Item MM 110480 Digital Photograph - Coles Store Decorated for Melbourne Olympic Games, Showing Batman & Colonial Settlement of Melbourne, Bourke Street, Melbourne, 1956

Summary

Note: This image includes elements appropriated from First Peoples culture and heritage and stereotypical depictions. It is also an overt portrayal of colonisation and dispossession which is deeply offensive and painful to First Peoples. Such cultural appropriation and stereotyping is not condoned by Museums Victoria which considers it to be inappropriate, even racist. Historical distance and context do not excuse or erase this fact.

Description of Content

View of Coles Department Store, Bourke Street, decorated with a tableau of bushland and a man in bushman's hat and red scarf standing in foreground. This photograph shows 'The Foundation of Melbourne', Coles Store Bourke Street, decorated for the 1956 Olympics. This is 'View 1', Bushland. The display tells the story of the founding of Melbourne. John Batman is looking over the Yarra and surrounding area announcing: 'This will be the place for a village'. The figure of Batman was three dimensional and the background was in panels which were mechanised. Every couple of minutes they would change to reveal 'View 2', the new city of Melbourne, captured in image MM110481. This Coles Store was near Myers on Bourke Street.