Frederick Riley
Contents
Background
Frederick J Riley was born in South Australia in 1886. He left school at 13, worked as a 'billy boy' and blacksmith's assistant before travelling around Australia and picking up jobs as a shearer, wharfie, on the trams and newspaper correspondent.
Goldfields Involvement, 1854
Post 1854 Experiences
Fred Riley visited the Ballarat Art Gallery in 1912. The director of the gallery 'tore off' a piece of the Eureka Flag and gave it to him. Riley sent this fragment to his father F. Riley in Adelaide and it was later deposited at the National Library of Australia.[1]
Transcription:
Registered Mail No.364
Posted from Collingwood, Victoria
To: Mr F. Riley
inspector of Scaffolding
Minister of Industry Office
Adelaide
Dated 13 January 1912 from 283 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne
Dear Dad,
Trip to Ballarat was set .. to the last degree and if you ever get the chance of dropping in the place for a day don't miss it.
I went and saw the .. and they were really something to skite about.
Lake Wendouree is another beauty spot that residents of the Ballarat blow about with the best of reasons.
Boarded an electric car and made out to the Old Cemetery and saw the graves of both the men and the soldiers of the Eureka Stockade. They are both kept in order by the staff at work there.
Next jumped on a car and rode around to the place where the fight took place "the Eureka Stockade".
But now the most important incident of the trip occurred, I went to the Art Gallery to see the flag the men foughjt under and strange to say no-one there seems to value it in the least, it is hung over a trestle affair fully exposed to the public. Well I got into conversation .. with the keeper or the caretaker of the Gallery and persuaded him to give me a bit of the flag, and much to my surprise and astonishment he gave me a bit. I was with him when he tore it off.
It seems wanton sacriledge [sic], vandalism or something .. worse to tear it. Still he did and I am in possession of that piece. I am sending it along to you in a registered letter and under no consideration whatever let it get out of your possession, of course I am not giving it to you, only asking you to take care of it for me. The flag is about 7 ft square with a blue back ground and a white cross worked across the middle of it [drawing of flag inserted here] and on the white cross is worked 5 stars one on each end of the cross and one in the middle. It was snatched from the miners by private King after the miners had been beaten.
In the night I held a street meeting and had a good hearing and a big meeting. also chummed up wiht a newspaper editor who if I had had more time would of taken me down some of the mines.
If you get the Melbourne Socialist you'll see a couple of articles in it that may interest you; further if you get the paper please put it away for me.
From your son
Fred
In the News
Obituary
Frederick Riley died in 1970. Frank McManus (later to become a DLP senator) referred to Riley in an obituary as ‘a great and humanitarian worker for his fellow Australians’, ‘one of the pioneers who built the trade unions… of a kind no longer with us’.[2]
See also
The Riley Collection, State Library of Victoria.
https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/search-discover/explore-collections-format/ephemera/political-ephemera
Marg McCormack, Frederick J. Riley and the Origins of the Riley and Ephemera Collection, The LaTrobe Journal, No. 47-48, 1991, pp. 82-84.
http://www3.slv.vic.gov.au/latrobejournal/issue/latrobe-47-48/t1-g-t4.html#n11
Taped interview with Shirley Wallace - sound recording. Wallace, Shirley, Interviewee. 1979 Apr. 23. 1979
Further Reading
Corfield, J.,Wickham, D., & Gervasoni, C. The Eureka Encyclopaedia, Ballarat Heritage Services, 2004.
References
External links
