There has also been some suggestion that the Union Jack was also flown at the stockade below the Eureka flag. Contemporary reports do not indicate that it was being flown at the time of the storming of the stockade but may well have been done at other times as the young Queen Victoria was a popular figure at the time.
The Eureka stockaders were heavily influenced in their demands for just treatment by the Chartist movement in England in the decade before. Many chartists came to Australia as a result of transportation of activists and many other free settlers or diggers who would no doubt have held sympathetic views at the time.
Even the term “Monster Meeting” the stockaders used to describe the meeting held in Ballarat to gather support for their cause was borrowed from the Chartist movement which held similar “monster meetings” in England.
Whatever our views, the Eureka flag represents an important step towards fair treatment by government of the hard working citizens of this great country, something that I sometimes think is not happening in this modern age.