"What goes around...": Colonial-era statue toppled
The statue honouring a controversial colonialist has been vandalised in Tasmania, with local councillors up in arms over the destruction.
The statue paid tribute to William Crowther, a politician and surgeon who cut off and stole the skull of Aboriginal man William Lanne in 1869, with the intention of sending it to London's Royal College of Surgeons.
On Wednesday morning, the statue was found face down after being sawn off at the ankles and falling from its plinth, with the words "what goes around" and "decolonize" spray-painted on the memorial.
The toppling of the statue comes just hours after someone attempted to saw through the statue's ankles but stopped about two-thirds through.
Hobart City Councillor Louise Elliot said she had noticed graffiti on the statue at midday on Tuesday and reported it, and then the cuts were found.
When Councillor Elliot visited the statue at 8pm on Tuesday, she noted that "no security was here" after she stood at the site for "half an hour".
She said she was "appalled" that a statue had been vandalised in a "completely foreseeable" incident.
"I found out about this from Crowther's great-great granddaughter in tears ringing me," she said.
"I'm really disappointed that the council, in my opinion, didn't take enough protective and preventive action to protect [the statue]."
ast year, the council voted to remove the statue, which was appealed in the Tasmanian Tribunal of Civil and Administrative Tribunal on the basis its removal would detract from the site's heritage value.
But in its decision, which was handed down today after the statue was toppled, the tribunal upheld the council's original decision to remove it.
Deputy Premier Michael Ferguson said it was" regrettable" that someone thought to take the law into their own hands.
"Regardless of anybody's sentiment or feeling, good intentions or otherwise, that's not how we run a civil society," he said.
"Horrible things happened in our history, but you don't resolve history [through] vandalism."
As members of Tasmania's indigenous community have been campaigning for years to have the statue removed, Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC) campaign manager Nala Mansell said the desecration of the statue reflected community attitudes.
"I'm not endorsing what's happened but I think it goes to show that the people of Tasmania are people who understand right from wrong [and are] saying 'enough is enough.'
"We've been fighting for decades for it to be gone," she said.
"Good on them for taking that action and doing what needed to be done a long time ago."
Image credits: Instagram - Kate Doyle ABC