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During the 19th-century gold rush, the 186 … During the 19th-century gold rush, the 1861 Victorian census showed nearly 16 per cent of the colony's population was made up of 87,160 Irish-born persons. During the years of convict transportation and assisted emigrants, up to 17.4 per cent of the convicts were Irish, and incentives to live in Australia offered between 1839 and 1851 were taken up by 28,900 Irish natives. Carboni recalls that the Eureka lead was an Irish stronghold and the miners were a "rowdy mob." There were tensions between groups of English and Irish miners. Among the other national flags on display at the public meetings held around the time of the rebellion were those of North American design, with Canada and most importantly the United States, being countries that included a large number of the Irish diaspora. Vern recalls that during his time in the colony: "Ballaarat was always the rallying point of the Americans." Ian MacFarlane notes that along with some other nationalities, the Americans were treated with suspicion and regarded as republicans at a time when Britain and the US were in an adversarial relationship. In the period 1851–1856, approximately 16,000 US nationals left for Australia. By 1854, most Americans in Victoria were occupying the goldfields. Beginning in 1853, the number of US flag carriers entering Port Phillip increased from 13 to 134 in 1854, when US imports equalled 1,668,606 pounds. In August 1852, the British consul in Philadelphia advised the British foreign secretary that the American emigrates were likely to be hostile to the British crown, saying: "From the knowledge which a residence among them of 12 years has given me of the Americans, and especially of the class of them now on their way to Australia, I do not think that their presence there will be attended with much good, and I would have our authorities in that part of the world to be on their guard." The American consul sought permission from the Victorian authorities to mark Independence Day in 1853 by firing a national salute. LaTrobe forwarded the request to the mayor of Melbourne who replied that: "Batman's Hill appears to me the most unobjectionable for that purpose.I am, however, decidedly of opinion that such demonstrations, in a British colony, are decidedly objectionable, and will tend to foster a feeling which should not be encouraged or even countenanced." In October 1853, a British official in Washington DC was told that "a revolution in Australia, by which its connection with Great Britain should be severed, would be an event highly acceptable to the great mass of the American people." The Irish in America, in particular, were "hereditary enemies of Great Britain." Many of the Irish who joined the Victorian gold rush came via California, where gold deposits were found in 1849, and had memories of the 1846-1847 potato famine - during which time Ireland was a net exporter of food. Of the Americans on the gold fields, Clive Turnbull states: "The temper of the large American colony in Victoria was interesting. It was strongly republican - a republicanism the more ardent for its comparative nearness to the War of Independence. Republicanism was an article of export ... England had held down the United States ... and was still holding down Ireland - and Australia. ... Side by side with the growth of that domestic anger at the abuses of the goldfields which was to culminate in the Eureka Stockade, there was proceeding, also, a secret, foreign, largely American, movement for an Australian republic."can, movement for an Australian republic."
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During the 19th-century gold rush, the 186 … During the 19th-century gold rush, the 1861 Victorian census showed nearly 16 per cent of the colony's population was made up of 87,160 Irish-born persons. During the years of convict transportation and assisted emigrants, up to 17.4 per cent of the convicts were Irish, and incentives to live in Australia offered between 1839 and 1851 were taken up by 28,900 Irish natives. Carboni recalls that the Eureka lead was an Irish stronghold and the miners were a "rowdy mob." There were tensions between groups of English and Irish miners. Of the Americans on the gold fields, Clive Turnbull states:on the gold fields, Clive Turnbull states:
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