Alice Eureka Boyce

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Alice Eureka Ward Nee Boyce, Weekly Times, 05 August 1933.

Background

Alice Eureka Boyce was born at Eureka on 29 July c1852. Here parents were James Boyce and Eliza Robe. [1] She married Reuban Ward in 1874. [2] In 1933 Alice Ward was living at Queen Street, East St Kilda.[3] She died in 1942 at Bairnesdale.

Reminiscence

FIRST GOLD RUSH

Link with Eureka Riots
Proudly claiming to have been the first white child born at Eureka, and to be the oldest surviving native of Ballarat, Mrs. Alice Eureka Warde has just celebrated her 80th birthday.
"The first gold rush," she told an interviewer, "began the year before I was born, and I was 16 months old at the time of the famous riots. Shots penetrated the tent where my mother sat on the floor nursing me, while the rest of the family tried to protect us. Bullets tore the canvas, but none of us were hit."
With a smile she produced a tattered blue ribbon. "My Eureka Stockade badge," she announced.
A gold brooch of quaint design was made from a nugget found by her father. "Many a dish of gold I have panned myself' she said. "My mother offen used to pull up roots of grass with gold nuggets clinging to the earth. Gold was easily found and easily spent."

DREAD OF BUSHRANGERS

"There were no banks. We had to wait for the escort, and in the mean time buried our gold in bottles under the floor of the tent. We were attack ed several times by armed white men, but my father was used to dealing with blacks, and was not to be robbed by whites. He always proved a match for them.
In 1857 Mrs. Warde's father moved to Windemere, and then to Gippslaud, still gold-mining.
"In Gippsland, for years," said Mrs. Warde, with a reminiscent shudder, "my sisters and I lived in dread of Ned Kelly all the time he was out. He had a number of relatives near us in Gippsland, and we never, knew when the Kellys would walk into the kitchen. We were always told never to incense them, but fortunately we did not meet Ned aftfer all.
"It is no wonder the modern girl Is a little irresponsible," Mrs. Warde added. "She does not have the train ing we had, We had to be the men of the house when the men were away. I remember how the gun was held over my shoulder for me to prac tice shooting until I was old enough to shoot for myself. "The orders were, when the men were away, to shoot any strange man who came within a certain distance of the camp. But I never had to shoot."[4]

Also See

Names Featuring 'Eureka'

Women of Eureka

Dorothy Wickham, Women of the Diggings: Ballarat 1854, BHSPublishing, 2009.

References

  1. Victorian Marriage Registration No.26422.
  2. Victorian Marriage Registration No. 215.
  3. Weekly Times 05 August 1933.
  4. Coff's Harbour Advocate, 30 September 1932.