A statue of a former Tasmanian state premier has been sawn off at the ankles and vandalised with graffiti in what appears to be the latest incident in a wider movement aimed at toppling effigies of prominent people linked with colonisation.
The statue of William Crowther was found face-down on the ground in Franklin Square, located in Hobart CBD, after it had been sawn off at the ankles. The plinth on which it stood, had been spraypainted with the phrases “What goes around” and “decolonize.”
An earlier attempt on May 14 was left unfinished when vandals stopped sawing around two-thirds of the way through.
Despite the vandalism, Crowther’s statue was already scheduled to be removed after a council decision in August 2023.
The decision was trumpeted as unique by the city, which said the council-endorsed removal of the colonial statue would be the first of its kind in Australia.
While it passed 8-2, the decision was appealed in the Tasmanian Tribunal of Civil and Administrative Tribunal (TASCAT).
An argument from the objectors, that the statue’s removal would detract from the site’s heritage value, was denied.
When ratifying, TASCAT President Malcolm Schyvens said the environment would not be negatively affected.
“That may be regarded as having some negative outcome historically, visually and aesthetically, but there are also positive resulting impacts.
William Crowther
Crowther (1817-1885) was a medical doctor with an interest in the now-discredited field of phrenology which suggested that bumps on a skull could indicate intelligence levels and character traits.His working hypothesis was that Australian Aboriginals were of lower intelligence than Caucasians.
Crowther broke into a Hobart hospital in 1869 and removed the skull of a deceased Aboriginal man named William Lanne.
Hobart Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds said the trigger for the removal of Crowther came from discussions with Tasmania’s Aboriginal leaders who had approached the council about removing the statue.
“Crowther was certainly not the only person making transactions in this discredited field of ‘racial science.’”
Other Defacements
Meanwhile, other councils around Australia have not followed suit in removing any historical figures despite some being constantly vandalised.In April 2023, a statue of Lachlan Macquarie located in Windsor’s McQuade Park in Sydney’s northwest, was covered in red hand prints and spray painted with the word “murderer” before an ANZAC Day service.