Cooked
Cottage,
Do
Not Enter
库克小屋 (或者
“熟小屋”) 不要进入

Naw, not too good, I’m Captain Cooked
— Uncle Ray Rose, Aboriginal Elder¹

There’s a sleepy little cottage in Fitzroy Gardens, close to Melbourne city centre. Disarmingly serene with ivy growing over the mud-brick walls, it is set amongst a lush, Victorian-era garden. Each day tourists and schoolkids alike pay to flock into this recreation of an 18th century English working class home. Inside, there are sparse bits of antique furniture and ye olde artefacts on display. You’re welcomed by friendly, expert staff who claim to know the history, and multilingual volunteers dressed up in period costumes ready to help translate.

But underneath this idyllic scene, is buried a sinister reality of genocidal greed, mass murder, racist denial and lies.

The cottage, today known as ‘Cooks’ Cottage’, is a contentious heritage site. Originally constructed in Yorkshire, England in 1755, it was shipped and relocated here to Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country in 1934. It was erected to celebrate the centenary of British invaders’ first arrival on Gunditjmara and Kulin Country, and their establishment of the city of ‘Melbourne’ and the state of ‘Victoria’. The Cottage is a monument honouring a 19th century imperial explorer, James Cook, and his role in navigating and catalysing British invasion of the continent known as ‘Australia’. Ultimately, it celebrated then, as it does now, white possession of First Peoples homelands.

You wouldn’t expect the many deceits present at the Cottage. To start, many people on Google Reviews are surprised or feel cheated that they have to pay for a ticket to see the interior, only to find out Cooks’ Cottage isn’t even a place where the celebrated explorer Captain James Cook himself lived—it’s the home of his parents, and it is only speculation that he ever visited the Yorkshire dwelling. One wonders then: why was Cook’s parents home shipped here, ‘brick-by-brick’ to Wurundjeri Country? Who’s behind this and why does it remain here? And why would school groups and tourists want to visit?

There is much more to be uncovered about this inauthentic heritage site.²

This is the true story of Cooks’ Cottage that you won’t hear on the official tours. Here you will learn about the colonial violence the cottage represents and how it continues to haunt the country. It is also a hard look into the psyche of a nation that continues to valourise British invaders, like James Cook, perpetrators of mass murder and racist violence who took possession of ‘Australia’ by atrocious means.

Footnotes

1. Cited in Maynard, J. (2020). Essay - ‘I’m Captain Cooked’: Aboriginal perspectives on James Cook, 1770–2020. Cook and the Pacific Online Resource. National Library of Australia. (Link) Accessed 2 February 2024. ↩

2. Balla, P., Land, C., & Golding, K. (2021). Indigenous perspectives on Captain Cook: this full agency, this decolonised spirit. ACCA. (Link) Accessed 29 May 2024. ↩

Australia is a Crime Scene
— Robbie Thorpe, Aboriginal rights activist¹

Upon the navigation and questionable ‘discovery’ of Terra Australis (Latin for 'Southern Land') on his First Voyage, Cook and his crew recorded observing many people on the shores as they journeyed north up the eastern coastline in their ship, the ‘HMS Endeavour’. On their first landfall on Gweagal lands—around the southside of what colonisers called ‘Botany Bay’—Cook and his crew encountered two Gweagal men who challenged their arrival with spears. Cook’s party responded by firing shots, wounding one of the men. As senior Gweagal knowledge holder Shayne Williams explains:

Two Gweagal men were carrying out their spiritual duty … In our culture, it is not permissible to enter another culture’s Country without due consent. Consent was always negotiated.²

Cook had been given secret instructions from the Admiralty to only take possession of the land in the name of the King of Britain ‘with consent from the natives’.³ Cook defied the conditions of these orders when he claimed the continent on behalf of the King, while ignoring First Peoples opposition. As Worimi professor John Maynard, explains:

… clearly Cook did not open up any meaningful dialogue or discussion, nor did he gain any consent in claiming the entire east coast of the continent. As such he was in direct violation of his orders from the Crown.⁴

Imagine if someone invaded your house, sat at your table, started eating your food and smashed your furniture; and you said ‘no, we don’t want you here, breaking our stuff. This is our place.’ And then they shot you. That would be a shocking act of evil.

Colonial invasion was rejected from the outset by First Peoples and many were murdered for resisting it. The British willfully overlooked First Peoples prior habitation and sovereign presence on these lands, declaring it no-man’s land (Terra Nullius) in order to move ahead with their homeland invasion.

Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Boon Wurrung/Bunurong people of the Eastern Kulin Nation are the First Peoples and caretakers of the broad region named by colonisers as ‘Melbourne’. First Peoples have lived here for more than 2000 generations and continue to do so.⁵ Before colonisation there were around 38 First Peoples groups with their own societies, languages and ways of living in what is now known as the Australian state of ‘Victoria’, with treaties and agreements between each other.⁶

Of the Aboriginal people he encountered, Cook observed:

[I]n reality they are far more happier than we Europeans [...] They live in a Tranquillity which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition: The Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life … they live in a warm and fine Climate and enjoy a very wholesome Air.⁷

It was so clear that people were thriving on this land, even someone like Cook could see it! Yet, First Peoples were deemed racially inferior, dehumanised, and uprooted from a way of life that they had sustained for thousands of years, dispossessed from their lands and massacred by the invading forces … why? Well, so colonisers could contain, eliminate and ultimately replace Indigenous peoples, in order to steal and exploit land and labour for profit. This is how ‘Australia’ came to be: a capitalist colonial state founded on race and class oppression.

Cook has left a legacy of unending violence

The British invaders' explicit genocidal impulse toward land theft, murder, slavery and rape of the early colonial period became more covert over time with paternalistic policies established during the ‘Protection’ era beginning in the late 19th century, granting colonial authorities powers to regulate vast aspects of First Peoples lives.⁸ These policies included driving First Peoples off their Country, moving them into reserves and missions where they were denied the right to speak their languages and practise their culture. Assimilation into the colonists’ way of life was enforced—a form of passive extermination by the State.

In Victoria, the Aboriginal Protection Act 1869, for example, granted the so-called Board for the Protection of Aborigines ‘an extraordinary level of control of people's lives including regulation of residence, employment, marriage, social life and other aspects of daily life’.⁹ The Half-Caste Act 1886 instigated a brutal policy of expelling First Peoples of mixed heritage off the reserves and missions to effectively ‘recast them as non-Aboriginal people’,¹⁰ separate them from their families and communities and force them to ‘merge into white society’.¹¹ As a result of paternalistic and assimilationist policies, numerous children were forcibly taken from their families under the guise of care and education, placed in institutions and trained to become servants and labourers for colonisers.

In the present day, government over-regulation of First Peoples lives looks like criminalisation and imprisonment, as well as ongoing policies that continue to rob Indigenous families of their children. To counter this violent onslaught over the centuries, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have organised, staged walk-offs and strikes, rallied and resisted, while setting up their own community-led healthcare, legal organisations, political campaigns, education programs and more—all of which are part of an ongoing movement for First Peoples sovereignty, self-determination, justice and land back.¹²

While Captain Cook is enshrined in song and story in the collective consciousness of this nation, he also symbolises, to First Peoples—and increasingly settlers and migrants alike—the world of pain he brought, through catalysing ongoing colonial occupation, destruction and desecration to Indigenous lands, waters, skyways, animals, and peoples.

Despite being a leader of expeditions that committed mass murder all around the world, Cook’s heroic image is preserved through the quaint and stylised ‘innocence’ of Cooks’ Cottage. We must see past the seemingly innocuous cottagecore cosplay, to recognise that the cottage today continues as a form of modern colonial propaganda on stolen Wurundjeri Country.

Footnotes

1. Thorpe, R. (2009, 25 February). ‘Australia is a crime scene’ - Robbie Thorpe - - - Part 1 - - -. Thejuicemedia. YouTube. (Link) Accessed 2 February 2024. ↩

2. Cited in State Library of New South Wales (2020). Eight Days in Kamay. Online Exhibition. (Link) Accessed 2 February 2024. ↩

3. National Library of Australia (2020). Secret Instructions. Cook and the Pacific Online Resource. (Link) Accessed 2 February 2024. ↩

4. Maynard, J. (2020). Essay - ‘I’m Captain Cooked’: Aboriginal perspectives on James Cook, 1770–2020. Cook and the Pacific Online Resource. National Library of Australia. (Link) Accessed 2 February 2024. ↩

5. City of Melbourne (2024). Aboriginal Melbourne. (Link) Accessed 8 February 2024. ↩

6. Deadly Story (n.d.) Invasion of Victoria. (Link) Accessed 2 February 2024. ↩

7. Maynard, J. (2020). Essay - ‘I’m Captain Cooked’: Aboriginal perspectives on James Cook, 1770–2020. Cook and the Pacific Online Resource. National Library of Australia. (Link) Accessed 2 February 2024. ↩

8. Gregoire, P. (2020, 22 June). The “Protection” Era: A Settler Colonial System of Paternalistic Control. Sydney Criminal Lawyers. (Link) Accessed 16 February 2024. ↩

9. Museum of Australian Democracy (n.d.). Aboriginal Protection Act 1869 (Vic). (Link) Accessed 2 February 2024. ↩

10. Birch, T. (2023). A Brief Aboriginal History of Victoria. In Birch, T., Katona, J. & Foley, G. Native Title is Not Land Rights (pp. 9–60). Melbourne: Common Room Editions. ↩

11. Museum of Australian Democracy (n.d.). Aboriginal Protection Act 1869 (Vic). (Link) Accessed 2 February 2024. ↩

12. See Foley, G. (2010). A Short History of the Australian Indigenous Resistance 1950–1990. Koori Web. (Link) Last accessed 26 February 2024; Gorrie, N. & McKinnon, C. (2024, 26 January). Reconciliation is dead, and so is recognition. What’s next? Crikey. (Link) Accessed 26 February 2024; Pol, G. (2022, 22 February). Land Back. Common Ground. (Link) Last accessed 5 February 2024; Spearim, B. (2023, 25 October). Frontier Wars Unending: The original land defenders lead today's resistance to coloniser destruction. Friends of the Earth Australia. (Link) Accessed 26 February 2024. ↩

We live in an unspoken shadow of catastrophic dispossession — Uncle Andrew Gardiner, Wurundjeri Elder ¹

Cooks’ Cottage was a gift from wealthy philanthropist, Russell Grimwade, to the people of Melbourne. It was donated just in time for the Victorian and Melbourne Centenary (1934–35) that celebrated 100 years since the arrival of British colonisers to Gunditjmara and Kulin lands in 1834–35, and the start of widespread settler colonial occupation of the Southeast of the continent. For First Peoples living in this region, this Centenary celebrates violent invasion and represents a time of mass genocide, the introduction of new and deadly diseases, and loss of their lands.

In 1834, the first permanent settlement of British colonisers was established by the Henty brothers, in the region now known as ‘Portland, Victoria’ on unceded Gunditjmara Country. A year later, John Batman—arriving fresh from a brutal campaign to dispossess the Palawa people in Lutruwita (named by colonisers as ‘Van Dieman’s Land’ and now ‘Tasmania’)—negotiated a dubious ‘treaty’ with Kulin leaders that he claimed gave him rights to vast portions of what the region’s early colonisers called the ‘Port Phillip Bay’ area. Batman claimed that for the annual exchange of a tribute of blankets, knives, flour, scissors, axes, clothing and mirrors the Kulin had consented to transfer to him six hundred thousand acres of a site that has become today’s ’City of Melbourne’. It has been argued by historian James Boyce that ‘clearly this was a lie’.² Given the Kulin had no cultural precedent for the concept of land sale or legal contracts it’s more likely that they entered into a conditional alliance with Batman, granting the squatter and his associates temporary access and safe passage on their Country through the Kulin rite of Tanderrum.³ Batman, however, exploited the access granted to establish a permanent settlement.

The agreement was short lived in any case, as Batman, according to the colonial government, had no authority to enter into a land transfer with the Kulin people as it was land owned by the Crown, and thus the so-called ‘treaty’ was declared void. Despite this, the illegal squatter occupation of Melbourne devolved into a frenzied land grab across the Southeast. During this period of Frontier Wars, Aboriginal people fought back to protect Country.⁴

Historian Patrick Wolfe describes how colonists set about removing First Peoples 'from their rich Victorian grasslands with unparalleled speed and ruthlessness’, and as a result, Aboriginal people in the region of Victoria 'suffered a demographic collapse'.⁵ Referring to official colonial figures, Wolfe shows Victoria’s Aboriginal population fell from an estimated 12,000 people in 1835 to 806 people 25 years later. He describes this little acknowledged catastrophe as:

Far and away the largest fact in Victoria’s history, one that dwarfs the campaign for the eight-hour day, the career of Ned Kelly, the holding of the first Australian federal parliaments or the staging of the Melbourne Olympics.⁶

Wurundjeri Elder, Uncle Andrew Gardiner, observes the impact of this rapid and fierce invasion:

This destroyed our civilisation that had been in harmony with this country for tens of thousands of years. With our culture and community shattered, echoes of this devastation still reverberate today.⁷

Victoria’s ‘largest fact’ is indeed the vastly damaging, deadly impact of British occupation. This catastrophe is disregarded, sidelined and suppressed in the Cottage’s celebration of white settlement and Cook’s legacy.

Do we really want to keep this monument to white supremacy and oppression of First Peoples in our city? The Cooked Cottage must be closed!

Footnotes

1. Cited in Merri-bek City Council (2024). Local Wurundjeri History. (Link) Accessed 2 February 2024. ↩

2. Boyce, J. (2013). 1835: The Founding of Melbourne & The Conquest of Australia. Melbourne: Black Inc, p.57 ↩

3. Ibid; Stephens, M. & Stewart-Muir, F. (2023) The Years of Terror: Banbu-deen Kulin and Colonists at Port Phillip 1835-1851. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing. ↩

4. Deadly Story (n.d.) Invasion of Victoria. (Link) Accessed 2 February 2024. ↩

5. Wolfe, P. (2016, 26 January). Australia Day: Patrick Wolfe on the Racialisation of Indigenous People in Australia. Verso. ↩

6. Ibid. ↩

7. Cited in Merri-bek City Council (2024). Local Wurundjeri History. (Link) Accessed 2 February 2024. ↩

The Cottage is a piece of history. If you don't like that history, you don't have to go in.
— Fred Grimwade, descendent of Russell Grimwade ¹

During the early colonial period, Fitzroy Gardens was initially set aside as a reserve, used as a rubbish tip and night soil dumping ground. It was remodelled in 1864 from an ‘old unsightly gully’ to become a ‘floral enclosure’.² The Victorian-era British landscaping features pathways laid out in an ‘accidental resemblance’ to the Union Jack.³ Today, the gardens are a dumping ground for all sorts of weird, outdated relics, public art and monuments, including Cooks’ Cottage.

Wealthy financier, Russell Grimwade, presented the cottage as a ‘gift’ to the state of Victoria in 1934 to celebrate 100 years of white colonisation in Victoria. Grimwade is an intriguing figure to investigate, given he was wealthy and influential enough to facilitate the buying, shipping and displacement of a significant historical landmark from faraway Yorkshire to its inauthentic location in Melbourne. More than a philanthropist and businessman, he was also a chemist and botanist who was involved in extracting oils and compounds from Indigenous plants. He has been described as believing ‘in progress, in civilization as in science, and celebrated white exploration and settlement without much concern for antecedent cultures’.⁴

As historian Alessandro Antonello has observed, some of Grimwade’s racist and inaccurate ideas about First Peoples and their relationship to the land was made explicit in a radio broadcast in September 1933:

‘Providence’, [Grimwade] began, ‘has granted to the people of Victoria one hundred years of peace in our land in which to transform it from uncultivated bush to a settled productive area of happy homes and bountiful harvests’. The Indigenous owners of this land, he opined, ‘had not reached that stage of development that had taught them to cultivate a tree bearing food nor an annual crop’. ⁵

Grimwade’s views are flagrantly incorrect. Bolstered by fantasies of racial superiority, colonisers like Grimwade were unable to recognise the ancient, sustainable relationship to Country First Peoples had developed over at least 40,000 years.⁶ There is ample evidence that First Peoples developed sophisticated systems of food production, land management and feats of engineering.⁷ The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape in Gunditjmara Country (Western Victoria), for example, contains ‘extensive physical evidence of deliberate manipulation, modification and management of water flow and ecosystems by the Gunditjmara in order to increase their available food resources’.⁸ In recognition that the Gunditjmara developed at Budj Bim one of the largest and oldest aquaculture networks in the world estimated at least 6,600 years old, the Cultural Landscape was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in August 2019.⁹

The Grimwade family have been described as ‘genteel pastoralists and investors in colonial Victoria’.¹⁰ They dominated the pharmaceutical industry in Victoria, established the glass industry, the sulphuric acid and superphosphate industries, and later the industrial gases industry. All these industries profit from and depend on raw materials dug up from stolen Indigenous lands. With his wife Mabel, Russell Grimwade was influential in establishing the Russell Grimwade School of Biochemistry and providing funding for what would become The Miegunyah Press, an imprint of Melbourne University Publishing. The couple were evidently invested in shaping the future of the early Australian nation, and supported a range of civic and cultural institutions.¹¹

A simple online search shows that today Grimwades are on the boards of art galleries, conservation institutes, publishing presses, but also a myriad of finance, building and development, mining, and agribusinesses.¹²

Russell Grimwade’s legacy in bringing over Cooks’ Cottage is only one amongst many examples, of how capital ‘C’ Culture in Melbourne has long been financed by political and economic interests that seek to maintain colonial exploitation and ownership of Indigenous lands not only here but also beyond in places such as Palestine.¹³ Of course, the Grimwades are not the only ones to benefit from colonialism—there were many other powerful families that financed the infrastructure, buildings and industries that make up the ‘City of Melbourne’. Researchers have also shown how heavily many of Australia’s major arts and cultural institutions are linked to funding from the fossil fuels industry.¹⁴

There have been recent attempts by the Grimwade family to deflect responsibility for the cottage. Russell’s great-great nephew Fred Grimwade recently claimed the family no longer has any connection to the attraction. As reported in the Daily Mail in 2023, he did however note:

While I cannot comment on behalf of the extended Grimwade family or the City of Melbourne, my wife and I support ongoing efforts to ensure that the cottage continues to be presented in a context and manner that reflects contemporary social and community attitudes but is respectful of history.¹⁵

Fred Grimwade is clearly aware of broader public consciousness about the cottage as a symbol of colonisation, but he is vague on what being ‘respectful of history’ entails.

---

Previously, in 2018, Fred Grimwade had also told the media:

Like we respect the history of our First Peoples, it’s the same with Cooks’ Cottage. The cottage is a piece of history. If you don’t like that history, you don’t have to go in.¹⁶

Ok, yea fine Fred we don’t have to go in. But whose history are we ‘respecting’ here?

Why is it that when people ‘dislike history’, the solution is to simply choose to not interact and not ‘go in’? Is this even possible, when colonial monuments and settler nation-building narratives are fixed in prominent public locations and embedded within school curriculums? You can’t really avoid it!

Fred’s suggestions around ‘respecting history’ and telling ‘both sides’ of the story sidesteps the entire issue of Australian nationalism that perpetuates colonial myths about First Peoples and celebrates Western progress and white racial superiority. It also disregards First Peoples repeated calls for ‘truth-telling’ that collectively confronts the violent imperialist colonial foundations of this nation which are denied and glossed over, leading to entrenched race and class exploitation today.¹⁷ The way we tell histories has a huge impact on people’s day-to-day attitudes, not just as interpersonal interactions but also through systemic racial biases that determine who gets access to housing, healthcare, education and decent work.

At the same time, it is also no coincidence that Grimwade’s opinions on ‘being respectful’ of a certain history is reported by right-wing Australian media. This media fixation on ‘respecting history’ is a liberal and right-wing talking point that directs liberal progressives to constantly fight on the narrative level of symbols and stories without meaningfully changing political economic reality. As writer and historian Tony Birch has noted:

Now, the History War is a phoney war. We should stop thinking about this as a legitimate discussion on the production of history or of colonialism’s past. This discourse, from the populist right or neo-conservatives, was never meant to be a meaningful discussion of history in Australia, except to the extent that it would provide a polemic to assist particular ideological positions. If anything this has been a cultural war (although I would avoid constructing merely another brand name) conducted by right intelligentsia, some politicians, and by media such as Quadrant magazine. It has been a debate within which the discipline of history has become a strategic plaything for those who realise that there is much more at stake than any noble claims to truth-seeking.¹⁸

Sustaining the Cottage as a tourism destination actively promotes Captain Cook, his colonial lineage and legacy, there’s no doubt about it. If you really want to ‘respect history’ Fred, why not return the Cottage brick-by-brick back to Yorkshire, its actual authentic historical location?

We can speculate that installing the Cottage in Melbourne gave the Grimwades social and cultural capital linking their family advantageously to the British Empire as the city sought to reaffirm its imperial connections.¹⁹ Now that they’ve benefitted enough from the clout, they’re happy to back quietly into the hedge and relinquish some ties to the dodgy landmark. We ask: what are the implications of this inheritance today for the City’s branding, maintenance and future-plans?

Footnotes

1. Ferguson, R. (2018, 22 September). A Piece of Yorkshire, brick by brick. Weekend Australian. (Link) Accessed 8 February 2024. ↩

2. Fitzroy Gardens (n.d.). Landscape History. (Link) Last accessed 8 February 2024. ↩

3. Ibid. ↩

4. Poynter, J. R. (1983). Sir Wilfrid Russell Grimwade (1879–1955). Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. (Link) Accessed 8 February 2024. ↩

5. Antonello, A. (2020). Memorialising Captain Cook in lonely places. Inside Story. (Link) Accessed 9 February 2024. ↩

6. Presland, G. (2001) Aboriginal Melbourne: The Lost Land of the Kulin People. Revised and updated edition. Forest Hill: Harriland Press. ↩

7. See Gammage, B. (2011). The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin; Pascoe, B. (2014). Dark Emu: Black seeds agriculture or accident?. Broome: Magabala Books; Deadly Story (n.d). Engineering. (Link) Accessed 16 February 2024. ↩

8. Budj Bim Cultural Landscape (2024). Gunditjmara Culture. (Link) Accessed 9 February 2024. ↩

9. Budj Bim Cultural Landscape (2024). World Heritage Listing. (Link) Accessed 9 February 2024. ↩

10. Gardiner, T. (2023). The World of Mab Grimwade. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing. (Link) Accessed 8 February 2024. ↩

11. Ibid. ↩

12. Business News (n.d.). Fred Grimwade. (Link) Accessed 9 February 2024. ↩

13. Chun, M. & Nabulsi, M. (2024, 9 January). Have you comprehensively rejected the Gandel Foundation? 4am Substack. (Link) Accessed 26 February 2024. ↩

14. De Vietri, G. & Foster, W. (2019). Fossil fuels + the Arts. Kumu. (Link) Accessed 26 February 2024. ↩

15. Cited in Pawle, F. (2023, 30 July). Cooks' Cottage: House built by James Cook's parents and brought to Melbourne's Fitzroy Gardens could be dismantled as anti-colonial sentiment grows. The Daily Mail. (Link) Accessed 2 February 2024. ↩

16. Ferguson, R. (2018, 22 September). A Piece of Yorkshire, brick by brick. Weekend Australian. (Link) Accessed 8 February 2024. ↩

17. See Commonwealth of Australia. (2017). Final Report of the Referendum Council 30 June 2017. Referendum Council. (Link) Accessed 30 April 2024; Ore, A. (2024, 30 April). Victorian premier confronts ‘bloody stains of colonisation’ at historic Indigenous truth-telling inquiry. The Guardian. (Link) Accessed 13 May 2024. ↩

18. Birch, T. (2006). ‘I could feel it in my body’: War on a history war. Transforming Cultures eJournal, 1. ↩

19. Victorian Collections (2019). Medal - Centenary of Victoria, Centenary of Melbourne 1935. (Link) Accessed 16 February 2024. ↩

… hear bone-strumming tales straight from the gallows, with no stone left unturned.
— Old Melbourne Gaol, National Trust¹

The City of Melbourne sells itself as offering a ‘premium lifestyle’, as ‘one of the most liveable cities’ and with a ‘proud history of cultural diversity’.² It distinguishes itself as a place to discover ‘distinctive flavours, sights and passions’.³

But… sorry it’s all a cover-up. Culture-washing 101.

Despite enduring structural racism in Australia, multi-racial immigration has proven to be profitable to the government funded and top-down planned culture and entertainment, education, and tourism industries. This progressive sheen and the diverse representation we see featured on screens and events is made possible by both government money and private financiers like the Grimwades. Philanthropy is not benign in the arts and culture industries, and neither is the city just about ‘culture’, it’s about corporate power and consumption.

In the City of Melbourne’s Official Visitor Guide for Summer 2023/24, Cooks’ Cottage is subtly promoted as ‘Family Fun’. Earlier in the guide there is also an advertisement for the Old Melbourne Gaol that uses a similar approach by trying to make violent colonial heritage seem appealing to kids (below).

On 20 January 1842, two Palawa (Tasmanian First Peoples) warriors named Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner were the first people publicly executed in Melbourne for killing two whale-hunters. They were part of a group of First Peoples engaged in guerilla warfare resisting British colonisers in the Dandenongs and the Mornington Peninsula. The site of their hanging was outside Old Melbourne Gaol. After several years of community campaigning to have the men recognised as freedom fighters opposing invasion,⁴ a memorial was commissioned by City of Melbourne and erected by the gaol on Franklin Street in 2016 to commemorate these ‘incredibly significant figures in Melbourne’s early history’.⁵ This is one of the little told stories of Old Melbourne Gaol.

Considering such histories of unjust imprisonment and brutal punishment, it seems like a sick joke to be making a prison into an events and tourism destination that invites the public to join a hangman’s night tour 'with the master of the rope’,⁶ particularly when First Nations and other racialised, poor and working class people are targeted for criminalisation in Australia.⁷ On the other side of exploiting prisoners' dignity as voyeuristic entertainment, the government keeps funnelling money into the expansion of policing and actual prisons.⁸

Landmarks like Old Melbourne Gaol and Cooks’ Cottage are forms of colonial propaganda that encourage visitors to be numb to oppression and in denial about the struggles around us.

Whether for a school excursion or an organised tour it’s so easy to miss the dark reality and ongoing violence in the City of Melbourne. The ‘City of Culture’ is clearly in on this.

The reality for most people living in Melbourne is that these arts and culture industries are not easy to access. Rent is skyrocketing, many are struggling with the cost of living and are becoming houseless.⁹ Migrant workers who are also international students, refugees and asylum seekers suffer through endless visa processes, exploitative jobs, and insecure living conditions.¹⁰ Gentrification and skyrocketing living costs push poor and working class people further into the outer suburbs.¹¹ Meanwhile, there are long public housing waiting lists even as swathes of public housing are being converted into ‘social housing’, which means rent goes up for people who need more support and into the pockets of private companies.¹² Occupied by daily struggles to make ends meet, poor and working class people become disconnected from the City of Melbourne and its ‘distinctive’ offerings.

The dark reality is that the real Melbourne has transphobes who are academics, influencers and politicians, protesting alongside Nazis and anti-vaxxers advocating gender fascism and white supremacy in 2023.¹³

The dark reality is that even as the Free Palestine movement protest the ongoing genocide in Gaza, across Australia in huge numbers and for over twelve months, the Australian government remains more committed in maintaining their own imperialist interests with the US and Israel, selling military equipment, handing nearly a billion dollars to an Israeli weapons firm, and subsidising nuclear submarines, rather than preserving the lives of people overseas.¹⁴ The City of Melbourne is complicit, recently voting down a motion to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.¹⁵

To understand why this reality of capitalist and colonial oppression is being covered-up, we have to understand the root causes and logics of how 'Australia' came to be. Our struggle to reject the Cottage does not end with the Cottage. This is a bigger fight within a long timeline of ongoing resistance.

Footnotes

1. National Trust (2024). Hangman's Night Tour. Old Melbourne Gaol. (Link) Accessed 8 February 2024. ↩

2. State Government of Victoria (2024). About Melbourne. Live in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. (Link) Accessed 8 February 2024. ↩

3. Victoria Every Bit Different (n.d.). Art & Culture. (Link) Accessed 8 February 2024. ↩

4. Toscano, J. (2023). Lest We Forget: The Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Saga. In Carlson, B. & Farrelly, T. (eds.) The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations (pp. 151-172). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. ↩

5. City of Melbourne (2024). Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner. (Link). Accessed 20 Januray 2025. ↩

6. National Trust (2024). Hangman's Night Tour. Old Melbourne Gaol. (Link) Accessed 8 February 2024. ↩

7. McCausland, R., & Baldry, E. (2023). Who does Australia Lock Up? The Social Determinants of Justice. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 12(3), 37-53; Stanley, C. (2021, 4 November). Indigenous incarceration: an extension of the Protection Era. IndigenousX. (Link). Accessed 26 January 2024. ↩

8. Vedelago, C. & Millar, R. (2021, 13 November). Thick blue line: Victoria builds the country’s biggest police force. The Age. (Link). Accessed 30 May 2024; Karp, P. (2022, 4 November). Australia’s prisons to cost $7bn a year by 2030 as number of women incarcerated grows faster than men – study. The Guardian. (Link). Accessed 30 May 2024. ↩

9. Terzon, E. (2023, 5 October). How rising rents and property values are pushing Australians into share houses, granny flats and house-sitting. ABC News.(Link). Accessed 26 February 2024; Staszewska, E. (2023, 15 September). For Matthew, 'a third job wasn't a crazy idea', as he struggled with the cost of living. SBS News. (Link). Accessed 26 February 2024; AAP (2023, 23 May). 'Worst ever seen': Homelessness rising, numbers of rough sleepers soaring. SBS News. (Link). Accessed 26 February 2024. ↩

10. Migrant Workers Centre (2023). Insecure by Design: Australia’s migration system and migrant workers’ job market experience. Melbourne: Migrant Workers Centre Inc.(Link). Accessed 26 February 2024; Cassidy, C. (2023, 23 May). ‘At the brink’: international students in Australia are ending up homeless and hungry. The Guardian. (Link). Accessed 26 February 2024; Taouk, M. (2023, 10 August). Asylum seekers left living in poverty as government payments dry up. ABC News. (Link). Accessed 26 Febuary 2024. ↩

11. Nicholas, J. (2023, 8 June). How gentrified is your postcode? Search our map of Australia’s capital cities. The Guardian. (Link). Accessed 26 February 2024. ↩

12. Kolovos, B. (2023, 17 March). Victoria’s social housing stock grows by just 74 dwellings in four years despite huge waiting list. The Guardian. (Link). Accessed 26 February 2024; Simons, M. (2023, 2 October). Australia’s public housing towers are regarded as dated and ugly. But what will happen when they’re gone?. The Guardian. (Link). Accessed 26 February 2024; Renters & Housing Union (n.d.). Public, Social, Community or Affordable? Demystifying Housing Terms in Victoria. (Link). Accessed 26 February 2024. ↩

13. Tanuki, T. (2023, 23 March). TERFs... Nazis... and how to respond. Youtube. (Link). Accessed 26 February 2024; Ore, A. (2023, 20 March). Victoria to ban Nazi salute after ‘disgusting’ scenes at anti-trans protest. The Guardian. (Link). Accessed 26 February 2024. ↩

14. Rachwani, M. (2023, 9 November). ‘My heart is chanting’: Palestinian voices ring out at largest anti-war rallies in Australia since Iraq war. The Guardian. (Link). Accessed 26 February 2024; Tranter, K. (2023, 17 November). Australia’s Role in the Bombing of Gaza. Declassified Australia. (Link). Accessed 26 February 2024; Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (2021, 9 October). AUKUS: a big step toward war. Red & Black Notes. (Link). Accessed 26 February 2024. ↩

15. ABC News (2024, 20 February). City of Melbourne votes down Israel-Gaza war ceasefire motion, as premier's office vandalised. (Link). Accessed 26 February 2024. ↩

Who calls Australia home is inextricably connected to who has possession, and possession is jealously guarded by white Australians.
— Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Goenpul scholar¹

What is the vision of ‘home’ and ‘heritage’ that Cooks’ Cottage shows us? Goenpul scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson tells us how the colonial concept of property rights stems from white logics of possession that upholds and affirms the settler nation state.² The sense of place, belonging and home enjoyed by colonisers is tied to ideas of capitalist ownership, and requires the dispossession of First Peoples and the refusal of their sovereignty.

Today there continues to be such claims to possession embedded in the psyche of many Australians, whether they’re on the street spitting at immigrants, or sitting in Parliament refining policy about who gets to enter the country or which First Peoples groups treaties are negotiated with. Possession here is a useful way to think about who has material stakes in the 'Australian Dream'—who gets to own and make money off property, housing and land. This Australian Dream requires the destruction and commodification of Indigenous lands and environments to sustain itself, as well as the exploitation of all working class people and their labour to make profit for bosses.

By inviting people into Cooks’ Cottage, there is a false sense of intimacy being constructed when we step in and look around this ‘private’ home. Even though being invited to someone’s house usually requires closeness or intention to build a relationship, you can pay $7.70 to enter the Cooks’ house! Colonial possession is presented as nostalgic, charming entertainment.

You used to be able to cosplay colonisers during your visit, whether it was putting on 18th century clothing or sticking your face behind a cardboard picture for a photo op (pictured). Due to COVID-19 associated public health and safety restrictions, the City of Melbourne quietly put an end to these activities and they did not return when the city reopened. We speculate that this is likely because the colonial cottagecore cosplay is directly at odds with the City of Melbourne’s ‘reconciliation journey’, and commitment to truth-tell the impact of colonisation on the lives of Southeastern First Peoples.³ It's pretty gross to want to dress up as a coloniser in Narrm/Birrarung-ga (Melbourne) today given their history of murder and dispossession—although volunteer guides at the Cottage still do so…

The preserved stump of a culturally modified tree in Fitzroy Gardens is an ongoing reminder that this site remains the sovereign homelands of the Wurundjeri people of the Eastern Kulin Nation, and has been for millenia. The ‘scar’ on the tree is made when First Peoples remove part of the bark to construct items such as canoes, shields, shelters or containers. As the Mapping Aboriginal Melbourne website explains, ‘These trees are an important living connection for Aboriginal people to ancestors and cultural practices, and are significant objects of tangible and intangible cultural heritage’.⁴

Tony Birch notes that being a sovereign Aboriginal person comes with it ‘a moral authority and moral responsibility’, which includes ‘thinking about what happens to all people suffering on Aboriginal land’.⁵ He writes:

As Aboriginal people, we have affinities outside our own struggle. And for many Aboriginal activists at the grassroots level, we’re engaged with other communities who we think equally struggle with inequality in Australia.⁶

While many people who are not First Nations have also found a home on unceded sovereign Country, there are various barriers with moving towards meaningful solidarity with First Peoples. There are sometimes negative reactions towards notions of Indigenous sovereignty, with people getting defensive about being called a settler, some due to having no real control over the need to leave their homelands as refugees and asylum seekers, others due to ego, guilt and longstanding colonial mentalities inherited from family. Another mental barrier may include not wanting to be ‘political’ due to trauma following foreign government persecution, or because people lack the knowledge and context of colonisation of this region. There are also practical barriers for many poor and working class people to participate in rallies and campaigns, while they’re juggling multiple jobs and dealing with their own immediate life crises.

Nevertheless, there are also many examples of how First Nations, settler and migrant communities have worked to be in solidarity with each other. Amangu Yamatji academic and community organiser Crystal McKinnon has discussed the significance of ‘Welcome to Aboriginal Land Passport Ceremonies’ where First Peoples and asylum seekers have together challenged and exposed Australian settler claims of sovereignty that are based on white supremacy and carceral violence.⁷ McKinnon argues:

The ceremonies disrupt settler claims of sovereignty, and foster relationships built upon the mutual understanding that the colonial systems that force refugees and migrants into detention centres are the same ones that have violently oppressed the many Indigenous nations across what is now known as Australia.⁸

Regular people must be guided towards understanding that they too have a vested interest in struggling with First Peoples against the capitalist colonial state, as it is the root of the many struggles faced by the poor and working class everyday. However, this collective struggle must not be done upon an individualistic basis. To build mass participation and support for Indigenous Sovereignty, people need to be organised and empowered in directly democratic unions and collectives willing to take direct action, so we can wield this power in solidarity with First Nations movements. To truly call this place home, we must collectively pull the current system from its roots, and remake society in a way that respects Country, returns homelands to First Peoples and makes Indigenous sovereignty its foundation.

Footnotes

1. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2015). The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. University of Minnesota Press, p. 7. ↩

2. Ibid. ↩

3. City of Melbourne (2024). Stretch Reconciliation Action Plan 2024-2027: Pillar 1: Truth-telling. (Link). Accessed 20 January 2025. ↩

4. City of Melbourne (2024). Aboriginal Melbourne. (Link. Accessed 20 January 2025. ↩

5. Birch, T. (2023). A Brief Aboriginal History of Victoria. In Birch, T., Katona, J. & Foley, G. Native Title is Not Land Rights (p. 58, 56). Melbourne: Common Room Editions. ↩

6. Ibid, p.56. ↩

7. McKinnon, C. (2020). Enduring Indigeneity and Solidarity in Response to Australia’s Carceral Colonialism. Biography, 43(4), pp. 691–704. ↩

8. Ibid, p.700. ↩

the sky doesn't fall down, the world doesn't end, when a statue is removed
— Julie Gough, Trawlwoolway artist¹

Australia’s public spaces are full of celebratory commemorations of offensive colonial figures, whether it’s Cook, Batman, Macquarie, McMillan, Mitchell, Canning and more.² It is troubling for many people that our cities still contain these disturbing symbols. How are First Peoples meant to have any ‘breathing space’ from ongoing violence, when they are required to live amongst constant reminders of the oppression of their people and destruction of their lands with these public monuments?³

In recent decades, social movements have raised attention to the many prominent monuments and statues that venerate colonial conquest, calling for them to be removed or recontextualised as part of broader anticolonial class struggles of oppressed peoples across the globe. Grassroots efforts to address the anguish such monuments cause First Peoples and raise attention to contentious histories here in Australia, have led to statues of Cook being protested, graffitied, pissed on, and cut off at the ankles. Numerous creative works of art and literature, museum exhibitions, symposiums, film and television programs, and critical historical interpretation have also confronted the violent truth of Cook’s legacy that is frequently denied or obscured by such monuments.

One example is Blak Cook Book: New Cultural Perspectives on Cooks’ Cottage (2021), a text commissioned by the City of Melbourne in the ‘spirit of truth-telling’, that explores First Nations perspectives of James Cook’s voyages and the Cooks’ Cottage, and features a range of creative works that raise attention to the negative impacts of Cook’s legacy. ⁴ Authors Paola Balla, Clare Land and Kate Golding note that:

Cooks’ Cottage itself has frequently been the site of protests by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and supporters because it is a centrally-located public landmark that is highly symbolic of British colonisation, along with all the questions of law and justice that originated with Cook’s 1770 ‘possession’ of this land. The cottage is also seen as symbolic of a one-sided view of history, because for a long time there have been very few significant cues to encourage visitors and passers-by to consider the wide-ranging negative associations of Cook’s legacy for First Nations peoples.⁵

The book underscores how for First Peoples, Cook is the original invader and a harbinger of death.⁶ Consequently, the authors adamantly refused the book’s incorporation into the Cottage’s official interpretation to become part of its value, describing the Cottage as ‘irredeemable’.⁷ Instead, the Blak Cook Book is available for free download online and stocked in the city’s official visitor centres.

Topplings and defacements of Cook, produce some much needed moments of visual and spatial justice, and certainly healing, from the routine celebration of violent conquest and white colonial domination that we tacitly tolerate in our public spaces. While closures and topplings of colonial monuments can increase public consciousness about their histories and realities through media reporting and circulation on social media, we must also make sure these actions are part of an anticolonial class struggle movement that activates widespread community education and truth-telling for longer-term societal transformation.

As Rhodes Must Fall campaigners have recognised, neither the University of Cape Town or Oxford University movements to remove monuments to Cecil Rhodes—a ruthless imperialist who laid the foundations for apartheid in South Africa—‘has ever been just about statues’.⁸ Collective efforts to protest the colonial iconography on campuses, and the media attention these actions garnered, were strategically utilised by activists to instigate a larger discussion about South Africa and Britain’s colonial and white supremacist past, and to connect it to a present of entrenched economic and racial inequality at universities and their specific contexts. The call to topple statues was part of broader calls for decolonised and free education available to everyone regardless of their class background.⁹

Likewise with efforts to contest Cook iconography: this is about more than monuments.

As much as people have tried to fight with the pen, the paintbrush, and the spraycan to challenge colonial narratives—like we’re doing with this website—these efforts should not merely prompt brief catharsis. While we may laugh, reshare the images of toppled Cook statues on social media feeds, and gloat at the media and government handwringing—contesting and removing monuments does not on its own deal, strategically and collectively, with the material structures of colonial capitalism that they represent. Even if the Cottage is closed, destroyed, or relocated, we must be mindful that we will still be left standing in a park landscaped with a Union Jack, with all the power structures that harm us intact. The root causes that produced the Cooked Cottage still need to be abolished.

Truth-telling about Australia’s history is long overdue: our collective responsibility is to raise consciousness about the painful colonial realities of our world in ways that meaningfully lead to a resetting of the relationship between First Peoples, settlers and migrants, and the creation of a society with First Nations sovereignty at its centre.

In the meantime, we also need to be shifting our theory of change away from changing how things look on the surface, away from simple awareness raising and reforming institutions from within, towards building directly democratic social movements and unions that wield collective power in the form of direct action, to address not only regular people’s day-to-day struggles, but also First Peoples' self-determination.

Social wrongs existing in Australia don’t depend on the evilness of Captain Cook alone, but rather on the collaboration between colonial government and multinational capitalist institutions.¹⁰ So, the remedy doesn’t just lie in destroying the image of these individual perpetrators of violence or swapping them out with better alternatives. Instead we need social movements that work to destroy the social and property-relations that structure and reproduce domination in the Australian settler colony.

Australia has a long history of people organising to forge alliances and build power from the bottom-up. Below we provide some resources to inspire future direct action:

• Gumbaynggirr activist Gary Foley’s archive of First Nations radical organising and resistance on Youtube (Link)
• Aboriginal Passport Issuing Ceremony (2010) (Link)
• People’s History of Australia including the Turkish socialist movement and migrant worker strikes and riots (Link)
• New South Wales Builders' Labourers' Federation (BLF) Rocking the Foundations (1985) documentary (Link)
• Lorna Munro and Joel Sherwood-Spring’s Survival Guide podcast (2018–19) (Link)
• Boe Spearim’s Frontier War Stories podcast (2020–22) (Link)
• Ngumpin Kartiya: Untold Stories of the Gurindji people and the Wave Hill Walk Off documentary (2020) (Link)
• Gary Foley writing on the Black Power movement in Redfern 1968–72 (Link)
• Ningla A-Na, a 1972 documentary on the Aboriginal Tent Embassy (Link)
• Amy McQuire and Martin Hodgson’s Curtain podcast (2016–24) (Link)

Footnotes

1. Julie Gough cited in Aitken, S. (2021, 16 September). A statue of a Tasmanian colonist has been covered up. Should it ever return? The Guardian. (Link). Accessed 7 May 2024. ↩

2. Daley, P. (2017, 25 August). Statues are not history. Here are six in Australia that need rethinking. The Guardian. (Link). Accessed 4 June 2024. ↩

3. Aitken, S. (2021, 16 September). A statue of a Tasmanian colonist has been covered up. Should it ever return? The Guardian. (Link). Accessed 7 May 2024. ↩

4. City of Melbourne (2024). Truth-telling. (Link). Accessed 20 January 2025. ↩

5. Land, C., Balla, P. & Golding, K. (2021). Blak Cook Book: New Cultural Perspectives on Cooks' Cottage. A set of provocations. Melbourne: City of Melbourne, p. 44. (Link). Accessed 20 January 2025. ↩

6. Ibid, p. 20. ↩

7. Balla, P., Land, C., & Golding, K. (2021). Indigenous perspectives on Captain Cook: this full agency, this decolonised spirit. ACCA. (Link). Accessed 29 May 2024. ↩

8. Srinivasan, A. (2016) Under Rhodes. London Review of Books 38:7, p. 32. ↩

9. Ibid; Cabe, M. (2023, 21 August). How Rhodes Must Fall Amplified Calls to Decolonise. New Internationalist. (Link). Accessed 4 June 2024. ↩

10. Dick, S. (2024, 15 January). Santos wins legal battle against Tiwi Islands elders over $5.7b Barossa gas project's underwater pipeline. ABC News. (Link). Accessed 5 June 2024. ↩