A contentious Captain Cook memorial repeatedly damaged by vandalism is to be scrapped.
The City of Yarra on Tuesday voted unanimously not to restore the memorial, which stood at the entrance to Edinburgh Gardens in Melbourne’s inner north.
The granite monument was toppled and graffitied on the Australia Day long weekend and is now in council storage.
A council report found that it would cost about $15,000 to repair and reinstate after it was toppled and spray painted with the words “cook the colony” last year.
More than $100,000 has been spent over the past 25 years to maintain the memorial.
The report described the memorial as of “little or no significance” and said conservation work should be prioritised elsewhere. It noted the memorial was “contentious within the community and Cook is a contested figure in relation to First Peoples” and also considered its “poor condition and structural integrity”.
It recommended against a $250,000 option to refabricate and reinstall the memorial “including a truth-telling marker”.
Yarra’s mayor Stephen Jolly said removing the memorial would eliminate the yearly maintenance costs.
“It’s a waste of ratepayers’ money,” Jolly told ABC Melbourne.
The memorial has been vandalised several times since 2018.
In 2020, the memorial’s plaque featuring Cook’s face was spray-painted, with the words “shame” and “remove this” scrawled beneath it.
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A similar statue of Captain Cook was hacked off at the ankles in St Kilda, and another statue of Queen Victoria near the city’s Botanic Gardens was splattered with red paint on the eve of Australia Day, last year.
Jolly denied council was giving in to vandals.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to destroy statues of people from the past … but we simply can’t afford it,” he said.
“If we wanted to keep it there permanently, we would probably have to have security guards there (and more) lighting. I just don’t think the locals want that.”
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, described the vandalism of monuments as “deeply disrespectful” and called for community division to end.
“It is disappointing,” she told reporters on Wednesday.
The bronze plaques, which belong to the memorial, are expected to be given to the Captain Cook Society, which celebrates the British explorer.
