The Eureka Stockade, an uprising of gold miners at Ballarat, is widely viewed as the most dramatic event experienced on Australian soil in the 19th century.

Miners resented the dear and discriminatory taxes they had to pay and also the high-handed tactics of the authorities. Late in 1854, in deepening tension, crowds of protesters gathered beneath a new revolutionary flag of dark blue and white: the flag of the Southern Cross. Behind a long fenced barricade, the more ardent rebels hoarded firearms and manufactured iron pikes. The Victorian government responded. At daybreak on Sunday 3 December, on foot and horseback, its men stormed the stockade.

During the brief battle, at least 30 miners and five soldiers were killed. The miners' leader, Peter Lalor, lost his left arm. The government placed the rebels on trial in Melbourne but the juries refused to convict them.

Eureka still fires the imagination of many Australians. They insist that it accelerated the rise of democracy; but on this question the debate is never ending.