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shillings per month, you could stake
a claim to mine for gold and keep what you found. Each claim covered a patch of
ground 3.5 metres by 3.5 metres; the claim also gave you the right to take wood and
water from the land. Commissioners were appointed to collect the fee, and to check
licences.
    From the very beginning the licence system was unpopular and unmanageable. The main
problem was that every person resident on the diggings (with only a few exceptions such as ministers of religion and servants) was required to pay the fee whether or
not they found any gold. The licence fee worked like a poll tax, falling most heavily
on the people with the least ability to pay. To add insult to injury, the licence
was ruthlessly enforced, with gold commissioners ordering the mounted police to perform
snap licence checks, often at the point of a bayonet. Anyone caught not holding a
valid licence was fined £5, a huge sum. If you didn't—or couldn't—pay, you went to
jail.
    POLL TAX
    A poll tax, also known as a head tax or capitation tax, is a fixed amount payable
by those included on a census. Everybody pays the same amount regardless of income
level or whether they have the right to vote or not.
    Poll taxes have been used throughout history to raise revenue by governments, often
in time of war or severe financial crises. It is what's called a regressive tax:
which means the burden of taxation falls more heavily on the poor than the rich.
    Poll taxes are generally resented by most ordinary people and have led to some famous
riots, including the Roman Revolt of 780, the Peasants Revolt in England in 1380
and the Poll Tax Riots in Britain after Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher replaced
council rates with a fixed tax per adult person in 1989.
    There was an exemption: All females not mining or trading and children under fourteen
years of age who shall only reside but not mine any Gold Field . Women didn’t need
to carry a licence, nor apply to the commissioners for the ‘exception ticket’ that
priests and servants had to get. But this meant, by implication, that women who did mine or trade would need to take out their own licence in their own name.
    No one knows exactly how many women were issued with mining licences, but there were
plenty of female storekeepers. And all persons resident upon the goldfields in the
practice of a profession, trade or calling, of any permitted kind were required to
pay up. Storekeepers were charged the hefty fee of £15 for a three-month licence
to run their business.
    This charge was just as unpopular as the mining fee, partly because you got so little
for your money: simply the right to open for business. (Most stores in 1854 amounted
to little more than a family tent with two chambers: one was for sleeping in and
one was the shop.)
    But the licensing system did lead to one novel situation: as licence-holders, women
acquired a legal identity separate from their husbands’ that they hadn’t enjoyed
previously. They were not just permitted but compelled to buy a licence.
    Bringing miners, shopkeepers and other professionals under the same regulations framework
produced another interesting result. All goldfields inhabitants were effectively
defined as small-business people. It was a one-size-fits-all system of economic management.
This would contribute to the famous egalitarian spirit of the goldfields where, as
the balladeer Charles Thatcher sang to packed crowds in the theatres of Ballarat
and Bendigo, we’re all upon a level .
    And because women became central to the economy of the goldfields, they also became
closely involved with the culture of protest that grew in intensity like a summer
storm over the tumultuous months of 1854.

POP-UP SHOPPING
    Gold digging wasn’t the only way to strike it lucky. By March 1854 there were three
hundred stores at Ballarat. One Ballarat resident estimated that women ran at least
two-thirds of these pop-up tent shops. Some of these shopkeepers had husbands