June 7, 2023
Day 28: Rest day in Ballarat
Armed with a MYKI we were ready for a day out in Ballarat. We were camped right next to the Eureka Stockade so that seemed like a good place to start. I don't know a great deal about Australian history but I'm learning. The Eureka stockade was a protest by gold miners in Ballarat against unfair licence fees. The stockade was stormed by troops and police with a lot of deaths on the side of the miners. That's the basics and I suppose much of the rest of it is surrounded by myth and romance developed over the years a bit like Gallipoli and Ned Kelly. Read in to it what you will. The museum is good and tells the story well, the centre piece is what's left of the original Eureka flag. This flag has come to mean lots of things to lots of different groups. The interesting thing for me was how a protest that became extremely violent (whose fault this was is debatable) is now seen as an act of heroism lauded by politicians. There is a large picture of Gough Whitlam holding the Eureka flag. The miners are hailed as heroes and the cornerstone of Australian democracy. In contrast, because Extinction Rebellion peacefully disrupted traffic in Adelaide a labor government has brought in Draconian laws that can jail people for peacefully protesting. I don't even want to get started on Ned Kelly. Enough of the politics but for an old socialist like me this is hard to take.
The rain was now torrential but we felt obliged to use the MYKI's that we bought so we just went into town and wandered about again. It was actually good to be doing something a bit aimless at last.
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