Administering the Oath, Eureka Stockade
This illustration, made years after the event, shows a dramatic scene of diggers kneeling to swear the oath that they would defend their freedoms. Normally, in this period, someone swearing an oath would swear by God, but the Eureka rebels needed a new and different authority: they chose to swear 'by the Southern Cross'.
George Rossi Ashton (artist) and F. A. Sleap (engraver), 1888
Accession number: IAN01/08/88/supp/16
From the State Library of Victoria's Pictures Collection.
