The discovery of gold and the prospect of easily acquired riches destabilized society in the Australian colony of Victoria. At Ballarat, one of the colony’s principal goldfields, the collapse of previously adhered-to moral restraints and the presence of lawless behaviour was commonplace. Against seemingly insurmountable odds, a small but zealous body of clerics and schoolteachers endeavoured to counter the influence of immorality and crime by promoting virtue and honesty in children. As a social history, the book especially examines – to use the words of Reverend Thomas Hastie, an 1850s Buninyong preacher – ‘the humbler classes’. The Other Rebellion is different to other history books, and uniquely appealing.
