Australian police are investigating after a statue of Captain James Cook dinner was once lined in pink paint and disfigured, forward of the Australia Day weekend.
It’s the second one time in 365 days that the statue in Sydney has been vandalised.
Australia Day is a countrywide vacation this is held each and every 12 months on 26 January – the anniversary of Britain’s First Fleet touchdown at Sydney Cove in 1788. Many Indigenous Australians say the date reasons them ache.
The native council in Randwick – the suburb the place the statue is positioned – described the vandalism as “a disservice to the neighborhood and a disservice to reconciliation”.
Councillor Carolyn Martin instructed Sydney radio station 2GB that the vandals had knocked off one hand and portions of the face and nostril.
The statue – which was once first unveiled in 1874 – was once in the past focused in February final 12 months, when it was once lined with pink paint and had portions of its sandstone broken. Works to fix and repair it have been finished a month later.
There are a number of Captain Cook dinner statues throughout Australia, and others have additionally been vandalised on or round 26 January.
In 2024, one in Melbourne was once lower down at the eve of the vacation, whilst its plinth was once spray-painted with the phrases “the colony will fall”. Two years previous the similar statue have been splashed with pink paint, whilst in 2018 it was once graffitied with the phrases “no delight” and had an Aboriginal flag positioned subsequent to it.
Cook dinner charted Australia’s east coast in 1770, laying the groundwork for the later resolution to ship the First Fleet, which was once led by means of Captain Arthur Phillip.
Australia Day is a contentious vacation for some, in particular amongst the ones in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities who view it as a reminder of the dispossession and displacement in their other people.
To many Australians even though, it’s celebrated as an afternoon of nation-building and success. Polling suggests a majority of persons are supportive of holding the vacation, in spite of ideas it will have to be modified to another date.
