The statue of William Crowther,former premier of Tasmania,in Franklin Square,Hobart.

The statue of William Crowther,former premier of Tasmania,in Franklin Square,Hobart.

The case against Crowther was indisputable. A surgeon and businessman,he mutilated the corpse of an Aboriginal man,William Lanne,sent his skull to the Royal College of Surgeons to support theories of white racial superiority,and put another skull on Lanne’s body. Evidence suggests Lanne was not the only one. Even at the time this was seen as an atrocity. Crowther was suspended by Hobart General Hospital,although failing the character test to practise surgery did not stop him becoming Tasmanian premier nine years later.

Crowther’s statue overlooked Hobart for 133 years. Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds called its removal “an important step towards telling a much more honest and truthful history of what happened in Hobart’s colonial past”. Nala Mansell from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre called it “a great day for Tasmania and for Tasmanian Aboriginal people”.

Historian Cassandra Pybus said other statues commemorated even more barbaric Tasmanians,including William Franklin,who gave the orders to desecrate the bodies of Indigenous men,and whose name adorns the square in which Crowther will no longer stand. Pybus said that as long as Crowther is singled out as the only colonist mutilator,“you’re not going to have the truth-telling about what a shocking and complete process was going on”.

Historian Cassandra Pybus.

Historian Cassandra Pybus.Credit:Peter Mathew

Coincidentally,this weekend marks the anniversary of James Cook finalising his 1770 voyage up the eastern seaboard,naming Possession Island and claiming British ownership of the entire coast. Contentious statues of Cook in Sydney and Melbourne have been embellished by tins of blood-coloured paint. The 10-metre statue of Cook in Cairns,which had its own baptisms in red,was pulled down three months ago by a demolition contractor who purchased it from James Cook University (which has kept its name).

There is more than one way of looking at this. The Crowther statue,those of Cook,Lachlan Macquarie and other colonists,cause grief and pain to Indigenous people and bring shame with reminders of some of their acts. The perception that statues keep such people alive as founding heroes entrenches the insult.

On the other hand,as Liberal alderman Simon Behrakis put it when opposing the Hobart council vote,“we need to preserve our history … warts and all.[Crowther’s] appalling acts should not be minimised,should not be sanitised away,but I think removing the statue does just that. I think it does sanitise history to an effect.”

Relics of Australia’s double-edged past can stir up conversations about change. Values evolve,and erasing the evidence of outdated ideas,superimposing new knowledge over old,is a step towards forgetting the past and repeating its mistakes.

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Going by this logic,you might as well erect a statue of Scott Morrison to educate future generations about what,in 2022,political leaders looked like.

What is the point of a statue? The website Monument Australia catalogues 38,389 monuments and memorials to individuals. Recent ones seem exclusively devoted to sportspeople. Australia has always loved putting up a statue to a hero,even though history reveals that heroes have feet of clay,and it’s only a matter of time and discovery of misdeeds,or wholesale revision of standards,before such statues will be questioned,vandalised,or ultimately pulled down. Give it a hundred years,and it might even happen to Shane Warne,or Betty Cuthbert.

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I question whether humans will ever be up to the task of maintaining immortality. It’s not only statues:the naming of buildings,sports stadiums (hello,Margaret Court!),parks and even streets seems increasingly like we are laying a minefield for the future.

There is a meaningful alternative,and it doesn’t imply dodging controversy so much as looking past it to what really endures in our psyche. My favourite Australian statue is Ian McKay’s 1961 Man from Snowy River,on a boulder in Cooma’s Centennial Park. The artist gave the horseman a wonky,Drysdale-like posture,cheekily undercutting any notion of taking Australiana too seriously while also celebrating it. Banjo Paterson might have had some questionable associations – such as withThe Bulletin during its “Australia for the white man” years – but the statue isn’t of the fallible human poet;it is of the myth he made,transcending and outlasting personal controversies. It’s the kind of permanence public sculpture should aspire to,an artwork about an artwork,reaching deep into memory and myth.

Similarly,Francois Sicard’s art deco statue of Apollo,Diana,Pan and the Minotaur in Hyde Park’s Archibald Fountain speaks across history. Gilbert Bayes’ sculptures outside the Art Gallery of NSW depict allegorical horse riders with an inscription “The Real and Lasting Victories Are those of Peace and Not of War”. These are statues worth stopping and thinking about. Without depicting actual people,they probe what it is to be human;they do not commemorate,they stimulate.

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We have plenty of other ways of lionising real people. Australia’s fictions penetrate deeper. Taking the cue from McKay’s Man from Snowy River,instead of Tasmanian colonists I would like to see a Hobart statue of Aljaz Cosini,the fictional protagonist of Richard Flanagan’s novelDeath of a River Guide;in place of explorer statues,one of Patrick White’sVoss;instead of convicts and settlers,the William Thornhill created by Kate Grenville forThe Secret River. These persons are better than real;they are true.

The Danes already get this:Copenhagen’s most-visited tourist site is the Little Mermaid statue,a representation of the character from the Hans Christian Andersen fable. She,too,has been defaced and vandalised for different causes over the years,not because of anything in Andersen’s fable but because,well,she’s a statue.

Australia’s disgraced statues deserve a retirement home where they go to rust. Budapest has astatue park where giant heads of Stalin,Lenin and other Communist potentates glare out of an overgrown field. They are worth keeping;you go there to learn why they are not still in Hungarian squares. Once our heroes of fiction have taken over our squares,an Australian resting place for disgraced historical figures would be a perfect final destination for William Crowther.

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