By Adam Carey and Eliza Sum
Statues of Captain James Cook and Queen Victoria have been vandalised in Melbourne on the eve of Australia Day, prompting a police investigation.
The metal Captain Cook sculpture on Jacka Boulevard in Catani Gardens, in St Kilda, was sawn off at the ankles about 3.30am on Thursday, with the vandals spray-painting “the colony will fall” on the statue’s granite plinth.
The statue of Cook was then dumped at the foot of the plinth.
Police were told that several people were seen loitering near the Captain Cook statue close to the time of the incident.
Footage of the two incidents was posted to social media on Thursday afternoon. An anonymous Instagram account published a video with a group of hooded and masked people scaling the statue of Captain Cook, placing a noose around its neck and severing it at the ankles with angle grinders.
The video also shows the group splashing red paint over the Queen Victoria Memorial, spray-painting anti-colonial slogans and holding up a banner that states: Land Back.
According to the Captain Cook Society, the bronze statue was unveiled in December 1914 and is thought to be the first major memorial to the British explorer in Victoria. It was donated to the bayside suburb by St Kilda Shore committee member Andrew Stenhouse, whose name is also on the plinth.
Closer to the CBD, the Queen Victoria Memorial was defaced in a similar fashion.
Red paint was sprayed liberally on the monument that stands on St Kilda Road, near the Royal Botanical Gardens.
The monument, which has stood in the Queen Victoria Gardens since 1907, was also sprayed with the message, “The colony will fall”.
City of Melbourne cleaners were working to remove the red paint from the monument on Thursday morning.
Victoria Police’s Melbourne crime investigation unit is investigating. Police were called to the St Kilda Road statue about 9am.
Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Memorial was also vandalised on the eve of Australia Day.Credit: AAP
The statue of Queen Victoria was also vandalised last year, after King Charles’ coronation. It was smeared with bright red paint, with handprints on the monarch’s chest.
Premier Jacinta Allan said vandalism of public statues had no place in Victoria.
“I want to signal today that we will be working with council to repair and reinstate the statue,” Allan said on Thursday.
She urged anyone with information to contact Victoria Police or CrimeStoppers.
Marcus Pearl, an independent councillor for the City of Port Phillip, told 3AW Radio that he hoped to see the statue of Captain Cook reinstated.
“It’s obviously a decision for the council’s CEO, but it’s my intention that it should definitely be repaired and reinstated to all its glory … it’s going to take a little bit of time and a bit of craftsmanship,” he said.
Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto released a statement condemning the vandalism and said he would be celebrating Australia Day on Friday.
“Some people have a different view and I acknowledge that January 26 is a source of pain for a number of Indigenous Australians,” Pesutto said.
“But we must always debate and discuss our differences in a respectful manner.”
Bella d’Abrera, the director of the Institute of Public Affairs’ Foundations of Western Civilisation Program, decried the acts of vandalism and said there was much to learn from Captain Cook’s legacy.
“Australians will be rightfully outraged by what has happened this morning,” she said. “Far more Australians love their country and its national day, than there are activists who seek to tear down our history.
“The vandalism this morning underscores the ignorance of those who want to cancel Australia Day. Captain Cook had been dead for nearly 10 years before the First Fleet arrived on 26 January, 1788.”
The Captain Cook monument in North Fitzroy’s Edinburgh Gardens was vandalised in June 2020.Credit: Penny Stephens
The City of Melbourne is home to several colonial statues that have been targeted before, including another Captain Cook statue in Fitzroy Gardens, and a monument to Melbourne founder John Batman at the Queen Victoria Market.
Batman signed a heavily contested “treaty” with local Indigenous elders in 1835, which he took as a contract to buy their land. The claim was based on European notions of land ownership that were alien to First Nations people.
The City of Melbourne employs roving security staff to patrol its statues at this time of year, a spokesperson said.
Thursday’s act of vandalism was not the first time the Captain Cook statue in St Kilda has come under attack from vandals, with memorials for Cook becoming the focal point of Australia Day protests in recent years amid growing discomfort over the nation’s colonial past.
Cook led a British expedition that landed at Botany Bay in 1770 and planted a British flag there. The First Fleet arrived 18 years later, sailing into Sydney Harbour on January 26, 1788.
Credit: Matt Golding
Many Indigenous Australians mourn the Australia Day public holiday for its connection to Aboriginal dispossession.
The St Kilda sculpture was doused in red paint during an Australia Day protest in 2022.
Vandals also poured pink paint over the monument’s head on the eve of Australia Day in 2018, scribbling the words “no pride” beneath Captain Cook’s feet. A memorial to explorers Burke and Wills was also vandalised that year, with green paint and the word “stolen” daubed on it.
A similar memorial for Cook at Edinburgh Gardens in Fitzroy North was covered with graffiti in 2020. The words “destroy white supremacy” and “remove this” were scrawled on the monument’s stone and bitumen in front of it.
That memorial was gifted to the then City of Fitzroy in 1937, according to the Captain Cook Society.
Anyone with any information about the incidents is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or submit a confidential report online at www.crimestoppersvic.com.au
With Broede Carmody
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