Morgan Lee

Story

Morgan Lee was born in Moycullen near Galway Ireland, a descendant of Gaelic nobility (his family had for many generations been hereditary physicians to the fearsome O’Flaherty clan of West Connaught). He farmed on the remote Irish-speaking island of Muigh Inis at the edge of Galway Bay before coming

to Ballarat in 1853, via Adelaide, South Australia in 1851. Morgan Lee left Ireland in 1851, following the death of his wife and son due to the devastating, indescribable Potato Famine that turned Ireland into a

vast open graveyard with well over one million dead, shattering every Irish family. Morgan’s four months at sea, with only two sightings of land for the whole journey, passed quite pleasurably. A daily draught of lime juice was compulsory. On board old barriers of counties and countries began to soften as people relaxed their old social boundaries. At night close to Australia he learnt to read true south when it was pointed out ‘there are the stars of Australia – See the cross – that’s the Southern Cross’.

When Morgan arrived at the Adelaide Wharf there was the ambition of many to go for gold at Ballarat. However, he decided to stay in South Australia and worked on a farm, relishing the vast openness of this warm land; the simple, stimulating, free life on soil being worked for the first time. As farm work slackened he joined the outflow for the fabulous Goldfields of Victoria at Ballarat in the summer of 1853. Morgan Lee (1811-83) worked on the Ballarat East goldfield for at least a year prior to the Eureka Uprising. In the spring of 1854 the hot wind of change, of revolution, stirred the coals of discontent that a repressive, authoritarian establishment government had created among free independent and enterprising men. On 29 November 1854 at Bakery Hill on a stump at the head of over 10,000 people an Irishman Morgan had come to know well had ended his address to the men assembled, solemnly removing his hat, and turned his face to a massive blue and white banner slowly curling at the top of a massive green gum sapling. That man, Peter Lalor, asked those present ‘Will you all swear by the Southern Cross’, the crowd fell silent and repeated after him, ‘We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties’. The next day the men reassembled and marched to the Eureka Lead and established the Eureka Stockade. At the time Morgan was working on the Eureka lead itself. In the early hours of Sunday 3 December 1854 troopers and police attacked the Stockade. Over 30 men were killed, it was a massacre. This Eureka uprising was the culmination of the injustices on the goldfields and became the crucible for the foundation of our democracy.

After Eureka, Morgan became a large and influential investor in the early Hand in Hand and Band of Hope gold mining companies in Ballarat and was subsequently a director and chairman of many other companies through the 1860s and 70s, including the world-famous Band of Hope & Albion Consols. The

Band of Hope became the world’s richest mine, producing a fortune daily for months on end. He later became proprietor of a hotel in western Sturt Street which he modestly renamed “Morgan Lee’s Hotel.” The home he built for his young bride in 1861 – St Oran’s Villa – at the corner of Dana and Windermere Streets remains today an elegant example of early Ballarat architecture. Morgan died in Ballarat on the 16th of June 1883.

Many of his descendents live in Victoria, several in Ballarat and one (Michael Lee of Narre Warren) has been recognised by the Chief Herald of Ireland as world chief of the name Lee.

This story of Morgan Lee is placed by his great granddaughter Eileen Egeberg (nee Lee). Excerpts of Morgan’s story are from ‘The Green and the Gold’ by Murray Tucker (a descendant of Morgan Lee)

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