Beneath the sun of Ballarat, where dust and hope collide, they scratched for gold in fevered ground, with law against their side. Tired hands and hungry hearts grew fierce for justice not for hire, And in the square at Bakery Hill they lit a stubborn fire.
Rumors through the diggings flew like winds across the plain, Men from every walk of life converged to bear the strain. A sheet of blue with shining stars was stitched beneath their breath A pledge to stand together, to bargain life with death.
"We swear by the Southern Cross," they cried, "to stand by one another," A banner stitched with courage flying over father, son and brother. Peter Lalor raised his arm and led the miners’ call, For rights and liberties they’d fight, and never, never fall.
The licence was a heavy chain, the troopers rode like scorn, They paid in blood and silver coins for every dawn they mourned. Women bound the bandages, and children hid their tears, While men made oaths beneath the cross to cast aside their fears.
From huts and tents and canvas roofs the voices swelled and rose, Surveyors, shepherds, sailors the broken and the pros. They swore no man should be sold by tax nor trampled by a crown, Their names were written in the dirt; their courage echoed round.
They built a stockade of timber, rough-hewn and barely wide, A beacon for the desperate, a shelter and a pride. Messages went out like fire to all the outlying claims, "Come join us in the stand for law," they shouted through the plains.
"Brothers," Lalor murmured, steady, voice cut like the stone, "Our oath is not a weapon it’s the seed of what's our own." They clasped their hands, they read the words, each syllable a vow, To share the risk, to live or die together here and now.
The dawn of December broke with smoke and thundered steps, Government lines met miners’ will where courage intercepts. Guns and muskets rang and fell upon the makeshift gate, Brave souls went down on either side, and fate would not abate.
When silence came, the toll was heard through Ballarat’s raw core, But whispers of reform began to travel evermore. Though some lay cold beneath the sky, the law would bend and turn, Their sacrifice became the spark that taught a nation to learn.
Remember names and faces, the mud and the loud refrain, The oath that bound the diggers close against the license strain. rom tyranny of tax and fear, a voice for rights was born, Ballarat’s harsh winter thawed into a dawning morn.
In courthouse halls and parliaments a different wind would blow, Votes and voices found their place where once the diggers sown. Lalor’s arm was lifted still, but wounded as he stood, A leader shaped by grit and blood, by desperate longing for good.
So when the Southern Cross hangs bright against the winter sky, Remember those who took an oath and dared to ask us why. Their promise echoes down the years, a covenant of flame The Eureka oath remember'd, the name they signed in name.
Heathen_AJ
