Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, I rise to talk about This is History, a long‑running public art and community engagement project in Nipaluna/Hobart that explores history, truth‑telling and how we choose to remember the past. Previously known as Crowther Reinterpreted, the project began in response to requests from the Tasmanian Aboriginal community for action regarding the Crowther monument in our capital city’s Franklin Square. After six years of community engagement, consultation and some contestation, This is History launched today, and it’s the newest installation in the otherwise colonial town square.
William Crowther was a 19th century surgeon, naturalist and former premier. His legacy is dark and deeply disturbing. Following the death of Aboriginal leader William Lanne, also known as King Billy, in 1869, Crowther mutilated Lanne’s remains, including removing and stealing his head. While this occurred within the broader colonial practice of collecting and trading Aboriginal human remains without consent as a means to personal notoriety and advancing personal status, it was also explicitly tied to racial hierarchies, eugenics and theories of European superiority that classified Aboriginal peoples as a dying race, important so-called science in the case of colonisation.
For Lutruwita’s Palawa people, the monument long‑represented a painful reminder of invasion and attempted genocide, and the ongoing need for truth-telling, acknowledgement and recognition. Nala Mansell, stalwart palawa campaigner for rights, recognition and land return, puts the pain of the Crowther statue in plain English. She said:
It’s so hard to comprehend how people cannot understand the offensiveness of glorifying a man who is responsible for mutilating a human being simply because of their race. To Aboriginal people, William Lanne represents our struggles, our treatment, our dispossession and everything we fought for over 220 years.
In response to a growing chorus of concern, to their credit, the Hobart City Council resolved to undertake, in collaboration with the palawa community, an interpretation project that would tell the layered story of King Billy, Crowther and his statue. Over five years, the project progressed through consultation, temporary artworks, public discussion and, ultimately, the removal of the bronze figure.
In the first stage of the project in 2021, the council commissioned five artists to create temporary public artworks responding to the events surrounding Crowther and Lanne. These works, by Allan Mansell, Roger Scholes and Greg Lehman, Julie Gough and Jillian Mundy, offered different perspectives on history, memory, absence and truth-telling. A public survey also invited the community to share its understanding and ideas for a more permanent response anchored in justice and truth. Stage 2 involved further community consultation and consideration by the council. In August 2022, it resolved to remove the bronze figure while retaining the sandstone plinth. Stage 3 included a development application, planning approval and subsequent appeal, culminating in removal of the bronze figure in 2024. It’s now stored in the valuables collection.
In a poignant twist, impatient activists cut down Crowther at the ankles on the very morning the planning tribunal dismissed an appeal of the formal council approval of its removal. The tribunal decision and removal of the statue marked an important transition for the project, but not its conclusion. The final stage is the commissioning of permanent artwork and interpretation surrounding the original plinth in Franklin Square, launched today. The new interpretation combines concise text on-site with longer pieces online, allowing visitors to explore the stories in greater depth. Edited by Jane Rawson, three writers bring distinct perspectives. Palawa storyteller Nunami Sculthorpe‑Green explores Palawa life and the story of William Lanne; historian Alison Alexander examines the colonial life and William Crowther; and art critic Andrew Harper considers the social and artistic questions surrounding the removal of statues, both legally and illegally. The installation features a bronze ring and circular garden of endemic flowers framing the plinth, which, in the words of the architects Taylor and Hinds, ‘can be summarised as a halo that holds the experiential pressure of the remaining plinth, a ring of truth-telling and circular garden that surfaces the deeper, more ancient and abiding reality of the cultural landscape’.
I applaud the Hobart City Council and all involved in this important project, and encourage everyone to pay a visit. I’ll conclude with some generous words from Nunami, drawn from the project and speaking to the reality of a common island bond. Nunami writes:
Ultimately, Crowther Reinterpreted is about more than a monument. It is about listening to community voices, acknowledging our dark past and creating space for a more inclusive understanding of our shared history.
