Walking down Queen Street, past the old cemetery brick wall and towards the edge of the carpark, you will find another site of contested history that evidences changing perspectives on the heritage of the Queen Victoria Market site. The John Batman memorial is dedicated to the supposed founder of Melbourne, who in 1835 claimed to have made a treaty with Wurundjeri elders for the land surrounding Port Phillip Bay. Dying of syphilis in 1839, Batman’s place of burial in the Old Melbourne Cemetery was lost for a period before renewed interest led to the identification of his remains and the raising of a public subscription for the memorial. It refers to Batman as Melbourne’s founder and that the land was at the time ‘unoccupied’. Now, we can recognise this today as being a bit problematic. Indeed, in 1992, Melbourne City Council affixed a plaque as an addendum:
WHEN THE MONUMENT WAS ERECTED IN 1881 THE COLONY CONSIDERED THAT THE ABORIGINAL PEOPLE DID NOT OCCUPY LAND. IT IS NOW CLEAR THAT PRIOR TO THE COLONISATION OF VICTORIA THE LAND WAS INHABITED AND USED BY ABORIGINAL PEOPLE.
Batman’s remains are no longer at the site, having been exhumed and removed to Fawkner Cemetery during the early twentieth century exhumations. The memorial then was relocated to various points in the city, including Batman Avenue before finding its way back to its current position in the 1990s.
Its presence at the Queen Victoria Market goes someway into identifying the site’s former use as a cemetery. However, memorialisation of Batman is a hot topic in Melbourne of late; with recent moves by local councils and other groups to change the name of eponymous local parks and even electorates, given contemporary revelations on Batman’s role in the dispossession and mistreatment of Aboriginal people. This feeds into a larger trend in heritage of recognising the difficult aspects of colonial pasts in order to facilitate reconciliation – a ‘mea culpa’ type of approach. As the head of the ‘Rename Batman’ organisation, Emily de Rango argues, "Symbols matter. What we name something says a lot about what we value" (Payne 2017).
The City of Melbourne plaque with its disclaimer, whilst is the spirit of recognition, is not exactly readily apparent to a passer-by. The story of Aboriginal occupation could still be seen as being marginalised here and the monument an anachronism.
On the other hand, does the monument in its current form have its own value? It can tell us about the way people were framing Melbourne’s history at the time of its erection. It was built in 1881 – almost 30 years after Batman’s death – what does this renewed interest in Batman say about society at the time? In the 1880s, Marvellous Melbourne was stepping out onto the world stage with International Exhibitions and a booming economy – it seems this was time for white Melbournians to try and assert a foundation story that validated the western colonisation narrative. Could the memorial, like we see in the preservation of other places of tragedy, also serve a purpose in making sure that the attitudes towards the Indigenous in the past are not forgotten so that a more inclusive history is adopted going forward?
Again, like the Old Cemetery and the Aboriginal section, the Batman Memorial is a part of a difficult and contested history that feeds into a wider ongoing debate about recognising Indigenous history in Australia. Heritage scholar Ashworth argues that all heritage is deliberately selected from the past to satisfy current needs and demands (Ashworth 2008, p. 231). The opportunity presented by the Queen Victoria Market renewal project is an chance to discuss if retaining, removing or reinterpreting this memorial could be a part of the way that we use our heritage to tell specific stories at specific times.