What Should the City of Melbourne Do with the Inaccurate and Offensive John Batman Memorial Obelisk?

In this chapter, settler artist and researcher Amy Spiers speculates about forms of imaginative visual and spatial justice that could be enacted to address contentious monuments and truth-tell the past in public spaces permeated with colonial place-making. The chapter focuses on a critical examination of the bluestone memorial obelisk to John Batman, located at the Queen Victoria Market, Naarm (Melbourne), that inaccurately describes Batman as founder of Melbourne on a site that was in 1835 ‘then unoccupied’. Drawing on lessons from previous creative (counter-)monuments addressing traumatic histories in Naarm (Melbourne); Nipaluna, Lutruwita (Hobart, Tasmania) and Berlin, Germany, Spiers argues that the City of Melbourne to date has failed to provide substantive remembrances to the victims of Batman’s horrific deeds that includes mass murder, deception and land theft. Addressing speculation that the Batman obelisk will quietly disappear due to a forthcoming multi-million-dollar renewal of the market, Spiers’ chapter argues that the redevelopment provides a significant opportunity for the City of Melbourne to fulfil its declared commitment to truth-tell the impact of the colonial past by meaningfully atoning for Batman’s memorial and legacy, and acknowledging the anguish caused to First Peoples, by fostering a culture of remembrance through creative commemorations.