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25-01-2025
SYDNEY: A statue in Sydney of British explorer James Cook, captain of the first Western ship to reach the east coast of Australia, was sprayed with red paint and damaged two days before Australia’s national day, authorities said on Friday.
It was the second time the statue has been defaced and vandalized in the last year. Police said that they had begun an investigation and that several items had been found near the statue.
Local councilor Carolyn Martin said the vandals may have scaled a fence around the statue using a ladder, which they left behind.
“It’s an absolute mess,” Martin told radio station 2GB. “They have splattered paint all over it, then they have managed to get to the top of the statue and they’ve knocked his hand off and also part of his face and nose.”
For many Indigenous Australians, who trace their lineage on the continent back 50,000 years and make up about 4% of the country’s population of 27 million, the Australia Day holiday is known as Invasion Day, symbolizing the destruction of their cultures by European settlers.
Many Indigenous groups want Australia to drop celebrations or move the date, which marks the anniversary of the arrival of the British First Fleet in 1788.
Every year on Jan. 26, protesters rally against the mistreatment of Indigenous people, who are by most socio-economic measures the most disadvantaged people in the country.
A survey by the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper on Friday showed the support to keep Jan. 26 as Australia’s national day surged to 61% from 47% over the past two years, signaling a shift in voters’ sentiment.
Captain James Cook FRS (7 November 1728 to 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.
Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He served during the Seven Years’ War and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St. Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec, which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. This acclaim came at a crucial moment for the direction of British overseas exploration, and it led to his commission in 1768 as commander of HMS Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages.
In these voyages, Cook sailed thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas of the globe. He mapped lands from New Zealand to Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean in greater detail and on a scale not previously charted by Western explorers. He surveyed and named features, and recorded islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time. He displayed a combination of seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, physical courage, and an ability to lead men in adverse conditions.
During his third voyage in the Pacific, Cook encountered the Hawaiian Islands in 1779. He was killed while attempting to take hostage Kalaniʻopuʻu, chief of the island of Hawaii, during a dispute. He left a legacy of scientific and geographical knowledge that influenced his successors well into the 20th century, and numerous memorials worldwide have been dedicated to him. He remains controversial for his occasionally violent encounters with indigenous peoples and there is debate on whether he can be held responsible for paving the way for British imperialism and colonialism. (Int’l News Desk)
