Tag: Invasion Day

Sydney: more actions against ‘Australia day’

Burn the [flag] banner

Indymedia: On the 26th of January, the 226th year since the British Naval fleet of Arthur Philip landed on this territory, we made some modest actions to counter the colonial narrative of ‘Australia’. 4 banners denouncing the nationalist holiday were hung from highway bridges in Broadway, Stanmore, Kogarah and Sutherland reading:

STOLEN LAND

NO PRIDE IN GENOCIDE

FUCK AUSSIE PRIDE

BURN THE (AUSTRALIAN FLAG)

Stolen Land banner

Continue reading “Sydney: more actions against ‘Australia day’”

Sydney: (more) Invasion Day vandalism

via Indymedia

Let no one say the past is dead.
The past is all about us and within
– Oodgeroo Noonuccal 1970

On the night of January 26th, while drunken nationalists celebrated the 226th anniversary of a British military invasion, some unaustralians vandalised the facade of the Ryde electoral office of Victor Dominello, the state minster for Aboriginal affairs and for citizenship.

On the same day in 1938 Aboriginal activists demonstrated for citizenship rights in their stolen lands, rights which were not granted until 1967. Yet citizenship has done little protect aboriginal people from poverty, prisons and police persecution. It has not recovered their stolen lands, and neither will the new Abbott approved call to recognised indigenous people in the constitution, another empty gesture like Rudd’s cheap apology.

When politicians talk of reconciliation, they seek to silence those who call for land rights and autonomy, to put an end to Koori resistance with some hollow words and ceremonies, while leaving the sovereignty of the state untouched.

From the White Australia Policy to Operation Sovereign Borders, citizenship itself is mechanism of state oppression, where politicians and bureaucrats grant select privileges to some while excluding and criminalising those deemed unworthy or ‘illegal’. Continue reading “Sydney: (more) Invasion Day vandalism”

Sydney: ‘Invasion Day’ graffiti at Botany Bay

24  January: Graffiti denouncing Australia Day as ‘Invasion Day’ has been daubed along the foreshore at Sydney’s Botany Bay.

Anti Australia Day slogans were painted on retaining walls, toilet blocks and other structures along an 8km foreshore stretch overnight, prompting a council clean-up on Friday.

Melbourne: Captain Cook’s Cottage vandalised again with anti-Australia Day message

26th Jan Australia's Shame

24 January, ABC: The historic Cooks’ Cottage, on the outskirts of Melbourne’s CBD, has been graffitied with anti-Australia Day slogans again.

The building in the Fitzroy Gardens was vandalised overnight, with slogans including “26th January, Australia’s shame” and another containing profanity.

Vandals sprayed fluorescent-coloured paint across the historic cottage and smashed a window in.

Police believe light globes filled with paint were also used to vandalise the second storey of the cottage.

It is the third time the building has been vandalised in a year; it was sprayed twice in the days after Australia Day last year.

Continue reading “Melbourne: Captain Cook’s Cottage vandalised again with anti-Australia Day message”

Melbourne: graffiti cleaned off Captain Cook’s cottage, press coverage

February 6: Council workers hosed off graffiti from Captain Cook’s cottage done as an anarchist attack for Invasion Day (a statement can be read here).

Or, as one radio station put it:  “An online anarchist group protesting white settlement has since taken responsibility for the attack.”

According to ABC news: “It is the second such attack in little more than a week.”

Edited to add: “Melbourne City Council revealed the cottage had been paint-bombed on January 28, with a subsequent graffiti attack on February 4 in which the words, ‘Cappy Cook was a crook killer liar theif’ (sic) were spray-painted across the brickwork.” (The Australian)

A news broadcast showing the graffiti can be seen here.