In 1854, Victorian miners fought a deadly battle under the flag of the Southern Cross at the Eureka Stockade. Though brief and doomed to fail, the battle is legend in both our history and in the Australian mind. Henry Lawson wrote poems about it, its symbolic flag is still raised, and even the nineteenth-century visitor Mark Twain called it: a strike for liberty. Was this rebellion a fledgling nation's first attempt to assert its independence under colonial rule? Or was it merely rabble-rousing by unruly miners determined not to pay their taxes?
In his inimitable style, Peter FitzSimons gets into the hearts and minds of those on the battlefield, and those behind the scenes, bringing to life Australian legends on both sides of the rebellion.
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"A remarkable story, so well told albeit from a biased perspective. Provided me with hours of entertainment in the reading this, not to mention other books I've since picked up on the subject some, with very different views than those expressed by Peter." — Ryan (4 out of 5 stars)
"A remarkable story, so well told albeit from a biased perspective. Provided me with hours of entertainment in the reading this, not to mention other books I've since picked up on the subject some, with very different views than those expressed by Peter."
" Bringing oft forgotten history to life and focus! Didn't enjoy it as much as Tobruk and Kokoda but in a similar way, vivid and inspiring, opening my mind to significant nation-building history which I didn't know much about... "
" Reads like a novel but is in fact well researched. It should be mandatory reading for every Australian - it tells us so much about who we are as a nation. "
" Yeah... Pewter fitzsimons has a real knack for reselling history, but on the other hand it's more of the same. It's what we expect of him - easy, breezy, reasonably interesting, but then again, it's the same old tho g "
" A good read and well written in the main: covered all the main protagonists. I found though that the "Fitzsimonsisms" that can work so well in a newspaper column tend to grate a bit across a book. "
" Very interesting, especially as Victorians, Ballarat is fairly familiar and it was easy to imagine the setting. Felt it was just a bit long and wordy and that had it been 100 or 200 pages shorter would have been more enjoyable. "
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