Editing Lola Montez (section)

===Australia tour===
In June 1855, Lola departed the U.S. to tour [[Australia]] and resume her career by entertaining miners at the gold [[diggings]] during the [[Victorian gold rush|gold rush]] of the 1850s. She arrived in Sydney on 16 August 1855.<ref name="eireann"/>

Historian Michael Cannon claims that "in September 1855 she performed her erotic Spider Dance at the Theatre Royal in [[Melbourne]], raising her skirts so high that the audience could see she wore no underclothing at all. Next day, ''[[The Argus (Melbourne)|The Argus]]'' thundered that her performance was 'utterly subversive to all ideas of public morality'. Respectable families ceased to attend the theatre, which began to show heavy losses."<ref>Michael Cannon, ''Melbourne After the Gold Rush'', pp. 313–4</ref>

She earned further notoriety in [[Ballarat, Victoria|Ballarat]] when, after reading a bad review of her performance in ''The Ballarat Times'', she attacked the editor, [[Henry Seekamp]], with a whip.<ref name="another"/><ref name="adb"/> Although the "Lola Montes Polka" (composed by Albert Denning) is rumoured to have been inspired by this event, the song was published in 1855 and the incident with Seekamp occurred months later in February 1856.<ref name="eireann"/> At [[Castlemaine, Victoria|Castlemaine]] in April 1856, she was "rapturously encored" after her Spider Dance in front of 400 diggers (including members of the Municipal Council who had adjourned their meeting early to attend the performance), but drew the wrath of the audience after insulting them following some mild heckling.<ref>Seymour, Bruce, ''Lola Montez: a life'', Yale University Press, 1996, p.347</ref>

She departed for San Francisco on 22 May 1856.<ref name="eireann"/> On the return voyage her manager was lost at sea after going overboard.<ref name="adb"/>