An Overdue Outrage at The Shrine

[fusion_dropcap boxed="no" boxed_radius="" class="" id="" color="" hue="" saturation="" lightness="" alpha="" text_color=""]F[/fusion_dropcap]or those who don't know Melbourne or retain only snapshot memories of a fading visit, that 120-hectare green wedge between the Yarra and St Kilda Road is generally (and incorrectly) known as the Botanical Gardens, and it has long been a prime spot for a bit of trouble. If Victoria boasted a keyboard tickler who wrote as badly as schlockmeister Stephen King, it might be cast as an ancient Aboriginal burial ground and subject to all the curses attributed to restless and vengeful spirits. Ghosts or not, it boasts a rich history of discord, even of sudden death, in which the Anzac Day booing of this year's Welcome to Country is but the latest entry.

Around the late 1840s, when prickly botanist Ferdinand von Mueller began transforming a plot of native bush, bushrangers would emerge from what was then marshy scrub to waylay St Kilda-bound escapees from the filth and epidemics that periodically ravaged a nascent Melbourne, which must have been a godawful place to live. Bourke Street in front of what is now Myer was a swamp and cessfield that could be crossed only on duckboards. More than a few lost their footing and drowned in the muck.



The Elizabeth street creek, which now runs beneath the roadway, was an open sewer which Aboriginal fringe dwellers sensibly avoided by camping well to the north of the site where St Francis church, erected in 1845, is one of the city's few surviving pre-Gold Rush relics. It was here a young girl, Sarah Ritter*, who had been missing for two days, was found safe and well in their care, so not all the news was bad.Mueller's achievements were broad and great, if not altogether blessed by what today would be regarded as worthy ends.

The blackberries that plague Gippsland and the High Country, for instance, he cultivated at the Gardens and propagated on his travels in order that settlers might have something sweet for dampers and dessert. Rabbits and firebugs thank him for that, nobody else. Relieved of his post as the Gardens' director in 1851, he did not take well to the snub and fancied himself the target of a vendetta.

Perhaps this monomaniacal German, driven by the energy of obsession, was simply hard to get along with, the evidence to be found in terse exchanges concerning his presumed right to author the first attempt at a definitive catalogue of Australian flora.Quite some years later, in 1924, Norman Alfred List, "a native of Richmond, globe wanderer, Mexican hobo and inveterate student of mathematics, astronomy and surveying" and also, most likely, a paranoid schizophrenic, shot and killed two young men and their sweethearts for no apparent reason, then fled to Pakenham and slashed his wrists, his suicide coming as a great relief for "Melbourne's 900,000 citizens", as a contemporary account put it. The year before, when police went on strike and a larrikin legion immediately looted the CBD from Spring Street to Spencer, the Domain Parklands -- the correct name for the overall area -- became the scene of a spontaneous thieves' market and swap meet.

This miscreants' playground was sanctified and redeemed by the Shrine of Remembrance, and for decades a respectful peace reigned in and around the bastion-like sandstone edifice. It looms as it has since 1934 above those heading southeast on St Kilda Road, a reminder beneath its stepped-pyramid roof, just as patron and prime mover General Sir John Monash intended, of Australians who perished on the battlefields of World War I and later. Monash died three years before completion but his vision of a secular temple honouring the 60,000 lives lost in mud and sand and Gallipoli's bloody gullies was never back then sullied nor challenged.

Who could imagine someone so low as to commit such sacrilege? And for decades no one could or did.In 2006, the Gardens really did become a graveyard when Aboriginal skeletons held for decades in the basement of Melbourne Museum were buried in a pageant of smoking ceremonies and white ochre, their common grave sealed beneath a large rock and marked by a plaque that incorrectly asserts those interred belonged to specific tribes despite the museum having no such recordsof their provenance. Shortly after, this site intended to prompt reflection became a circus when Robbie Thorpe, of the Collingwood tribe and Senator Lidia's uncle, lit a "sacred fire" some 200 metres from the Eternal Flame and set up camp with fellow activists to protest the Commonwealth Games and anything else that came to mind.

Some weeks after the occupation began, Thorpe's Smith Street Nation gained a multicultural overlay of sorts when a man in full Red Indian regalia entered the eyesore of cars, caravans, tents, empty bottles and general rubbish to express indigene solidarity. Asked if he was Crow, Apache, Cherokee or whatever, he admitted only to being a savvy bargain hunter who had found the buckskins and feathers at a good price in a Frankston op shop. There was little moment to chuckle, however, for that burlesque moment was soon eclipsed on the news pages by word of the Eternal Flame being extinguished in the night.

Thorpe & Co., denied drowning the fire with the contents of a stubby and swore blind they were no less appalled than their genocidal invaders. Whoever did it, however, the spell had been broken.

[fusion_dropcap boxed="no" boxed_radius="" class="" id="" color="" hue="" saturation="" lightness="" alpha="" text_color=""]M[/fusion_dropcap]any would argue the Shrine's management is as out of touch as that Frankston redskin.In 2022, a public outcry foiled plans to bathe the building in rainbow colours which, it was explained, would have honoured homosexuals who laid down their lives in Australia's defence. But why only gays? Surely those of the fallen with a heterosexual attraction to, say, redheads deserve equal recognition if sexuality rather than sacrifice is to be the institution's leitmotif? The official line was that fears for the safety of Shrine staff forced the cancellation, but there never came an admission that it had been an extraordinarily dopey move to divide the grey battalions of the dead according to their legatees' fashionable new passion for identity politics.

More recently, Shrine management announced plans to make the main building's annexe a for-hire venue catering to social functions and publicity events, a move immediately denounced by, among others, former Premier Jeff Kennett, himself an Army veteran, as "entirely inappropriate".And who can forget the day in 2021 when anti-lockdown demonstrators were harassed from their CBD assembly point by VicPol's armoured car and rubber bullets, herded past Flinders Street Station and driven under relentless police pursuit into the Gardens and onto the Shrine's steps, where an all-day siege would end only when Daniel Andrews' praetorian guard advanced and opened fire on their fellow Australians. Again Shrine management had a good line, swearing blind there was CCTV footage of the landmark being defiled by beer-swillers and their urine.

None of that alleged video was ever released, however, no charges were laid, and no independent evidence of the allegation has ever been produced. Several of those present when VicPol not only attacked but, having routed the occupiers, shot them as they ran for cover, have told Quadrant Online the Shrine was a reasonable and logical place to seek sanctuary. "What better place to protest the freedoms we've all lost," an Elwood woman said the next day, "than a sacred building dedicated to those who gave their lives for that freedom?" Others might and will disagree with her sentiments, but the massive rubber-bullet bruises on her back and thigh attested to an undoubted sincerity that what was done to Melburnians by executive fiat and on no known medical advice was an abomination.

[fusion_dropcap boxed="no" boxed_radius="" class="" id="" color="" hue="" saturation="" lightness="" alpha="" text_color=""]N[/fusion_dropcap]ow let us turn to the events of Friday, which has seen the criticism directed almost entirely at those in the 50,000-strong crowd attending the Dawn service who raised their voices against welcome giver Rob Brown.The racket, let it be said, was a disgrace and an outrage, and that applies no matter how much one detests the notion that it is right and proper to 'welcome' Australians to their own homes. The Shrine is, well, a shrine, one dedicated to honouring those who made the supreme sacrifice; to let any other sentiment but decorous respect impinge their domain and memory should be regarded as plumbing the same tawdry depths explored by the site's alleged champions efforts to make the grounds available for piss-ups and rainbow lights.

We are told the instigator and principal howler is a neo-Nazi, which "far right" label, apparently, is enough to shame into silence any and all who share his disdain for possum-skinned poseurs laying guilt trips on blameless fellow Australians. The proud Mr Brown has received no criticism in the legacy press, yet much is due.First, if the cat-callers and heckling are to be condemned, how about noting that Brown lacked the couth to remove his hat in deference to the dead? Or is it that doffing an American-style baseball cap goes against indigenous tradition?And what, exactly, was he intent on conveying with what amounted to a four-and-a-half minute geography lesson about the territory some of his ancestors controlled prior to white settlement?Finally, there is the question worth pursuing of how much he was paid, if paid at all, with estimates and guesstimates on social media positing anywhere from $500 to $5000.

And yet, for whatever the amount might have been, the word 'Anzac' passed his lips not once.We do know, however, how much Chief Executive Dean M. Lee is paid-- $330,000 per year as of 2023, the last year for which records are available from the Charities Commission.

For that sort money, one might expect just a bit more nous in the selection of guests, speakers and causes.*Sarah Ritteris is the author's great-great-grandmother and the account of her rescue by Aborigines should be taken as further proof you need to check everything the media reports as truth. According to family tradition, the reporter got her story hopelessly wrong, as little Sarah went missing from early Melbourne's shanty town and not after the family moved to Horsham.

The post An Overdue Outrage at The Shrine first appeared on Quadrant..