150 years ago today, the Macrossan Queensland dynasty was established in Charters Towers. On 25 November 1873, John Murtagh Macrossan was first elected as the Member for Kennedy. He was to continue as the Member for Kennedy until 1878, and then as Member for Townsville from 1879 to 1891.

John Murtagh Macrossan was born in Creeslough, County Donegal in Ireland in about 1832. At 16 years of age, he was sent to study in Glasgow, but the adventurous Macrossan found himself on the Victorian goldfields by the time he was 21.

After pursuing a mining career in Victoria, NSW and New Zealand, Macrossan took on the role of second in charge of John Mackay’s 1860 expedition that explored the area north of Rockhampton to where the city of Mackay now stands.

By the age of 33 Macrossan had moved to the goldfields of north Queensland and by 1871 had become a leading figure and spokesperson for miners’ rights. A fiery personality with a fierce loyalty to his fellow miners, Macrossan organised the Ravenswood Miners’ Protection Association, which petitioned the Minister for the removal of Goldfield Commissioner T.R. Hackett. In the same year, Macrossan himself was fined for publicly horsewhipping Hackett for alleged defamatory comments. Macrossan’s popularity increased because of this incident.

In 1872, Macrossan divided his time between Ravenswood and the new goldfield of Charters Towers.  In June 1872 he chaired a meeting called to form a Miner’s Protection Association at Charters Towers. Macrossan’s political base in Charters Towers was the large Irish population of Millchester township, many of whom had moved over from Ravenswood.

At a public meeting in February 1873, John Murtagh Macrossan encouraged Charters Towers miners to register on the Electoral Roll. The recently enacted Electoral Redistribution Act of 1872 would then entitle them to return a representative to the Queensland Legislative Assembly.  Macrossan did not suggest at any point that he would be a candidate, but the thrust of his discourse was that a local representative would give the diggers the representation they deserved, and that theirs would be the dominant voice in the North Kennedy. 

On 19 July 1873, Macrossan gave the Millchester township its newspaper, when he published the first issue of The Northern Advocate and Miners’ Journal.  Possession of a newspaper in his electorate gave to Macrossan an invaluable platform, and to the predominantly Irish township a vehicle to express its rivalry with Upper Camp township. 

For the next few years Thadeus O’Kane, editor of the Northern Miner and John Murtagh Macrossan, through their journals, were to fight the battle of their rival townships to a finish. In the process they made the uninhibited journalism of the Charters Towers goldfield a byword throughout the Australian colonies.

Some mystery surrounds the source of John Murtagh Macrossan’s income, but he must have had some substance to remain an unpaid member of parliament for twelve years. He certainly controlled the Northern Advocate and Miners’ Journal for some time and was rumoured to have other newspaper interests in the north. He also appears to have invested in lead mining and was involved in railway construction contracts in New South Wales and perhaps in Queensland.

Macrossan was an unshakeable representative of miners and north Queensland. In debates in the Queensland Parliament, he advanced the causes of north Queensland. He argued for a continuing cheap supply of South Pacific Islander labour for sugar planters, as long as their work was confined to the plantations, and for a tax to be removed from mining machinery. In 1886, he made an impassioned speech in favour of north Queensland’s separation from the rest of Queensland, because he did not believe the north was receiving its due in government expenditure.

Macrossan was physically small and slight, pale-complexioned and almost delicate in appearance. His deep-set eyes and heavy beard, jet black in his earlier years, attracted attention and hinted at a depth of feeling and a strength of expression to which his contemporaries all attest.

Solitary by nature, he was known to miners as ‘Jack the Hatter’ and he seems not to have made friends easily. This difficulty must have been enhanced by his intense vigour in party politics, the bitterness and passion of the speeches in and outside the House, the strength of his insistence on his Catholic religion and a clear determination not to conciliate or to suffer fools gladly.

Macrossan was seen as a champion of the worker and his support for north Queensland separation and for the mining and sugar can industries never wavered. However, Macrossan lost the seat of Kennedy at the 1878 general election, but won the seat of Townsville at a by-election on 4 March 1879 when a loyal supporter resigned in his favour.

Prior to his re-election, John Murtagh Macrossan was appointed Secretary for Public Works and Mines in January 1879. He resigned from the portfolio in 1883 because of the possibility of a conflict of interest over a railway construction project in NSW, but regained it in 1888. In 1890 he was for a short time Colonial Secretary and Secretary for Mines.

John Murtagh Macrossan possessed a magnetic personality. Though he was of frail physique he was full of energy, and his speeches exercised a remarkable power over his hearers. His language, like his mind, was simple and direct.

In February 1890, John Murtagh Macrossan and Sir Samuel Griffith attended the conference on Federation called by Sir Henry Parkes in Melbourne. Although the government resigned in August 1890, Macrossan was chosen to accompany his long-time parliamentary adversary Griffith to the Australasian National Convention at Sydney in 1891.

Macrossan’s health deteriorated seriously, but he was able to contribute two substantial speeches to the 1891 convention. He pursued the separation issue when he argued that some of the colonies were too large for good government.

“I believe also that power should be given to the Federal Parliament … to cut up, if thought necessary, the different existing colonies into smaller states … Some of the existing colonies, such as Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia, are far too large for good government.”

The effort proved too much. Macrossan had been suffering from heart disease for some years but he had an attack of bronchitis in Sydney and died during the convention on 30 March 1891. He was buried in Nudgee Cemetery, Brisbane.

John Murtagh Macrossan was survived by his wife Bridget, née Queely, whom he had married at St Joseph’s Church, Townsville, on 1 October 1874, and by a daughter and five of their seven sons. Two of his sons, Hugh Denis Macrossan (who also represented the Windsor electorate) and Neal Macrossan, along with his grandson, John Murtagh Macrossan, became Chief Justices of Queensland, while other descendants have been prominent in the law. For a person who often expressed contempt for persons who lived on the law, John Murtagh Macrossan spawned an amazing legal legacy.

On 7 August 1925, the Macrossan family donated £2000 to The University of Queensland, under a deed of trust, to fund an annual lecture on subjects of public interest. It was the first lectureship of its kind established in Queensland. In March 1928, the first John Murtagh Macrossan Memorial Lecturers were announced by the UQ Senate. From 1928 to 1993, Macrossan Lectures were given almost every year by distinguished Australians on a broad range of topics of public interest.

In 2023, a new annual Macrossan public lecture series was established by The TC Beirne School of Law and the UQ Law Association to be delivered in the Banco Court of the Supreme Court of Queensland to celebrate the commencement of each academic year.

Today is the first time Queenslanders have had a public holiday to celebrate the birthday of King Charles III and yet there has been no victory lap yet of the Commonwealth. There appears to be a growing distance between the British monarch and the people of Australia.

Queenslanders took the day off work today; not in recognition of their hard work, but to recognise the British Monarch who will most likely be sleeping through the public holiday.

The first King’s Birthday public holiday in Queensland, which now commemorates King Charles III’s birthday on 19 November, is another demonstration of our denial of choice. Since his birth, Prince Charles has known he would take over the top job. Then one morning last year, Australians simply woke up to hear news from Britain that has changed our country for decades to come. Australians did not choose King Charles III as our Head of State. It is a disgraceful fact that without constitutional change, the citizens of Australia will never be consulted on our head of state.

Australian love their public holidays, even if the reason for the occasion is a little vague. For goodness sake we even have a public holiday in Melbourne for a horse race and in Brisbane for an agricultural show. Nevertheless, the purpose of the King’s Birthday public holiday is the vaguest of them all. The King’s Birthday public holiday doesn’t remind us of anything good about our country. At worst, it tells us Australia’s head of state gets the job by inheritance. The lack of any public activity around the King’s Birthday public holiday shows how the concept of monarchy is out-of-step with contemporary Australia. 

It’s time for an Australian to be our Head of State to be not only one of us but also willing to turn up.

In fact, since King Charles III became Australian Head of State he is yet to grace any of the Commonwealth nations which still call him their King with his presence.

National Director and CEO Isaac Jeffrey said:

“King Charles III is King of Australia by birthright and he has held that lofty position for over a year now, yet our King hasn’t made the trip to visit us. In fact, he hasn’t been to any of the Commonwealth nations which still call him their King and Head of State. He’s visited Germany, Romania and, within the last few days, he sipped champagne in France, but he hasn’t found time for us.

Prior to becoming our King, then Prince Charles, only visited Australia 16 times. He’s fast approaching his 75th birthday. He’s had decades to travel down under to get an idea of who we are as a people and to truly understand who we are a nation. He’s only managed around one visit every five years. Some of these were extended visits, such as his days at Geelong Grammar on exchange as a schoolboy, while others like the last visit in 2018 were for only a few days – yet we still call him King of Australia.”

It beggars the question, does the monarchy take us for granted?

It’s time for an Australian to be our Head of State and do the job full-time, rather than working from home at Windsor Castle where they can’t even be bothered Zooming into the office at least once a week.

We are a unique multicultural country and we need someone who understands how to embody us, to be the guardian of our Constitution, to be a unifying symbol at home and someone we are proud to see representing us abroad. They should be elected on merit, not gifted the position by birthright. They should have the skills and work experience to do the job. The person should be one of us, responsible and accountable to us, and unwaveringly loyal to us and only us.

And, they should be willing to turn up.

In Britain, the King’s Birthday is celebrated on the first Saturday in June. In New Zealand, it’s the first Monday in June and in Canada, it’s in the middle of May. The Canadian celebration is called “Victoria Day” because it was created to honour Queen Victoria. However, over the years the Canadian holiday has changed to include the reigning sovereign’s birthday as well.

The idea of two birthday celebrations was introduced 250 years ago. Earl Charles Spencer, brother of the late Princess Diana, stated former Queen Elizabeth II received a second multiday celebration now, thanks to historical tradition.

As Spencer said, George II was

“…born in the depths of winter and they decided they couldn’t celebrate his birthday in the winter every year because there’s all sorts of pageantry.”

So, George decided he’d have a second birthday and the idea stuck.

“Anyone who’s been King or Queen of England since has a summer birthday, so that we have a hope of some sunshine.”

Since 1748, the British monarch’s official birthday has been marked by the parade known as Trooping the Colour — usually held on the king or queen’s actual birthday. But Edward VII, who reigned from 1901 to 1910, was born in November. Yet he celebrated his birthday officially in May or June because there was less chance of it being cold and drizzly during the outdoor event.

The British monarch’s official birthday celebrations (as opposed to the actual birth date) began in Australia in 1912. The monarch after Edward VII – King George V – helpfully had a birthday on 3 June. Queen Elizabeth II’s father, George VI, whose birthday was unhelpfully in December, reintroduced the tradition of an official birthday by having his official birthday on the second Thursday of June. Elizabeth II continued with this tradition. However, in 1959, after several years on the throne, she changed it to the second Saturday in June for convenience.

And yet it has always seemed absurd that Australians acknowledged the birthday of former Queen Elizabeth II at a completely different time to her actual birthday, and at different times in different states. Around Australia in 2023, the King’s Birthday public holiday continues the tradition set by the Windsor line holding the official birthday in Australia on the second Monday in June — except in WA on Monday 25 September and in Queensland on Monday 2 October.

We have our own identity as Australians. The Royals represent Britain, but cannot represent us or unite us as Australians. Australians believe in freedom and equal opportunity, not that some are born to rule over others.

We come from all walks of life, from all corners of the globe and this ancient land. Our shared commitment to our common future is what binds us together. Standing against this is the elevation of Charles III.

We can have respect and affection for Britain and its celebrity royals but still question why we do not have our own Head of State. The royals are welcome to visit as representatives of Britain, but I look forward to when the British people and their royal family will welcome a visit by the first Australian head of state.

In the words of Sammy J,

So to our King, we say g’day, and we praise his DNA, his ever loyal subjects across the sea.

We might have golden soil and a bit of wealth for toil, but us Aussies are still girt by monarchy.

14th September 2023 is the 2000^th anniversary of the death of Drusus the Younger. His death on 14 September 23 CE left the Emperor Tiberius without a direct heir following the mysterious death of his adoptive brother and cousin Germanicus in Antioch in 19 CE at the age of 34. This was ancient Rome’s ‘JFK’ moment and shook the very foundations of the Roman state.

Drusus Julius Caesar was born on 7 October 14BCE to Tiberius and his first wife, Vipsania Agrippina. Just as Agrippa’s sons were, Drusus was about the same age as Germanicus, and both of them also followed parallel careers. Drusus and Germanicus held all their offices at the same age, and progressed through the cursus honorum at the same pace.

With the death of Germanicus, for which his wife Agrippina the Elder suspected murder instigated by the Emperor Tiberius himself, the Emperors son, Drusus the Younger became the next heir in the line of succession. Four years later, the death of Tiberius’ son was to have considerable implications for the Roman Imperial family, especially the children of Germanicus.

Drusus died suddenly on 14 September 23 CE. Ancient historians, such as Tacitus and Suetonius, claim that he died amid a feud with the powerful Sejanus, Praetorian prefect of Rome. They alleged that Drusus was murdered. In their account, Sejanus had seduced his wife Livilla, and with the help of a doctor she had poisoned Drusus. Despite the rumours, Tiberius did not suspect Sejanus and the two remained friends until Sejanus’s fall from grace in 31 CE.

The most dangerous place in the ancient Roman world during the first century CE was within the embrace of the Roman Imperial family.

VALE – Drusus Julius Caesar

New Year’s Day, 1 January 2023 marks the 250^th anniversary since Reverend John Newton, a former slave trader, delivered his ‘Amazing Grace’ sermon.

Today, Amazing Grace is one of the most recognisable songs in the English-speaking world.

Amazing Grace was composed in the weeks leading up to John Newton’s New Year’s Day 1773 service at St Peter and St Paul Church, Olney in Buckinghamshire to accompany his New Testament teaching on 1 Chronicles 17:16-17 where King David said:

“Who am I, O Lord, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?”

The lyrics for Amazing Grace are an ideal subject for New Year’s Day reflection. The first verse, for example, can be traced to the New Testament story of the Prodigal Son. In the Gospel of Luke the father says:

“For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost, and is found”.

The story of Jesus healing a blind man who tells the Pharisees that he can now see is told in the Gospel of John. It is here that John Newton used the words: “I was blind but now I see”.

It is also in the 2014 film Freedom where the story is told of John Newton’s composition of the Amazing Grace hymn.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-story-of-amazing-grace/

In the United States, Amazing Grace became a popular song used by Baptist and Methodist preachers, especially in the American South, during the early 19th century. However, in the rest of the world, including the United Kingdom, it was largely forgotten until the mid-twentieth century.

With the folk music revival of the 1960s the trans-Atlantic traffic of musicians saw the rise of performances of Amazing Grace in Church congregations and folk festivals in Britain. The influence of Amazing Grace can be seen in it making an appearance at the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival.

From the 1960s Amazing Grace also became a favourite with supporters of freedom and human rights. During the US civil rights movement of the 1960s and opposition to the Vietnam War, Amazing Grace took on a distinctly political tone.

Amazing Grace encourages looking back at life and considering who you are now, as well as looking forward to what the future might hold.

Through many dangers, toils and snares,

I have already come

It is also about journeying back to home.

In 1970, Amazing Grace went mainstream when Judy Collins released her iconic rendition.

In 1985, Joan Baez opened the US portion of Live Aid with Amazing Grace.

On 26 June 2015, President Obama delivered the eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, one of nine black parishioners murdered by a white supremacist in a shooting at Charleston’s Mother Emmanuel Ame Church, where he called on the “reservoir of goodness”, and reflected that if we can find that that grace, anything is possible.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Judy Collins re-released Amazing Grace with the assistance of the Global Virtual Choir comprising 1000 singers from around the world.

Amazing Grace is frequently performed on bagpipes and has become associated with this instrument ever since it became popular in a 1972 recording by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards that became a Number 1 radio hit. At the recent Berlin Tattoo over 200 bagpipes played Amazing Grace.

There has been long-standing association of Amazing Grace with the House of the Rising Sun popularised initially by the Blind Boys of Alabama.

We could all do with a little more grace in our lives.

Today is the 80th anniversary of the USAAF B-24 Liberator, #41-23825, commonly known as Texas Terror, of the 400th Bomb Squadron of the 90th Bombardment Group, crashing into the southern side of Mount Straloch on Hinchinbrook Island shortly after its departure from Garbutt Field in Townsville. The accident was to be blamed on a violent storm and navigational errors.

On 18th December 1942 the factory-new Texas Terror B-24 Liberator was being flown from Amberley to Iron Range in north Queensland by 1st Lieutenant James Gumaer for delivery to the 90th Bombardment Group. A total of 12 persons were killed in this tragic crash. 1st Lt. Gumaer and his 4 crewmen had picked up at least 7 passengers at Garbutt airfield in Townsville on their way to Iron Range.

This was the fourth B-24 (and crew) that the 90th Bombardment Group had lost in almost as many days.

18th December 1942 was to be the last day of their war for the crew of the Texas Terror, a B-24 Liberator belonging to the United States Army Corps 90th Bombardment Group. The day dawned hot and overcast. The tropical low that had halted air operations all along the coast for nearly a week was beginning to lift. Although flying conditions in some places and at some times would be marginal at best, the war would not wait.

From soon after first light, Garbutt Air Base, Townsville began to accept and despatch aircraft that had spent a week weather bound along the coast, from Brisbane, 800 miles to the south of Townsville, to Iron Range, 500 miles further north.

Conceived in the panic days between the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway when it appeared that the advancing Japanese would overrun New Guinea, the airstrip at Iron Range was a dusty red scar gouged in the rain forest on the eastern coast of Cape York, a temporary pierced-steel-planking strip from which the 90th Bombardment Group entered the war in mid-November 1942. For the 90th, Iron Range was a harsh initiation to the rigors of a tropical campaign.

Most of the 90th’s aircraft had been grounded by the weather between 14 and 18 December, 1942. On the 15th December, 1942 a B-24 left Iron Range for Garbutt to collect a load of bomb fuses and flares. One of the crew, Staff Sergeant F.A. Matthews noted laconically in his diary:

“Ran into bad weather on the way down. Mighty rough. We were grounded here until 18 December”.

About 10.30am on the morning of 18 December 1942, Matthews flew out of Garbutt to return to Iron Range. He makes no mention of the weather in his account of the return flight; presumably it was clear on their track and at their time of flight along the Queensland coast between Garbutt and Iron Range. An hour after they arrived they were away on a mission over New Guinea during which the weather claimed a 400 Squadron aircraft. Several others on the strike were forced back by a ferocious snowstorm over the Owen Stanley Ranges.

Some northbound aircraft that day passed Garbutt without landing. Captain Everett Woods and his crew had spent a month hanging about in Brisbane waiting for an aircraft. On 18th December 1942, they finally boarded their brand new B-24 and took off from Amberley outside Brisbane for Iron Range. It was very nearly their last flight. As Captain Woods reported:

“… passing Townsville, we encountered bad weather, so I dropped down to sea level in an attempt to fly along the coast, but the visibility was zero, and there were so many mountains to the left of us, I proceeded to head out to sea. At 3000 feet I levelled off, not wishing to get too far from shore, and took up my old heading. Twenty minutes passed (blind) when my navigator screamed into the interphone that we had just missed a mountain on our right. This meant that for 20 minutes I had been flying over land that was covered with 4000-foot hills, while I was at 3000 feet. I immediately hit the throttles, increased the RPM and climbed out of danger, expecting at each moment to crash into an unseen mountain”.

1st Lieutenant James Gumaer also took off from Amberley on the morning of 18th December 1942, ferrying another new B-24 to Iron Range. Gumaer was the operations officer of 400 Squadron. After bringing a B-24 across the Pacific in early November 1942, he had taken part in several operations out of Iron Range. His crew on that December 1942 morning were Second Lieutenant Dewey Hooper (co-pilot), Second Lieutenant David Lowe (navigator), Technical Sergeant Waldo Kellner (engineer) and Staff Sergeant Walter Haydt (radio operator).

The aircraft that Gumaer was delivering was B-24 41-23825, built by Consolidated at its San Diego plant, the first of a run of 25 B-24 D-7’s. The Army Air Corps had taken delivery of her on 20th August 1942, at a cost to the US taxpayer of $287,276. On 3 November 1942, Gumaer and his B-24 left Hickham Field for the long flight across the Pacific Ocean. While the B-24 was at Amberley she had been modified by strengthening the nose strut. In the fashion of the day she bore a nickname, Texas Terror.

During the flight north along the east coast of Australia, Gumaer was diverted into Garbutt. The purpose of the diversion can only be guessed but while the crew were on the ground they collected a group of passengers for Iron Range, transients drawn from various arms and services scattered along the route to New Guinea.

The most senior of the passengers was Colonel Carroll Riggs, a West Pointer commanding the 197th Coastal Artillery. He had held the appointment since 26 June 1942 when the regiment had been deployed to protect Perth from Japanese aircraft. The regiment was now fulfilling the same function in Townsville but two batteries had been deployed to Iron Range. Colonel Riggs was paying his first visit to these detachments.

Accompanying Colonel Riggs was Lieutenant Raymond Dakin, also of the 197th, carrying money for the gunners who had not been paid since August 1942.

Captains Peter Kiple and Carl Silber were both members of the 8th Fighter Group stationed at New Guinea.

Lieutenant John Cooper was on attachment to the 19th Bomb Squadron, 22nd Bombardment Group.

The last member of the services to board the aircraft was Technician 4th Grade Michael Goldstrop of the 1156th Quarter Master Company.

One civilian completed the passenger list. He was Robert Trevithick, a representative of the Pratt & Whitney Division of the United Aircraft Corporation whose motors powered the B-24.

At a quarter past eight on the morning of 18th December 1942 the Texas Terror lifted off from Garbutt, disappeared into the overcast sky and passed from the knowledge of all people.

Searches were started immediately but no trace of the big bomber was found. Two clues came from civilian sources. About nine o’clock that morning while Ingham, 70 miles to the north of Townsville, was being lashed by a heavy storm, the residents heard an aircraft circling overhead. At roughly the same time the inhabitants of the small coastal settlements near Ingham reported having seen a flash high on the face of Mount Stralock on Hinchinbrook Island, just off the coast.

For several nights from then on there were reports of a flashing light on the shoulder of Mount Stralock. Workers in a nearby sugar mill claimed that in certain conditions they could see reflections from metal on Mount Stralock. The American and Australian authorities discounted these sightings. They considered the missing Texas Terror aircraft would have been much further north by 9am on the day she went missing.

The search was abandoned a month later. Hinchinbrook Island is extremely rugged, covered with dense tropical rainforest and uninhabited. The discovery of the missing aircraft might, except for the remotest of chances, have been delayed indefinitely.

It wasn`t until late in 1943 that Aborigines reported to authorities that they had discovered burnt US currency whilst scratching for tin in the creeks at the southern base of Mount Straloch on Hinchinbrook Island.

A search party found the plane on 7th January 1944 and the remains of the crew were removed and interred in the US Armed Forces Cemetery at Ipswich before they were disinterred and interred as a group at Fort McPherson National Cemetery, Nebraska.

Amongst the debris was also found a red stiletto heal shoe. Its presence is yet to be explained as there were no women listed in the crew.

The Texas Terror Memorial in Ingham was unveiled in 1999 and commemorates the American airmen who were killed in the crash of the B-24 Liberator Bomber in 1942.

On 18th December 2002, the 60th anniversary of the crash, a memorial commemorating the victims of the Texas Terror was unveiled at Borello Park, Lucinda.

A cross has also been erected at Mount Straloch on Hinchinbrook Island.

It is as well to remember, in the grand sweep of historical events, that the fighting and dying in the Second World War was done by individuals. Many of them died far from home and found their graves in unlikely places.

Today, 3 December 2022 marks the 168^th anniversary of the Eureka Stockade Rebellion.

On 30 November 1854 miners from the Victorian town of Ballarat, disgruntled with the way the colonial government had been administering the goldfields, swore allegiance to the Southern Cross flag at Bakery Hill and built a stockade at the nearby Eureka diggings. Early on the morning of Sunday 3 December 1854, when the stockade was only lightly guarded, government troops attacked. At least 22 diggers and six soldiers were killed. The rebellion of miners at Eureka Stockade is a key event in the development of Australia’s representational structures and attitudes towards democracy and egalitarianism.

In the early 1850s gold was discovered in Victoria. Thousands of people moved to the state to search for treasure. The state soon made laws that the gold diggers felt were unfair to them. For instance, all diggers had to buy a mining license to dig for gold. Diggers often fought with the police when the police checked these licenses and collected fees. The diggers were also upset about not being able to vote.

Starting in 1853, miners began to gather in ‘monster’ meetings to voice their complaints. Delegations presented their concerns to Governor La Trobe, but he was unreceptive to the requests. Many of the diggers were politically engaged – some had participated in the Chartist movement for political reform in Britain during the 1830s and 1840s while others had been involved in the anti-authoritarian revolutions that spread across Europe in 1848. The situation on the goldfields was tense as police regularly ran ‘licence hunts’ to track down diggers who hadn’t paid their fees. The miners claimed the police were extorting money, accepting bribes and imprisoning people without due process.

When Charles Hotham became the new lieutenant governor of Victoria, he made the police check mining licenses twice a week instead of once a month. Conflicts between the police and the diggers became more frequent. On 6 October 1854 the Scottish miner James Scobie was killed in an altercation at the Eureka Hotel in Ballarat. The proprietor, JF Bentley, was accused of the killing. A court of inquiry was held and Bentley was quickly exonerated. The diggers sensed a miscarriage of justice; not a difficult conclusion since one of the court members, John D’Ewes, was a police magistrate well known to have taken bribes from Bentley. On the 17 October 1854 about 5,000 men and women gathered to discuss the case. They decided to appeal the decision, but after the dispersal of the crowd, a small group decided to set fire to the Eureka Hotel. Having done so, they were arrested by police.

Over the next weeks the miners met and elected delegates who, on 27 November 1854, approached the new Victorian Governor, Charles Hotham. They demanded the release of the men who burned down Bentley’s hotel but the governor took offence to having demands made of him and dismissed their grievances. He then despatched 150 British soldiers of the 40th Regiment of Foot to Ballarat to reinforce the police and soldiers already stationed there. Sensing a change in atmosphere, the diggers held another mass meeting on 29 November 1854 at Bakery Hill. It was here the newly created Eureka flag was unfurled.

The police were unsettled by the hostility building among the diggers and decided to implement a licence hunt the next day. That morning, as the police moved through the miners’ tents, the diggers decided they had had enough, they gathered and marched to Bakery Hill. At this meeting the charismatic Irishman Peter Lalor became the leader of the protest. Lalor led the miners to the Eureka diggings, where the men and women joined him in an oath:

‘We swear by the Southern Cross, to stand truly by each other, and fight to defend our rights and liberties’.

Then the company gathered timber from the nearby mineshafts and created a stockade.

Over the next two days, the men and women remained in and around the stockade, many performing military drills in preparation for possible conflict. This was too much for the Commissioner of the Ballarat goldfields, Robert Rede. He called for the police and army to destroy the stockade at first light on Sunday 3 December 1854.

That morning almost 300 mounted and foot troopers, and police attacked the stockade. The assault was over in 15 minutes, with at least 22 diggers (including one woman) and six soldiers losing their lives.

The police arrested and detained 113 of the miners. Eventually 13 were taken to Melbourne to stand trial. Governor Hotham called for a Goldfields Commission of Enquiry on 7 December 1854, but the citizens of Victoria were opposed to what the government had done in Ballarat and one by one the 13 leaders of the rebellion were tried by jury and released. The Eureka Stockade rising accelerated the enactment of reforms, which followed in 1855.

The battle at the Eureka Stockade near Ballarat in 1854 changed Australia forever. It has come to represent popular struggle and has been called the birthplace of Australian democracy. The Eureka Stockade became a legend, not only because it was the birth of Australian Democracy, but because of the courage, and determination of the diggers and their willingness to defend their rights.

In 1888, the Bulletin launched a campaign to change the date of Australia Day from 26th January (the day Convicts were landed) to 3rd December, the date of the rebellion. In its own words,

“Australia began her political history as a crouching serf kept in subjection by the whip of a ruffian gaoler, and her progress, so far, consists merely in a change of masters. Instead of a foreign slave-driver, she has a foreign admiral; the loud-mouthed tyrant has given place to the suave hireling in uniform; but when the day comes to claim their independence the new ruler will probably prove more dangerous and more formidable that the old.’ Rather than ‘the day we were lagged’, Australia’s national day should be December 3, the anniversary of the Eureka rebellion, ‘the day that Australia set her teeth in the face of the British Lion”.

11 November 2022 was the centenary of the birth of one of my favourite authors, Kurt Vonnegut, in Indianapolis, Indiana, who wrote wryly satirical novels that frequently used postmodern techniques as well as elements of fantasy and science fiction to highlight the horrors and ironies.

My favourite Vonnegut novel is his 1969 Slaughterhouse-Five with the underlying philosophy that existence is capricious and senseless. This fictional account almost perfectly mirrors Vonnegut’s real experience in the war. In WWII, Vonnegut was imprisoned in Dresden, was beaten, and made a prisoner in Schlachthof Fünf or Slaughterhouse Five, a real slaughterhouse in Dresden.

As a witness and victim of the horrors of the fire-bombing of Dresden, Vonnegut would argue he has permission to take a satirical literary position and use irony and humour towards these events as well as mocking social conventions as a means to try to understand the utter absurdity of such violent actions of humans against other humans.

On the nights of 13-14 February 1944, the city of Dresden, Germany was subjected to one of the worst air attacks in the history of humanity. By the end of the bombing 135,000 to 250,000 people had been killed as a result of the fire-storms created by the combined forces of the United States and the United Kingdom screaming down the streets of Dresden and howling between the city buildings. Dresden was different than Berlin or many of the other German cities which were attacked during World War II because it was never fortified or used for strategic purposes and, therefore, was not considered a military target.

The reason Vonnegut’s satire is so popular and works so well is because he had personal ties to all the elements that he lambasted in his works. Vonnegut’s experience as a soldier in WWII during the firebombing of Dresden corrupted his mind and enabled him to express the chaotic reality of war, violence, obsession, sex and government in a raw and personal manner.

Slaughterhouse-Five follows a non-linear time progression to represent the anguish of the human mind as a result of trauma. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, becomes “unstuck in time,” when his mental state takes a drastic turn after witnessing the bombing of Dresden during World War II. In the novel, Kurt Vonnegut uses the fantastical notion of time travel to portray the negative effects on the soldiers who fight in wars.

Satirists such as Kurt Vonnegut use their creative work to reveal the comic elements of an absurd world and incite a change in society. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut steps back from society and sees the absurd circus the world has become.

Slaughterhouse-Five depicts a profoundly absurd and distinctly postmodern world. It is an account of Billy Pilgrim’s capture and incarceration by the Germans during the last years of World War II, and scattered throughout the narrative are episodes from Billy’s life both before and after the war, and from his travels to the planet Tralfamadore (Trawl-fahm-uh-door). The novel tells of the bombing of Dresden in World War II, and refers to the Battle of the Bulge, the Vietnam War, and the civil rights protests in American cities during the 1960s.

Slaughterhouse-Five is written in the third-person omniscient point of view with interruptions from a first-person narrator who appears to be the author, Kurt Vonnegut.

The language of Slaughterhouse-Five is straightforward, so it’s easy to understand what’s happening in each of the sections. But with all the time jumping, alien abduction, and heavy-duty philosophy, it can be tough to work out how the sections go together.

His New York Times obituary in 2007 declared Vonnegut the “novelist who caught the imagination of his age”. Norman Mailer called Vonnegut “our own Mark Twain”, a comparison many have made, and praised him as “a marvellous writer with a style that remained undeniably and imperturbably his own”.

Due to its use of obscene language, depictions of sexual acts, lack of patriotism, and mentions of homosexuality, the novel has undergone at least eighteen banning attempts in public school systems and libraries in the United States.

Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five is a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century.

Slaughterhouse Five is one of the most enduring anti-war novels of all time.

Albert Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905. In his work leading to his later General Theory of Relativity (published in 26 November 1916), Einstein proposed the then paradoxical and counterintuitive theory that strong gravitational field would bend not only mass, but light itself. This is known as the Gravitational Red Shift or Einstein Shift:

This notion could be proved or disproved, Einstein suggested, by measuring the deflection of starlight as it travelled close to the Sun, the starlight being visible only during a total solar eclipse. Einstein predicted twice the light deflection that would be accountable under Newton’s laws.

The 1922 eclipse had a lot of scientific interest with teams of scientists from Sydney and Melbourne converging on Goondiwindi, in southern Queensland, a group from the British Astronomical Association (N.S.W. Branch) heading for Stanthorpe and a magnetic observer from the Carnegie Insitution setting up in Coongoola, north of Cunnamulla.  The other major centre for scientific observations was at Wallal in Western Australia where a team from the Lick Observatory of California was at the centre of an international effort.

https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/media/24639

The chief concern of the astronomers at that time was to confirm predictions arising from Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.  Einstein had predicted that light from the stars would be displaced by gravity as it passed close to the sun and a total eclipse was the only time that stars could be observed close to the sun before the advent of space travel.  Observations during an eclipse in 1919 had agreed with Einstein’s predictions but further confirmation was needed as the expected displacement is very small and microscopic measurement of the photographic plates is required to detect the difference.

A member of the Sydney University team at Goondiwindi, James Nangle, recalled the experience of the eclipse in an interview in the Sydney Morning Herald, the experience still vivid in his mind in 1937.

“A total solar eclipse is the most awe inspiring of Nature’s phenomena,” said the Government Astronomer (Mr. James Nangle) yesterday. “I shall never forget the spectacle of the total eclipse which I saw from a backyard at Goondiwindi, in South Queensland, in 1922.

“A scientific party, of which I was a member, rented a shop and we erected our apparatus in the backyard.  For some days we each rehearsed our tasks so that when the great moment arrived, scientific observation could proceed as rapidly as possible.

“When the day did arrive we were nervous, excited, and on edge. Just before the total eclipse, shadow bands, about three inches wide and three inches apart, raced across the earth like millions of snakes. There was a galvanised iron fence at the back of the yard, and it seemed to me that reptiles were crawling all over it.

“Meanwhile, the moon was rapidly covering the face of the sun. The light became a bilious green. Animals became uneasy, and fowls, thinking that normal night was setting in, returned to roost. Then, suddenly, day turned to night. We were able to look toward the sun with the naked eye.

“The scene for three minutes was indescribably lovely and eerie. We saw the great streamers of the corona suspended from the disc of the moon. Their colour was a combination of silver and pearl. We saw, also, the chromosphere, which can best be described as a ring of rosy light at the outer edges. The chromosphere is irregular and its prominences extend for thousands of miles.

“There were two incidents during that eclipse that I shall never forget. I saw a crow, completely bewildered by the turn of events, endeavouring to gain a foothold on the revolving arm of a windmill.

“And there was the man from whom we rented the shop. Before the eclipse, he used to watch us making our preparations, but he was certain that there would not be an eclipse. He probably regarded us as a lot of crazy scientists.

“I saw him after the eclipse, which he had witnessed from a meadow, and he said that if anything similar was likely to occur again in Australia, he would leave the country.”

https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/media/27146

The Melbourne journalist, John Sandes, writing under the pseudonym ‘Oriel’, published a poem in the Melbourne Argus, 16 September 1922 a week before the eclipse:

Back of Bourke and the Mulga there’s a township on the plains,

Where there’s nearly always sunshine and it hardly ever rains,

And the chaps who planned Australia were so hard up for a name,

That they called, it Goondiwindi and that was its only fame

There it lay, neglected, for a long, long stretch of years,

its streets were oft deserted, except by herds of steers,  

And the raucous shouts of the stockmen, and the pistol crack of the whips,

Were Gundy’s chief amusements before the big eclipse

Then the news ran round the stations, and raised the squatters’ hopes,

When the scientists got busy and unpacked their telescopes,

And the cowmen flocked, to the township in eagerness to see

The testing of Einstein’s theory of relativity.

There was Long Jim Smith and his cobbers, and Shorty, the lasso king,

And they gathered around the scientists in a tough but admiring ring,

And Old Man Smith from the Seven Mile leaned up against the bar.

And cried in a voice that was hoarse with beer, ‘The star, me boys the star!”

There were telescopes and cameras and gadgets by the score –

Then Baldwins crowd from Melbourne town brought just as many more.

Yet still they came, those scientists, in dozens and in scores,

Until the Goondiwindians were forced to close their doors.

By train they came and motor-car, by horse and four-wheeled trap –

Goondiwindi smiled serenely – it was once more on the map;

And the squatters and the cowmen, why, their knowledge scientific,

defies all explanation. It was simply- well, terrific!

https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/media/27147

Many north Queenslanders believed during World War II that the Menzies government had a plan to abandon northern Australia to the Japanese should they invade from the north.