160th Anniversary of Eureka

At a seminar in Canberra to commemorate Eureka, Dr Clare Wright (along with Dr Anne Beggs-Sunter from Ballarat, the only female presenters) again highlighted the importance of women before and during the uprising, in the course of which one woman was killed. One was influential bloomerist (sensible clothes wearer) Willy (Wilhemina) Train along with Clara Seekamp writing stirring editorials in The Ballarat Times and Ellen Young, the real leader of Eureka, penning inflammatory poetry in the republican tradition. The women of Eurkea are now considered to be the more passionate revolutionaries urging on men of weaker spirit. The first novel written about Australia by a woman, also about the goldfields, is republican Catherine Helen Spence’s “Clara Morison: A Tale of South Australia During the Gold Fever” published in 1854, the same year as Eureka.