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Vandals have defaced two historic monuments in the lead-up to 26 January despite efforts to protect against targeted attacks.
Heavy machinery was used to tear down the Pioneer monument in Melbourne’s oldest park, Flagstaff Gardens, overnight before the badly-damaged ruins were vandalised, police believe.
The words “Death to ‘Australia’” were spray-painted on the plinth supporting the momunent, which was erected in 1871.
A towering sandstone obelisk, standing five meters tall, signifies the city’s inaugural burial ground.
The nearby Separation memorial, erected in 1950 to commemorate the founding of the Victorian colony a century earlier, was similarly defaced.
“This sort of behaviour will not and cannot be tolerated in Melbourne,” Melbourne’s lord mayor Nicholas Reece told ABC radio on Thursday morning.
Reece described the vandals as “idiots”, adding they failed to understand the historic significance of the monuments they targeted.
Similar vandalism offences have occurred in the lead-up to Australia Day in recent years, often targeting sites dedicated to the city’s colonial past.
During the January long weekend in 2025, vandals brought down a statue of Captain Cook that stood at the entrance of Edinburgh Gardens in Fitzroy North.
In January 2024, council workers in St Kilda, Melbourne, cleared away the remains of a Captain Cook statue. Source: AAP / AAPIMAGE
The City of Yarra voted to scrap the statue in May 2025 due to the high cost of its upkeep, given it was repeatedly targeted by vandals.
Reece said the price of repairing the Flagstaff Gardens monuments was not yet clear, but insisted they would be reinstated.
“We cannot allow it to be the case that when statutes (and) memorials are destroyed … that is rewarded by allowing it to continue,” he said.
A crime scene has been established at the site as police investigate.
