9 News
A 100-year-old statue of Captain Cook, in St Kilda, has been sawn off at the ankles and spray painted with the words “the colony will fall” on the eve of January 26. Another statue, of Queen Victoria near Melbourne’s CBD, was also splashed with red paint overnight.Members of the public found the statue face down and reported the vandalism to police in the early hours of Thursday morning. Hours later, Victorian premier Jacinta Allan told reporters “this sort of vandalism has no place in our community,” and said the statue of Cook would be repaired and reinstated.Statues of prominent coloniser leaders have increasingly become a target of vandalism in recent years. In 2017, a statue of Lachlan Macquarie, in Sydney, was spray painted with the words “Change the Date.” Last year a bust of Macquarie in north-west Sydney was splashed with red paint and hand prints following an Anzac Day service. The St Kilda statue of Cook has also been previously splashed with red paint in 2022 and was defaced in 2020 and 2018.See more from Australia Today on vice.com and on TikTok.
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