The Endeavour Hills Captain Cook statue

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 -

A bronze statue of Captain James Cook has been hacked off its plinth in a Melbourne park, prompting a police investigation. The sculpture of the British explorer at Cooks' Cottage in East Melbourne's Fitzroy Gardens was cut off between 5pm on Sunday and 7am on Monday. A video posted to an anonymous social media account shows masked vandals using an angle grinder to saw the statue off at its ankles, before pushing it over. The words '' the colony will fall'' were painted beside the fallen statue, according to the account.

'' 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.  

Lewis Land Corporation Sales Office, c. 1973.

The Sales Centre was on the corner of Heatherton Road and Joseph Banks Crescent.

Image: Casey Cardinia Libraries

The statue was created by Marc Clark. The community newsletter, the Endeavour Gazette of March 30, 1974 reported on the event -

Heavy rain drove guests to shelter at the unveiling of Endeavour Hills statue of Captain Cook last November. Mr Norman Banks, who officiated at the unveiling, compared the weather with that of Yorkshire - Captain Cook's birthplace.

Sheltered by an umbrella, Mr Banks left the guests under cover and preformed the ceremony in a downpour. Only the sculptor Mr Marc Clark and some press photographers braved the elements with him.

Applause broke out as Mr Banks pulled the cord, and the sheet veiling the statue fell to the ground. The applause was probably as much for the efforts of the participants as for the statue itself.

In his address, Mr Banks - descendant of Sir Joseph Banks, botanist aboard the "Endesvour" - sais that the seven-foot statue of the navigator was the most authentic likeness yet.

"The face is modelled after the only two portraits for which Cook sat in person, and there has been tremendous attention to detail of the uniform," Mr Banks said.

He said the sculptor Mark Clark's wife was curator of costumes at the National Gallery of Victoria and had provided valuable aid to her husbands in this respect.

Mr Paul Day, project Manager of Endeavour Hills, said the statue would eventually be moved from its present site to the shopping & community centre planned for the development.

Mr Day said the statue was the symbol of Endeavour Hills and he hoped it would help develop  strong sense of local identity. (6)

The Statue unveiling, November 1973

Image: Endeavour Gazette March 30, 1974.

The statue was used on early sales brochures - this is from 1974.

Image: Casey Cardinia Libraries

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. 

Sales flyer for the statue, March 1996

Image: Casey Cardinia Libraries

Sales flyer for the building, showing the statue in situ, March 1996

Image: Casey Cardinia Libraries

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 textbooks told us that he was one of the world's great navigators, and that he discovered Australia, but on Australia Day, 1997 this Captain James Cook is all adrift.

The life-size statue of Cook has been in limbo at a Fitzroy gardens depot since it was donated to the City of Melbourne last year by Endeavour Hills dentist Dr Mark Hassed.

Valued at around $45,000, the statue by sculptor Marc Clark was unveiled in 1974 to help launch the Endeavour Hills housing estate in Melbourne's south-east.

After trying to sell the statue, Dr Hassed offered it to the City of Melbourne to be displayed near Cook Cottage in the Fitzroy Gardens.

In a letter dated 21 June 1996, the councils cultural development manager, Ms Kate Brennan, wrote that the Melbourne Open Air Sculpture Museum Trust was "pleased to accept the gift."

Then, in a letter dated 26 November 1996, another council officer, Mr Vince Haining, wrote that "no decision has yet been made on whether the council will finally accept the statue and where it will ultimately be sited."

A City of Melbourne spokesman, Mr Scott Darkin, said council officers had decided to accept the statue in late 1996. He said the council expected  to identify a suitable location for it soon. (9)

The statue was moved to the Cook Cottage site in July 1997. (10)

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)

The statue being moved into position, near Cooks Cottage, July 1997

Image: The Age July 24 1997 p. 7 from Ancestry.com

I hope the Melbourne City Council reinstates the statue that honours one of the greatest navigators of all time and doesn't cravenly and pathetically let ignorant vandals dictate their public art installations, as the City of Yarra appear to be doing. If the issue is there are too many memorials to 'colonisers' then add some interpretive signs, add more memorials and statues, add a broader range of public art from a diverse range of artists. Surely, Councils can think of something creative instead of just condoning destruction.

Footnotes

(1) I have written about the Catani Gardens Captain Cook statue here  https://carlocatani.blogspot.com/2019/09/carlo-catani-andrew-stenhouse-and.html
(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/

(5) https://victoriaspast.blogspot.com/2024/03/endeavour-streets-in-endeavour-hills.html
(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

(9) The Age, January 26, 1997 p. 3. From Ancestry.com

(10) The Age July 24 1997 p. 7 from Ancestry.com

(11) Nicholas Gledhill & Co., sales brochure; Birth and Death dates     https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/artist/650/