A rare copy of a book giving a unique account of the Eureka Stockade miners' uprising in 1854 has gone under the hammer in Melbourne.
The book was expected to sell for between $15,000 and $20,000 but failed to find a buyer.
The author, Italian adventurer Raffaelo Carboni, is considered the definitive eye-witness to an event that helped shape Australian democracy.
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The humble-looking book's hundred and twenty-six pages have provided historians with telling details about the 1854 miners revolt at Ballarat.
A man who had already fought in Italy's revolutionary wars, Carboni found himself at the centre of another uprising, when he came to Australia in search of his fortune on the goldfields.
He was subsequently one of thirteen miners charged, and cleared, of high treason.
Harry Glenn, of Melbourne auction house Mossgreen, said Carboni's account was the only first-hand description of the Eureka rebellion.
The book was owned by Anastasia Hayes- herself a significant figure at the time, having helped sew the original Eureka flag and tend to revolutionary leader Peter Lalor's wounds after the battle.
"The Eureka Stockade" is part of a four hundred piece Australian antique collection auctioned in Melbourne this afternoon.
