Lambing Flat riots

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The Roll Up banner around which a mob of about 1,000 men rallied and attacked Chinese miners at Lambing Flat in June 1861. The banner is now on display in the museum at Young.

The Lambing Flat riots or Lambing Flat massacre were a series of violent anti-Chinese demonstrations that took place in the Burrangong region, in New South Wales, Australia. They occurred on the goldfields at Spring Creek, Stoney Creek, Back Creek, Wombat, Blackguard Gully, Tipperary Gully, and Lambing Flat (now Young, New South Wales), in 1860-1861.

From 1855, during periods of high unemployment, strikes occurred in the NSW gold mines. A major element of the strikes was violent opposition to immigrant Chinese labourers who had settled on the goldfields. The first disturbance grew out of a demonstration organised by a white miners' vigilance committee against gambling dens and other alleged vice on 12 December, 1860. The miners attacked the Chinese quarter, killed several people and wounded many others. Other attacks followed and the Chinese miners were eventually forced to abandon the fields.

Some of the rioters were arrested whilst others fought gun battles with the police. A military detachment finally restored order in mid-1861. When the Chinese returned to the fields and the troops departed, a final, devastating riot occurred on 30 June. Several thousand miners descended on the Chinese, plundering their dwellings. Mounted pursuers overtook the fleeing Chinese and degraded, beat, and robbed them. Police soon returned to restore order.

The NSW legislative bodies passed the Chinese Immigration Act in November 1861, restricting Chinese immigrants to certain areas and charging a residence tax in order to discourage immigration. In Victoria, Chinese arrivals were denied the right to naturalisation. Such sentiments sowed the seeds for the White Australia Policy that would dictate Australia's immigration policy for more than a century.

A banner from the period, painted on a tent-flap in 1861, is now on display at the Lambing Flat museum in Young, New South Wales. Bearing a Southern Cross superimposed over a St. Andrew's Cross with the inscription, 'Roll Up - No Chinese', the banner was a variant of the Eureka Flag. It served as an advertisement for a public meeting that presaged the infamous Lambing Flat riots later that year. Painted by a Scottish migrant, it is a testimony to the transfer of cultural practices and values through migration. It is possibly a unique example of the Chartist art form.