In an act of ignorance and senseless vandalism, the statue of Captain Cook in Fitzroy Gardens was cut down by barbarians in late February 2024. This follows the same destruction of the Catani Gardens, St Kilda, Captain Cook statue just before Australia Day (1) and the toppling of a Captain Cook commemorative plinth in the Edinburgh Gardens, North Fitzroy. Astoundingly the police still, apparently, have not made any arrests.
This is the report written by Alex Crowe, published in The Age February 27, 2024 -'' Yet another monument to the imperialist James Cook has been felled in so-called Melbourne. Rumour has it that this was the last remaining Cook statue in the city,'' the post on Instagram says. '' Monuments such as this only serve to prop up the narrative that enables so-called Australia's continuing theft and desecration of land and life, and to legitimise its ongoing violence. '' This narrative is as hollow as a monument to a long dead coloniser who met his just fate, being speared by first nations warriors in Hawaii.''
According to the Captain Cook Society, the statue was sculpted by Marc Clark in 1973, and was owned privately before it was gifted to the City of Melbourne in 1996. The sculpture was moved into the garden at Cooks' Cottage the following year. Built in 1755, Cooks' Cottage was the Yorkshire home of Captain Cook's parents, with the two-storey brick house and its adjoining stable taken apart and shipped from England to be rebuilt in Melbourne. The attraction opened in 1934.
The targeting of Cook's statues follows similar incidents in Melbourne on the eve of Australia Day.
Cook's statue in St Kilda's Catani Gardens and Queen Victoria's memorial on St Kilda Road were both vandalised, with vandals scrawling the same message in red paint. The St Kilda foreshore statue is currently being repaired and will likely be returned to Catani Gardens , after Port Phillip councillors voted earlier this month to reinstate the statue.
Meanwhile, the City of Yarra is considering permanently removing a memorial to Captain Cook from Edinburgh Gardens and scrapping it from its collection after the memorial was repeatedly vandalised.
The granite monument at the entrance to Edinburgh Gardens in North Fitzroy was most recently broken from its base and spray painted in red with the words '' cook the colony'' on January 29. (2)
The Fitzroy Gardens statue has an interesting history, which I wrote about in 2017, when I was Local History Librarian at Casey Cardinia Libraries, for my blog Casey Cardinia Links to our Past As the statue is in the news, what follows is an updated version of my original post.
Endeavour Hills was officially gazetted as a suburb on July 14 1971, and the first land sales took place on November 24, 1973. The project was first conceived in 1970 when Lewis Land Corporation purchased the 1,032 acre site (about 420 hectares). As the suburb was being developed at the same time as the 200th anniversary of the arrival of Captain Cook in the Endeavour, it was considered fitting to name the suburb after the Endeavour. (3) The Endeavour carried members of the Royal Society, who were on board to observe the Transit of Venus in Tahiti as well as sailing crew and military personnel, as after leaving Tahiti, Cook was instructed to 'find' the southern continent. (4) Around 80 Endeavour Hills streets are named after the Endeavour crew and passengers. (5)
The statue of Captain James Cook was unveiled in Endeavour Hills in November 1973 outside the first sales office on the corner of Joseph Banks Crescent and Heatherton Road; the building was still there in 2017, but it appears to have been demolished now.
A new sales office opened around July 1979 on the corner of Matthew Flinders Avenue and Monkhouse Drive. The statue was then moved from the original location to the new sales office in Matthew Flinders Avenue. The Endeavour Hills Gazette of July 1979 reported that The statue of Captain James Cook has been moved to the new location and has been sited in a commanding position on a large area of undulating ground which has been sown to lawn. (7)
The statue remained outside the sales office building, even though it ceased being a sales office around 1993 and was leased out to a Radiology group. In March 1996, the building and the statue went up for auction.
When I wrote this post in 2017 all I knew about the fate of the statue after the sale was that It was later donated to the City of Melbourne for display near Cook's Cottage, in Fitzroy Gardens. It was installed in July 1997. (8) However I have now found a report from The Age of January 26, 1997, which fills in some missing details.
Cook lost in a sea of read tape, by Royce Miller.The artist who created the sculpture was Marc Clark. On the back of the sales flyer for the sculpture, there are some biographical details of Mr Clark. He was born in London on October 20, 1923, studied at the Canterbury School of Art, served in the 9th Queens's Royal Lancers from 1942 to 1947 and then studied sculpture at the Royal Collage of Arts in London. After various jobs he arrived in Australia in 1962 and lectured at the Caulfield Institute of Technology, was Drawing and Sculpture Master at the National Gallery Art School and later lectured at the Victorian College of the Arts. Other works he was commissioned for include a statue of the late Queen of Tonga; a statue of the first Australian Prime Minister, Sir Edmund Barton in Canberra; a statue of Governor Bligh in Sydney and a statue of Matthew Flinders in Mornington. Mr Clark died September 12, 2021. (11)
(2) https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/captain-cook-statue-toppled-in-latest-attack-on-melbourne-monuments-20240227-p5f81r.html (may be behind a paywall)
(3) Harding, Maria Doveton: a brief history (Friends of Doveton Library, 1993). p. 26; Endeavour Gazette: the official newsletter of Endeavour Hills, November 28, 1973.
(4) https://www.captaincooksociety.com/
(6) Endeavour Gazette: the official newsletter of Endeavour Hills, March 30, 1974.
(7) Endeavour Gazette: the official newsletter of Endeavour Hills, July 1979
(8) The Melbourne Encyclopedia https://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM02040b.htm
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