A man has been charged over decapitating the statue of a famous local prospector, adding the next twist to a mystery that left a rural Australian gold mining town puzzled.
Early on Thursday morning, the local council in Kalgoorlie – a city about 600km north-east of Perth in Western Australia – learned of “an act of vandalism that targeted” a statue of Paddy Hannan. Police believe that the night before, between 11pm and midnight, the head was lopped off.
Hannan was an Irish prospector who discovered gold in the region in 1893, paving the way for a gold rush and ultimate naming of the broader region around Kalgoorlie as the Goldfields. The decapitated statue was a replica of an original erected in the spot on 1929, in front of the town hall and main street which is also named in Hannan’s honour.
“A member of the community secured the head and returned it” to the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder council several hours later, police said, leaving authorities puzzled as to who committed the crime.
WA police said on Thursday night that a 38-year-old man had been charged with one count of unlawful damage. He will appear in court at a date yet to be set.
Earlier in the day, the council said it was “deeply disappointed by this act of vandalism which not only defaces a significant piece of our city’s history but also disrespects the memory of Paddy Hannan and the hardworking prospectors who played a vital role in shaping our community”.
“It’s a part of the fabric of that town and the history of it, so we are hoping to identify those responsible and bring them to justice,” the WA police inspector Geoff Desanges said, according to WA Today. “That status is iconic to the community of Kalgoorlie and surrounds,” he said.
The deputy mayor, Glenn Wilson, told the ABC: “As many people have pointed out already, it has been a disgusting act on what is one of our most iconic statues here in the city. The head is with the CEO at the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder admin office, so I dare say [he] has an odd head looking at him on his desk at the moment.”
Wilson said it was too early to know what repairs would cost. “How we reattach and how we repurpose that will obviously be up to some professionals in the future.”
Brooklen Dowson, a Kalgoorlie local, told the ABC: “We just heard about it so we ran down to check if he was OK and he’s not.”
“It’s pretty upsetting you know … someone probably came over in the middle of the night and decapitated a pretty well-known landmark in Kalgoorlie – that’s pretty sad.”
