Nick covers Italy, the Vatican, Greece and the Balkans. He has reported for the paper since 2000, having previously covered Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific 5:02pm GMT A decision to replace the toppled statue of a British colonial figure with an installation called “the ring of truth-telling” in Australia has prompted protests.

The statue of William Crowther, a surgeon and a leader of the British island colony of Tasmania, was cut down by activists in Hobart in 2024.

Crowther was controversial because he broke into a morgue and took the skull of an Aboriginal man named William Lanne for what he claimed was scientific research.

The empty sandstone plinth where his statue had stood since 1889 is now encircled by a bronze ring inscribed with commentary contextualising the colonial settlement of Tasmania and how it affected the island’s Aboriginal inhabitants.

The circle refers to Crowther and the colonial era, Lanne and Aboriginal history, and observations about historic statues.

The bronze ring, surrounded by a garden of native plants in the city’s Franklin Square, was unveiled on Tuesday.

The bronze ring features inscriptions that seek to provide context for the colonial settlement of Tasmania and how it affected the island’s Aboriginal inhabitants Protesters objected to the fact that the statue had not been reinstated. They held up placards which read: “Hobart city council have decided that after 134 years of heritage, our statue will be torn down. We say no!”Louise Elliot, a city councillor, criticised the installation and objected to the statue being put into storage. “I believe in additions to our cultural heritage, not deletions,” she said.

She called the installation “the crescendo of a A$300,000 project in a cost-of-living crisis that has left the community more divided than ever before”.

Ms Elliot said that during his life, Crowther was highly respected in the community and hundreds of people made small donations to pay for the original monument. “It’s wrong his memory has been used as an outlet for anger,” she said.

The sandstone plinth where Crowther’s statue had stood since 1889 was sprayed with the words ‘what goes around’ after the figure was sawn down Mat Hinds, the architect who designed the installation, called the bronze circle “a ring of truth-telling, effectively like a halo of light”.

The protesters were confronted by Aboriginal community members, who have supported the removal of the statue and the reinterpretation of the colonial monument.

Nunami Sculthorpe-Green, a writer of Aboriginal heritage who contributed text to the bronze circle, said the statue had been regarded as offensive to indigenous people for decades.

“Like many others, I celebrated when it was torn down and applauded those who did it,” she said. The bronze circle was “not about changing our history, it’s about widening the narrative of what’s included in our history”. Anna Reynolds, the lord mayor of Hobart, said the installation was the culmination of extensive consultations.

“It’s not about erasing history, but rather providing even more information, context and a broader range of perspectives that have often been absent from public spaces,” she said.

“What we have here is a project that actually is telling us more history than we had before, a deeper history with more information about things that were suppressed or not considered important.”The skull of William Lanne, an Aboriginal man who died at the age of 34, was removed from a morgue by Crowther for what he claimed was scientific research In a letter to the Royal College of Surgeons in London, Crowther described how he had “obtained the head” of Lanne.

Nicknamed “King Billy”, Lanne was born on the west coast of Tasmania and became a whaler before dying in 1869 at the age of 34 from dysentery and cholera.

A number of British colonial statues in Australia have been vandalised, toppled or beheaded in recent years, including statues of Queen Victoria, King George V and Captain James Cook.