By Cara Waters
Police and the City of Melbourne are hunting for the head of a King George V statue after footage of the head alight on a barbecue was posted to social media on Australia Day.
The statue was beheaded on the King’s Birthday holiday in June last year, and the head has been missing since.
The head from a statue of King George V is burnt in footage posted online on Australia Day.
Police were called to the statue in Kings Domain on Linlithgow Avenue just after 9am on Monday, June 10.
“It appears the head of the statue has been removed and red paint thrown at the monument,” a police spokesperson said at the time.
Videos posted to social media six months later show the head of the statue of King George V at what appears to be an Australia Day barbecue. There is an Australian flag behind the flaming head in the footage.
The videos were posted to Instagram by activist groups Whistleblowers, Activists and Communities Alliance and Disrupt Wars with the captions “Throw another king on the barbie! #notourking #thecolonywillfall #invasionday #alwayswasalwayswillbe #abolishaustraliaday #resist #decolonise #landback”.
Another post said: “Cooking with king. Hot tips for roasting #invasionday #notourking #cooking #cookingwithlove.”
A spokesperson for Disrupt Wars said the video was sent to the group anonymously with a note. The note said: “We will BBQ a monarch every year on January 26 until Australia [Day] is abolished #NotMyKing the colony will fall.”
The head of a statue of George V is burnt on a barbecue
As the Duke of Cornwall before he became king, George V opened Australia’s first parliament in May 1901 at Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building.
Police are aware of the video footage, and a spokeswoman said the investigation remained ongoing.
Lord Mayor Nick Reece said the City of Melbourne was working with police to find the missing head and each time a monument was damaged it was ratepayers who footed the bill.
“While there are a range of views on statues and memorials in Melbourne, defacing or damaging city assets will not be tolerated,” he said.
“The damage to the King George V statue was extensive, and it is not a simple restoration. Ways to restore this statue are still being investigated.
“When a monument is damaged, we engage specialists to restore them and lend our support to Victoria Police – valuable council resources that could be better used to deliver for our community.”
The statue of King George V before it was decapitated. Credit: Shkuru Afshar
The decapitated statue remains standing at Kings Domain.
Other statues have been the target of vandals over the past year, including a bluestone monument memorialising Melbourne’s controversial founder, John Batman, which was toppled last month before Australia Day.
The heads of statues of former prime ministers Paul Keating and Kevin Rudd were severed and stolen from the Ballarat Botanical Gardens in the lead-up to Australia Day.
A bronze statue of Captain Cook was cut off at the ankles in Fitzroy Gardens near the explorer’s cottage in February last year.
The statue was repaired by the City of Melbourne and reinstated last week after the council engaged a specialist restoration company at a cost of $13,000.
Port Phillip Council has paid $4000 for a 3D digital scan to be kept as a template of its Captain Cook statue at Catani Gardens in St Kilda after it was repeatedly vandalised.
The statue was sawn off at the ankles before last year’s Australia Day.
The council invested about $15,000 in security measures to protect the statue before Australia Day this year. It was kept under 24/7 guard and a mobile CCTV trailer from the council streamed to St Kilda police station.
Whistleblowers, Activists and Communities Alliance and Disrupt Wars did not respond to a request for comment.
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