Far-left extremists have attempted to behead a statue of Captain Cook in Melbourne’s Fitzroy Gardens – the latest in a series of Anglophobic attacks on public monuments across Australia.
The anti-Australian vandals defaced Cook’s cottage next to the monument but fled shortly after trying to destroy the statue with an angle grinder at about 2am on Tuesday, causing damage to Cook’s neck.
The extremists are believed to have been scared off by new security measures installed by the City of Melbourne council, lights and a loudspeaker warning them they were under surveillance.
Victoria Police said two offenders sprayed anti-Cook comments on the building and that CCTV is being inspected. No arrests have been made, and police have also failed to catch the perpetrators of a previous attack on the same statue last year.
They are also yet to make arrests over last month’s vandalism of 20 bronze busts of Australian prime ministers in Ballarat, the defacing of Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Memorial, an Anzac memorial and a statue of John Batman, within a one-week period.
The incident comes just weeks after NSW Police released images of two people they believe may be able to assist with their investigation into an attack on a Captain Cook statue in Randwick, Sydney, in the lead-up to Australia Day.
Anglo-Celtic advocacy group the British Australian community, which has documented more than 40 vandalism attacks on Australian monuments as part of its Name Back campaign, spoke out against the statue attack at the time.
“It’s not just disgusting Anglophobic vandalism, it’s also the oldest statue of Captain Cook in Australia. There’s also an amazing story behind how it came to be,” the BAC wrote on X at the time.
BAC President Harry Richardson wrote an open letter to the country’s police ministers asking for a dedicated police guard to protect prominent monuments in the lead-up to Australia Day.
“The British Australian Community is concerned that continuing ambivalence to the desecration of our monuments sends a signal to politically-motivated extremists that not only are the physical monuments to Australia’s British heritage open targets for ongoing attack, but also that Australia’s British-descended population are similarly ripe targets for attack,” he wrote.
“The British Australian Community thanks police forces nationwide for their indefatigable work protecting our communities and hopes our political representatives will do the right thing and mount a defence of our nation’s British heritage.”
Header image credit: Madelaine Burke, 3AW.
