Rage and resistance: Remembering the women of Baker's Flat

For nineteenth century South Australia, the mining town of Kapunda was critically important. It had the first successful metal mine in the country, its rich copper ore saved the fledgling state from bankruptcy and many of its men went on to do ‘great things’. But what about the women? And more specifically, what about the women of Baker’s Flat, a long-lived Irish settlement on the outskirts of town that provided much of the labour for the mine?
The Baker’s Flat settlement was located on contested land, with the Irish residents proclaiming their rights to it as vehemently as the legal land owners. Mostly, the women are remembered in general terms as feisty and rebellious, agitating for their rights to the land through direct action. The descriptions are almost comical at times, detailing how they jumped in post holes to prevent the land being fenced or repelled legal officers using sticks, brooms and pots of boiling water. The women’s names, however, are rarely used and their individual stories and lives are missing. This chapter redresses the absence of these women in the printed histories. Using contemporary newspapers accounts, genealogical data and archaeological evidence, this chapter puts names to many of the activists, highlights their struggles and their inter-relationships, and places them in the context of their day-to-day lives.