For over a century, a statue of the well-known surgeon who later became a premier, William Crowther, loomed over the Hobart park. However, it was chopped down at the ankles one evening in May, and the words “what goes around” were spray-painted on the sandstone foundation.
It was reminiscent of another night, almost 150 years ago, when Crowther is said to have broken into a morgue, cut open the head of an Aboriginal leader, and taken his skull, setting up a gruesome struggle for the remaining body parts.
The colonizers’ efforts to drive out Australia’s Aboriginal population had centered on Tasmania.
Furthermore, William Lanne, the sailor on the slab, was said to be the last person on the island, making his bones a deformed trophy for white doctors.
Some regard Crowther, warts and all, as an unfairly criticized man of his day, and his effigy as a significant piece of the state’s history.
However, it stands for the cruelty of colonialism, the dehumanizing lie that Tasmanian Aboriginal people are extinct, and the erasure of the island’s history for Lanne’s descendants.
“You walk around the city anywhere and you’d never know Aborigines were here,” Aboriginal activist Nala Mansell says.
The mutilated statue is now used as a metaphor for a city and a country that are grappling with their darkest moments.
