A Captain Cook statue in a Melbourne park was vandalised, toppled and defaced hours out from Australia Day.
The statue in St Kilda’s Catani Gardens, St Kilda was cut from its stone base shortly before 3.30am on Thursday.
Vandals spray painted the chilling words ‘the colony will fall’ in red on the memorial base and left the statue hacked off at its ankles behind on the ground.
Police have launched an investigation to track down the culprits responsible.
A Captain Cook memorial has been defaced at a park in St Kilda
Liberal MP Angus Taylor called out the vandalism.
‘Captain Cook was a man of the enlightenment. Why would they do this to I think a great human being,’ he told the Today show on Thursday.
‘It’s another one of those acts that frankly, everyone should condemn.’
Port Phillip councillor Marcus Pearl added: ‘This is not a solitary act of mischief.’
‘It’s a repeated pattern of disrespect, especially evident around Australia Day for the past six years. Such acts blatantly disregard our community’s hard-fought principles of debate and democratic expression.’
The statue has been a frequent target for vandals in recent years.
The statue had red paint thrown over it over three consecutive days in 2022 as part of an Australia Day protest and was previously vandalised in 2020 and 2018.
Several people were seen loitering in the area around the time of the incident.
Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers.
The statue was built to commemorate Captain James Cook, a British explorer who made the first recorded European contact with Australia’s east coast on April 29, 1770.
Arthur Philip and the first fleet arrived in Australia on January 26, 1788.
The date later became known and celebrated as Australia Day.
The public holiday is known as ‘Invasion Day’ to many Indigenous Australians with protests scheduled to take place in major cities across Australia on Friday.
The same Captain Cook monument in St Kilda was splattered with red paint in 2022 (pictured)
