Latest news with #YarraCity
Arab News
15-05-2025
- General
- Arab News
Australia removes repeatedly vandalized James Cook statue
MELBOURNE: The Australian city of Melbourne will not replace a damaged monument to British explorer James Cook, the mayor said, for fear it will inevitably be vandalized again. The granite-and-bronze memorial in the southeastern Australian city has been a favorite target of vandals, who tore the monument down last year and scrawled 'cook the colony' on its surface. It was similarly defaced in 2020 with spray-painted slogans of 'shame' and 'destroy white supremacy.' Stephen Jolly, mayor of Yarra City in Melbourne's inner suburbs, said the Cook monument would not be replaced because it would just be 'damaged again.' 'I'm not in favor of demolishing statues of people in the past, even problematic ones, but don't think if we put it back up, it wouldn't be just damaged again,' he said in a statement Wednesday. 'It would be ongoing. How can we justify that?' Vandals poured red paint over a different statue of Cook in the lead-up to Australia Day earlier this year. Statues of colonial figures such as Cook are frequently targeted by vandals to draw attention to the plight of Australia's Indigenous peoples. Cook sailed into Botany Bay in 1770 and claimed eastern Australia for Britain under the doctrine of 'terra nullius' — land belonging to no one — brushing over tens of thousands of years of Indigenous history.
News.com.au
14-05-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
City of Yarra in Melbourne to remove Catptain Cook statue after repeat vandalism
A Melbourne council will permanently remove a Captain Cook memorial from a public park. Yarra City Council announced on Wednesday it would not restore the bronze and granite monument to avoid further repair costs caused by repeat vandalism at the site. The statue has been missing from Fitzroy's Edinburgh Gardens since January 2024, when it was last vandalised. It was toppled and graffitied on the Australia Day long weekend, and is currently in council storage, The Guardian reported. It would cost $15,000 to repair the memorial and put it back on site, according to a costing report. The council said this cost was not justifiable. More than $100,000 has been spent over the past 25 years to maintain the statue. The report described the statue as of 'little or no significance'. It stated the site was 'contentious within the community and Cook is a contested figure in relation to First Peoples'. Speaking on Wednesday, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan said she was 'disappointed' the City of Yarra had been forced to make the decision. 'I think we have seen enough … we have seen enough division,' Ms Allan said. 'It is disappointing if Yarra have made the decision based on those reasons (Cook being a contentious figure). 'When times are tough … we have an obligation to work harder to bring people together, not use platforms like this to divide, but to use them to make sure we are building social cohesion.' Yarra City Council Mayor Stephen Jolly labelled the decision a 'boring economic issue' and denied caving to vandals. 'I'm not in favour of demolishing statues of people in the past, even problematic ones, but don't think if we put it back up, it wouldn't just be damaged again,' he said. 'It would be ongoing … how can we justify that?' The memorial has been vandalised several times since 2018. In 2020 it was spray-painted with 'shame' and 'remove this'. A similar statue of Captain Cook was hacked off in St Kilda last year. The council will explore an 'appropriate institution to take ownership' of the monument.
