An Irish Dig Down Under

On an autumn day in 1880, three men set out to build a fence. They were headed for Baker’s Flat, a section of contested land comprising about 400 acres in rural South Australia. As they arrived on site,they encountered a group of women and children, numbering between 50 and 100. Described in contemporary newspaper reports as possessing a strong patriotic spirit,and equipped with brooms, shovels and sticks, the women urged the men not to do the legal landowners’ bidding, one of them proclaiming that she was prepared to lose the last drop of her blood before the fencers would sink a hole in the land (Fig. 1).