CHEWTON has celebrated the 159th anniversary of the historic goldfields Monster Meeting with a lunch, a march and a song award.Television personality Tony Robinson of Blackadder and Time Team fame joined the celebrations this year, along with more than a hundred community members.Chewton Domain Society chairman John Ellis said the event had been going since 2003 and was a way of promoting the rise of democracy on the goldfields.Introduced this year, the song competition attracted 38 entries, with full-time farmer and occasional songwriter Martin McKenna’s Thirty Shillings a Month winning the $1000 first prize.“The challenge was to write the best song about, or based upon, the 1851 Monster Meeting of diggers at Forest Creek,” judge Jan Wositzky said.“The resulting diversity and concert showcased many, many talented songwriters and musicians.“The diversity of music styles and approaches that have developed from a single starting point was amazing.”December 15 marks the anniversary of the 1851 Monster Meeting at Shepherd’s Hut, where between 12,000 and 20,000 gold diggers met to protest the doubling of digging licence fees from 30 shillings to three pounds a month.It’s recognised as one of the first stirrings of democracy on the central Victorian goldfields, pre-dating the 1853 Red Ribbon Rebellion in Bendigo and the Ballarat Eureka Stockade.