page_title: Australian folklore
section_title: Socio-political events
hierarchical_section_title: Australian folklore / Socio-political events
caption_attribution_description: English: Battle of the Eureka Stockade. J. B. Henderson [1854] Watercolour
context_page_description: Australian folklore refers to the folklore and urban legends that have evolved in Australia from Aboriginal Australian myths to colonial and contemporary folklore including people, places and events, that have played part in shaping the culture, image and traditions that are seen in contemporary Old Australia.
context_section_description: Australian constitutional crisis of 1975 – a real political crisis that has since taken on mythic proportions and elevated the protagonists to legendary status (depending on which side of the debate one takes). A visiting American politician at the time wryly observed that he was sure he had only heard the tip of the ice cube. Gough Whitlam's speech "Well may we say God save the Queen, because nothing will save the Governor General" is replayed frequently.
  Eureka stockade – A miners' revolt in 1854 in Victoria, Australia against the officials supervising the gold-mining region of Ballarat, in particular, the high prices of digging licenses. It is often regarded as the "Birth of Australian Democracy" and an event of equal significance to Australian history as the storming of the Bastille was to French history, but almost equally often dismissed as being of little or no consequence.
  The Stolen Generation - From the late 1800s to the early 1970s, young Aboriginal people were forcibly removed from their families as children between the 1900s and the 1960s, to be brought up by white foster families or in institutions. In 1999 then-prime minister John Howard avoided using the word "sorry", to the families. In 2008 Kevin Rudd made an official apology to the stolen generation and their families, on behalf of the Australian government.
  Tenterfield Oration - Speech given by Sir Henry Parkes in 1889 calling for the six Australian colonies to be Federated, which would eventually lead to the Commonwealth of Australia.
caption: Eureka Stockade battle by J. B. Henderson
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