A Bundle of Sticks – Montreal Goldfield

They came for gold and dug up democracy!

2 pm, Sunday 14 April 2019

The story of Australia’s first mass protest, the hitherto forgotten 1851 MONSTER MEETING of gold diggers.

A single twig may be bent or broken,
but a bundle together yields not, nor breaks.

In “A Bundle of Sticks” Jan Wositzky sings this history into life – weaving the tale of how ordinary people did not have a vote when the gentry ruled Victoria, and of how gold was the ‘democratic mineral’ that might enable the poor to rise in the world – or to be heartbroken.

It’s a story that’s neither left nor right wing. It was ordinary people protesting an unfair tax – Governor La Trobe’s Gold License, the initial protest that led to Eureka.

In the performance Jan ‘Yarn’ Wositzky plays 5-string banjo, bodhran (Irish drum) and sings all the songs. It’s a lively, heart-felt, fun and rebel-rousing performance, singing out loud and strong for fairness, justice, democracy and our rights. As the diggers proclaimed, Fie Upon Pusillanimity! (Cowardice)

NOT WORTH MISSING!