Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Growing Inequalities
As the easily won gold began to run out, Victorian diggers despaired of ever striking it rich,
and the inequality between themselves and the privileged few who held the land that they
worked stoked a fire of dissent.
Men joined together in teams and worked cold, wet, deep shafts. Every miner, whether
or not gold was found, had to pay a licence fee of 30 shillings a month. This was collected
by policemen who had the power to chain those who couldn't pay to a tree, often leaving
them there until their case was heard.
In September 1854, Governor Hotham ordered that the hated licence hunts be carried out
twice a week. A month later a miner was murdered near the Ballarat Hotel after an argu-
ment with the owner, James Bentley. When Bentley was found not guilty by a magistrate
(who happened to be his business associate), miners rioted and burned the hotel down.
Though Bentley was retried and found guilty, the rioting miners were also jailed, which en-
raged the miners.
The Ballarat Reform League was born. They called for the abolition of licence fees and
for democratic reform, including the miners' rights to vote (universal suffrage was yet to
exist) and greater opportunity to purchase land.
By 1840, when the young Queen Victoria took the throne, Melbourne had 10,000 (occasionally upstand-
ing) citizens and was looking decidedly like a city.
