Eureka Stockade (1949)

Interesting facts

Eureka Stockade is a 1949 British film of the story surrounding Irish-Australian rebel and politician Peter Lalor and the gold miners' rebellion of 1854 at the Eureka Stockade in Ballarat, Victoria, in the Australian Western genre.

Development

According to Rex Rienits, writing in 1948, there had been little interest in Eureka Stockade in the early 20th century. Rienits wrote that "except for spasmodic attempts to keep its memory alive by a few minor enthusiasts, whose crusading zeal outweighed their writing skill, it has been an almost dead chapter in our history for many years." This changed during World War II, with six publications in six years on the rebellion: two re-issues of Raf…

Rienits said the best sources on Eureka Stockade were Raffaelo's, and History of Ballarat by W.B. Withers (1870), as well as Further Papers Relative to the Discovery of Gold in Australia, 1852-57, and other government papers.

Rienits felt that the story of the Stockade "is a drama of masses, not of individuals. Lalor and Raffaello are no more the heroes than Hotham and Rede are the villains. Its conflict is between the people and authority; between the ideal of democracy and the fact of autocracy."

Following the success of The Overlanders (1946), Ealing Studios were keen for Harry Watt to make another film in Australia. Rex Rienits claimed he had heard Watt wanted to make a historical picture, and sent the director a manuscript about Eureka Stockade while the latter was in London.

In September 1946 Watt said he had commissioned Jon Cleary to write a melodrama set in Sydney after the war about an RAF veteran who gets into trouble. Other topics he was interested in included Eureka Stockade and other Gold Rushes, Kalgoorlie, bushrangers, explorers like MacDougall Stuart or Burke and Wills, or the story of an outback family.

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