Melbourne’s oldest surviving building has been vandalised overnight, with activists claiming responsibility for the attack on the heritage-listed site.
La Trobe’s Cottage, the former home of Victoria’s first Lieutenant-Governor, Charles Joseph La Trobe, was sprayed with red paint and the words “oversaw 54+ massacres” on Wednesday night.
Footage of the incident was circulated on Thursday in a press release distributed by activist group Whistleblowers, Activists & Communities Alliance (WACA).
The video appears to show a woman using a repurposed fire extinguisher to spray red paint onto the heritage-listed structure.
In a statement accompanying the footage, the group said: “We honour all people of the Kulin nation who were victims of Latrobe’s violent colony and whose sovereignty was never ceded, and we pay our deep respect to the Wurundjeri people on whose stolen land this action took place.”
“Latrobe’s name and likeness are plastered all across this colony. City streets, statues and institutions all commemorate him, and his cottage has remained immaculately preserved for nearly two centuries.
“None of these commemorations tell the truth about him, the senior government official who oversaw the rapid expansion of a violent settler colony and the genocide and ethnic cleansing of so-called ‘Melbourne’.”
The statement also highlighted comments made by La Trobe about Aboriginal people in 1839 and 1840, and alleged he had “enabled, engaged in, encouraged or allowed … at least 54 massacres of Aboriginal communities, the deliberate ethnic cleansing of ‘Melbourne’ city, the acquitting of white settler murderers of women and children, the separating of children from families, the confinement, torture and murder of hundreds of Aboriginal captives [and] the establishment of the Native Police, one of ‘Victoria’s’ earliest and most violent policing institutions”.
“This colony and its settlers refuse to reckon with the violence enacted on First Nations peoples by their British heroes – so no colonial building, memorial or monument can be left intact,” the statement said.
“This colony will fall. Its founders will be remembered as the thieves and murderers they truly were.”
Victoria Police and Melbourne City Council have been contacted for comment.
La Trobe’s Cottage is a single-storey timber building that housed Charles Joseph La Trobe, his wife and children between 1839 and 1854. Originally located on his Jolimont estate, the cottage was acquired by a shoe company in 1899 and largely demolished by the late 1950s.
The National Trust later salvaged the dining room, with the cottage subsequently reconstructed and relocated twice. It now sits in the Domain parklands near Government House and the Shrine of Remembrance.
The incident follows a series of attacks on colonial-era monuments across Australia in recent years, reflecting similar actions overseas following the Black Lives Matter movement.
Last week, an historic statue in Melbourne’s CBD was torn down, while a nearby monument was defaced with the words “death to Australia” and “the colony will fall”.
Images: news.com.au
