Efforts to stir cultural outrage over the decision to “banish” a statue of the heroically failed explorers Burke and Wills from Melbourne’s City Square offer a welcome opportunity to reconsider the tragic folly of their 1860 expedition.
The 1865 statue – Victoria’s oldest public monument – was put in storage almost nine years ago, having been relocated four times previously without controversy. But now the monument has made modest news again, after the former Victorian Liberal premier Jeff Kennett and state MP David Davis described the decision to keep it mothballed as “not respectful’’ and a “politically correct’’ airbrushing of history.
