leyler, who was a miner from uh Ireland that had come over here. He eventually became, I think he became yeah, the speaker of the Victorian Assembly in later life. He also lost an arm as well. He had an arm amputated.

SPEAKER_00 38:42

We had an arm story in the Mexican episode, remember?

SPEAKER_02 38:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What happened to it?

SPEAKER_00 38:46

He lost it, founded, and rolled back to hospital with it?

SPEAKER_02 38:50

And that is a monument for the arm. It wasn't stitched back on, it didn't grow back. No, I don't think Peter still. He didn't want to leave it on the arm.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

Only only on Putcast.

SPEAKER_04 39:00

Um so this is 1850s. This was 1855 that the uh licenses were revoked, yeah. A more equitable system was put in place. One of the things is that people talk about, well, because of this rebellion, because of like the things to do with like workers' rights and stuff like that, was that although the miners lost like, I suppose, the battle in quotation marks, yeah. Um they won like the wider war. The moral victory was theirs because it brought in reforms um afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 39:33

Sets a precedent for the way that Australia grew up, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:36

Absolutely. Let's talk about myth building here. You're a history teacher, David. So this could have just been forgotten, never mentioned again, and it really would not even be a footnote in Australian history if there I think would have been bigger, more violent events following like the War of Independence in America, you know, revolutions overthrow, parliament houses burned down. None of this ever happened in Australia. Again, a very good thing. Um, do you think what that this then led to this becoming such an iconic moment in history that a flag is still flown on every building site these days that that dates back to that moment in history?

SPEAKER_01 40:12

Not to mention uh most school kids in Victoria would still probably visit Ballarat, Sovereign Hill. Sovereign Hill. Yeah. And if you learn about the intricacies of the Eure Eureka stockade.

SPEAKER_03 40:23

It's still part of the primary school curriculum. I think they touch on it briefly in maybe not in year nine anymore, but it it it's still embedded. Yeah, it's still embedded.

SPEAKER_04 40:32

But I also think that you know, like what you were saying is that because Australia back then was so small, and because it was probably so sort of like I don't know, like would parochial be the right word? That's a pretty good word for it. Yeah, like things which would seem pretty small take on like an outsized significance. Because in that society back then it was a big deal. It would have been, yeah. You know, you had basically a load of convicts, you had a load of prison officers that had come over, then you had all these free miners that had come over. Like you'd have had a lot of sort of, I guess, um, interesting individuals. But and it was just a small microcosm.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

David, you just told us it's still in the curriculum, students living in Victoria in the south of Australia still visit a an outdoor museum called Sovereign Hill, uh, in the town of Bellaret, which is where the Eureka stockade took place um all those years ago, which again shows us that it was a significant event by Australian standards. Sovereign Hill. It's traced back to that very moment that Australia became a nation because nation building is so important for Australia. And Federation in 1901 wasn't that, you know, um, that trigger moment, like in other countries where you now have a national holiday based on that. Australia didn't really have that. So is that why it was myth building, or does it deserve the place in history that it has?

SPEAKER_03 41:57

I think when there's the first significant act of political resistance, um those things are usually, irrespective of how big they are, you know, in a country, sometimes they can take on uh a significance. And again, we've had nothing since. Like you said, we were talking about how we are um fundamentally a very obedient country. Uh so this as yeah, a challenge of government power, like you were saying, James, government overreach, workers' rights. I think there's a confluence of things here. I remember as a primary school kid in the 1980s, almost this kind of martyrdom of these miners who suffered at the hands of the government. Um they who knows what they were actually like. They might have just been drunks who are caught unawares, sleeping in and um butchered by the government, but we don't know. But yes, I mean at Sovereign Hill, they have a s a light show spectacular and a reenactment of the stockade. It's one of the big events that you can go and um buy additional tickets to. So it still has the imagination of I don't know if we would say it's in the collective Australian imagination, but it's just it's definitely something that the majority of children who go to primary school um in Australia would be able to recognise and point out about Australian history.

SPEAKER_04 43:09

Trevor Burrus, but but it's also like a larger thing about like the stories that nations tell themselves, right? Yeah. You know. And it is like a almost like a finding like a f a finding story.

SPEAKER_03 43:21

Political consciousness, maybe something like that. Sure. Yeah. Australia's growing up at this stage.

SPEAKER_01 43:27

It's it's sort of an adolescent nation, I guess, is probably the way to describe it. And uh m mum and dad England is uh is being more frequently rebelled against.

SPEAKER_00 43:37

And it was uh it was multicultural already, as we've mentioned. So it was people from all over the world. Yeah, correct. And then it was rained back in uh fifty years, sixty years ago.

SPEAKER_04 43:46

But it's also it's also interesting, like in terms of like why this particular story they decided to amplify it. Because yes, it is awakening of like your political. Conscience or whatever. But you could also see how governments or historians may be asked to play it down a little bit more in some respects. Because you know, it does show I mean like kind of like if you like if you start a rebellion or whatever, then reforms can come in after. It's just because I mean I don't think that something like this could have been there was there was probably so many things like this that had happened, but they never made it into the history books. So why this particular?

SPEAKER_01 44:30

Yeah. Should I I don't know. I I I think it's about the sense of fairness, which is part of the the Australian psyche. So Ballarat might not have been at this time, but was soon to be the richest city in the world. Okay. Um so the distribution of wealth extremely unequal. Um and this is about people, I guess, getting a getting a fair go on getting their fair share, which is definitely part of uh the way Australians see themselves.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Yeah, the gold rush, the big equalizer, right? So getting away from that old hierarchical society in Europe and starting fresh here, and your title name didn't matter, but picking up gold from the streets basically on a creek uh could change your life for good, um, with all the bad stuff it came with. Now, here we are on Putschcast. Uh, this is a special episode you might remember, and uh, we're talking about Australia and moments of rebellion and even the coup that we've learned about today. First of all, it's the Rum Rebellion in 1808. Uh great name, interesting story, and the only documented coup in Australian history. James, you just told us about the Eureka stockade, which is still known in the Australian psyche and taught in schools, as you told us, Dave. The next one, Dave Sloan, I've never heard about, I have to be honest. Um, it has something to do with sheep or a lamb. And we've moved on almost 10 years, so we're in the 1860s now. What is your topic?

SPEAKER_01 45:46

Look, we are still in the gold rush. Uh, we're talking about the lambing flat riots. It doesn't actually have anything to do with a lamb or a sheep. That's just the uh the name that goes with this particular place. Uh, but this is really adjacent to what we just heard uh uh about the Eureka stockade. Um so just to set the scene a little bit, definitely gold rush times. Now, the gold rush in Australia uh I think kind of roughly kicked off in about 1850. And it started in a lot of different places at once. Uh, this concept of alluvial gold, which we just talked about, which is gold that's kind of close to the surface of the earth and relatively easy to access with a pick and a shovel or like with a pan at a creek, uh, you can find yourself a nugget and uh and go home a wealthier person. Um that concept in Australia uh created the gold rush. Um, masses of immigration um all at once. I think the geography of Australia's got something to play here as well. Um I think at the time that we were talking about the Rum Rebellion, basically the whole population of Australia is isolated to the uh to the east coast. Um there's a thing called the dividing range, uh, which is you know big lumpy mountains that are kind of hard to cross that was basically keeping the population coastal. And uh in the early 1800s, I think it was uh somewhere about 1817, uh people first crossed the dividing range and effectively opened up the whole of the inside of Australia. So not many people, huge expanse of land, and there's bits of gold lying around. Uh so if you can find one and pick it up, you know, you're you're a wealthy person. That's the dynamic um that is causing the gold rush and is causing this place to explode. So uh all of a sudden, um, there's this wealth dynamic, um, there's I guess a loss of control as well, because the government um or the um uh yeah, the the government that's in place really isn't big enough or broad enough to be able to keep all these things uh under control. So there's a lot of chaos going on around the place. Um a little bit about uh Australia at this point in time. Uh I think we I mentioned this just a moment ago. It's got this adolescence about it. So it's sort of growing out of its English parentage. Um and that kind of psychology um uh is really sort of starting to play out in the way that people are behaving. If you look at the immigration question, we've got tens of thousands of people coming into the country. They're coming from primarily Europe and America, but there's also heaps of Chinese people coming in. Now that's supported by the English government at this time. Running parallel, uh the opium wars have just concluded. Uh there are agreements and treaties between the English government and the Chinese. Um, Hong Kong's been handed over, Kowloon has been handed to the English as well. Um, and in compensation, uh, the English are basically supporting uh and encouraging distribution of Chinese people into British colonies. Um now that sounds great, but the people in Australia are like, hang on a second, why are you sending them all here? Um we want this wealth for ourselves, and that's creating a bit of resentment and um uh I guess part of the challenge. All these things are going on. This place called Lambing Flat is in the middle of New South Wales. There's nothing there except alluvial gold. Um Lambing Flat.

SPEAKER_00 49:03

Can you give us a modern day geographic anchor point?

SPEAKER_01 49:06

Yeah, so Lambing Flat is not a place. You won't find it on a map now. Um it was basically the name of a paddock where uh where this mining was going on.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

Very Australian, by the way. Historic event named after a paddock.

SPEAKER_01 49:20

Yeah, exactly. Named after a nice paddock. I'm sure it was a nice place. Um today there is a town called Young just there. Um so it's in kind of uh central southeast New South Wales. Um if you looked at a map and saw Australia's capital, which is Canberra, uh it's probably about 150 kilometers northwest of there. Okay. So it it's a it's middle of nowhere ish, right? Yeah, yeah. Um and it it's generally speaking, it's a nice place. Um uh I think a lot of farming and orcharding and all that sort of stuff still goes on there today. There is no gold mining going on there today. So in in fact, even though the gold rush uh very much existed and there were people out there digging up like crazy, um, there aren't significant amounts of gold. Uh so you know, it it turned out to be folly. One of the things that's going on here though, we've got tens of thousands of people who are out in Australia trying to find gold. There's a whole heap of Chinese people. Um, and there's a pretty interesting cultural dynamic that's going on where we've got Australians and Europeans that are pretty happy-go-lucky. They're disorganized, they're probably drunk most of the time, just going for broke, right? They're digging holes, they're impulsive, um, probably um uh impatient, I guess, in the way that they go about it. Then you've got Chinese miners who are organized, methodical, and really bring the industry, I guess, with them. Well, they work very hard. The Chinese. Uh yes. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:44

So they're like professional miners.

SPEAKER_01 50:46

Uh it i yes. Um there's uh there are Chinese immigrants who are basically paid miners. Okay. And there are Chinese immigrants who are mining of their own accord. The ones who are paid miners uh are working for relatively cheap wages and they're happy to do that because they're more frugal than their Australian or European counterparts, and that's another sort of source of resentment. Um, but uh being organized themselves to go about this mining, um, it's really effective. Um they don't give up easily. They work hard, they work long hours, and funnily enough, they're more successful than their Australian and European counterparts. And this makes people cranky, right? So and at the start of 1861, so this is in summer of 1861, things start to get a bit sort of disgruntled, I guess, um, because the Europeans are getting upset with the Chinese. The Chinese are more successful. Um and at the same time, in uh the New South Wales Parliament, uh they're attempting to pass an act to exclude Chinese immigrants from Australia, or at least sort of control Chinese immigration. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 51:52

Just for historical or global context, this is the year the American Civil War started, which was all about race and the discriminating against people based on their ethnic origin. So that might have influenced the way of thinking at least.

SPEAKER_04 52:07

Trevor Burrus, Jr. When they had the gold rush in California. They had all the Chinese go over there. They did. And they excluded they were excluded from the states as well, weren't they? I think there was a lot of issues around that.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

Yeah. And from what I understand, it it's that similar sort of dynamic, right? Um, where you know people kind of organized and working hard were resented because of their effectiveness. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So the New South Wales Parliament uh is sort of at the nexus of the uh the English encouraging Chinese migration into Australia and the Australian population kind of resenting the presence of uh Chinese gold miners because you know they're um they're taking our wealth. Um and they're attempting to pass this bill. Um what happens in the middle of 1861? Um, A, that bill fails. Um it does come back again later, but it fails at that point in time. Um and in this place called Lambing Flat, you've got about 3,000 sort of European and Australian miners, you've got about 2,000 Chinese miners. So there's a lot of people. Um similar to how you described Ballarat a little earlier, uh, there's not a lot of infrastructure here, right? People are living in tents, uh, they're like the the gold minings are um are fairly unsophisticated. They're just digging as deep as a human can with a shovel and then moving on to the next spot. So it's that sort of stuff going on. Um they get themselves organized uh and they choose to try and drive the Chinese off the gold fields, right? Um so there is a major riot that uh I guess is the culmination of a fair bit of angst that builds up over time, and 2,000 Chinese people get driven out. It's fairly non-bloody, right? No one dies at this point in time. Okay. It's brutal, um, and I guess probably fairly thuggish, but non-bloody. Um there is a there is a banner, there's a flag that still exists. It's uh kept in a museum, and I'll probably find an image for it so that we can stick it up on on YouTube, but it's uh it basically says roll up at the top and it says no Chinese in in huge letters. Um there are some sympathizers, so there's um uh there's a family who keep a farm not too far far away, and they kind of shelter and accommodate thousands of Chinese people for a number of days and uh and sort of protect them. Um there are journalists who uh are basically risking their lives to tell this story uh as it is and uh getting all sorts of backlash from uh from the uh the local organized miners. But this thing kind of boils on for a couple of days. The Chinese get pushed off the land, uh police do turn up, and where the real violence happens and where the one person who dies in this whole episode gets killed is when police engage with uh the Australian and European miners that actually instigated the whole thing. Eventually, there are a couple of hundred soldiers that are brought to the area and they stay there for a period of 12 months to calm everything down and get it back under control. So this event, you know, it's not massive, um, but in the scheme of things, it's pretty significant because it really is about uh it really is about racism and it's about uh immigration and you know racial acceptance in uh in this new country of Australia. Um what does happen is the New South Wales government does pass legislation, um, and there's a thing called, let me just check my notes, uh the Chinese Immigrants Regulation and Restriction Act, which is a precursor really uh to the White Australia policy, which takes effect in 1901. Okay. Um so this as a as a little example basically uh sets the scene for institutionalization um of anti-immigration in Australia. So it's a significant, a really important event. And if you think about the effect of the White Australia policy, which more or less precluded or attempted to preclude anyone that wasn't from Europe uh from immigrating to Australia from 1901 until you know, like the mid-1950s, um, this is uh having a substantial effect on the way that Australia grew up and the way that we um uh you know the way that we've developed. So pretty interesting little story.

SPEAKER_00 56:15

Aaron Powell So the Lambing Flat Riots. That's and it's about ethnic cleansing, isn't it? That really is a form of ethnic cleansing.

SPEAKER_01 56:24

It is, it is. I mean, it's not uh that that term for me has sort of connotations of genocide and it's not that's what happened to indigenous people. But it's uh it's a complete um lack of acceptance, right?

SPEAKER_00 56:36

We don't we don't want you here, is the statement that's after inviting them to do all the dirty work and then when they're actually successful. Yeah, exactly. Um But I mean, you at the time, Europeans weren't didn't all see eye to eye either. Like even when you look at the Irish and the English, and back then the division was usually on religion, right? So Catholic versus Protestant was a huge um dividing line in in in the colony at the time. Um did they unite against the common enemy that were the Chinese?

SPEAKER_01 57:06

Yeah, that's that's the way I take it, yeah, absolutely. So the you know, the the 3,000 Australian and Europeans uh that were there that um uh that basically drove the the Chinese out um got organized around this cause. Do you know what happened to the Chinese after? Uh they dispersed. They didn't necessarily go back to China, right? No. Um so um they probably moved on to other gold fields or went uh went elsewhere in the country. Uh absolutely uh there were a lot of Chinese in many, many places around Australia at this time, um uh all doing the same thing basically. It was alluvial gold mining. They were really good at it. Um and uh they were heavily engaged.

SPEAKER_00 57:48

So the other population that many people don't know about is the Afghanis as well that were here in the in the 19th century as part of trekking, and hence all the camels in Australia that were brought in because of their resilience and their you know, they'd the the barren land that is the outback uh you know, there's some resemblance to Afghanistan and uh very arid landscapes, and they also were either forced to assimilate or depart again later on.

SPEAKER_04 58:12

Um that was the first, like because I was reading about that the other day. That was one of the first terrorist attacks in Australia, wasn't it? And the Afghanis, those two Afghani camel herders or whatever they were, attacked. That's like one of the first recorded attacks from uh Afghanis.

SPEAKER_01 58:28

Uh of this particular story. It's uh you know, it's the it's the gold rush and this um uh little uh little um racist incident that really set the scene for the way that Australia thinks about immigration and that um that sort of thinking stayed in place for a hundred years to come.

SPEAKER_00 58:44

Yeah, and interesting again, uh James, your event was uh never forgotten, it's still celebrated. Those two that you talked about pretty much forgotten, and it takes uh fantastic podcasts like Putschcast to bring it back to life and to discuss. I think that's that's um it's a statement on its own that we are we're very selective with our collective memory when it comes to Australian history. Yeah. Um and this is again a very strong 19th century focus. Uh you might be surprised, but there were events in the 20th century as well that are relevant to Putschcast, um, where some lawyers would still have a picnic today to figure out what actually happened, was it legal, was it not legal? And there's one very prominent one, David, that we you are very passionate about. And maybe a future episode we'll deal with just that. Tell us.

SPEAKER_03 59:30

I'd love to. So the 11th of November 1975 is a date that a number of Australians um will know, and it's also probably one of the most politically charged in our nation's history as well. Um, I uh sometimes drink at a pub in Broadmeadows near my school, which um has a founding stone laid in it. And funnily enough, the name of the person who opened that pub was the Honorable Goff Whitlam, and he did it on the 10th of November. So his last official act as the Prime Minister of Australia was opening the Broadmeadows Sporting Club. And so we often have a beer there and um, you know, consider how I suppose disappointing that might have been for him as like the the final the final act of his premiership. But yes, there's a lot, and especially now that cabinet papers and other information and FOI requests um have been put in and things have been released. There's more information that suggests there was collusion, um, not just between um Malcolm Fraser and the Governor General, other forces as well. So it's a lot to look into.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:35

Yeah, Defense of the Nation is again, we've learned about Governor Bly, you know, that long ago, 200 years ago, um, who was representing the monarchy here in Australia, and we still have that in place today. So the political system has not changed that much. We still have governors, but the power they hold is very different to the Bly days.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:57

Yeah, that's right. Um, I suppose the Governor General, the Governor General is it a it's a titular role, um uh ceremonial almost. But uh again, if you read the fine print, they do have we are a constitutional monarchy and they are the king's or queen's representatives, so they do wield, they can wield significant power.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:16

As they did in 75, which is the whole controversy, right? That's it. Little teaser took Goth Whitlam 1975. Uh hopefully this year, David? You're making commitment? We're gonna talk about it?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:26

Let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:27

All right. So that's 2026, just for the record, not 27. That's a commitment, David, this year, not for the big anniversary in 35.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:36

Correct. We probably should have gone last year, but oh well, that's fine.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:39

And um, again, you've seen a wonderful Pudgecast shirt today. Um, David, great hat, by the way. Wearing that. Excellent. Um, and to find out more about our podcast, uh, visit pushcast.com. If you've got any feedback suggestions to putcast at gmail.com, send us an email. Please follow us to tell your friends uh about us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcasts. Um thanks and keep putting.