Contested Colonial Heritage in Melbourne: The Case of John Batman

Like other Australian cities, Melbourne is replete with multiple references to contested colonial people and events. This entry considers two specific memorials that reference the controversial figure of John Batman, the “founder” of Melbourne, who effectively dispossessed local Aboriginal people through a discredited “treaty” when he arrived in 1835. It uses a concept of atmospheres to analyze the Batman memorials’ significance and impact as heritage. It argues that atmospheres allow us to consider the experiential qualities of heritage to see how people actually make sense of and understand it. It can help explain why heritage sites affect us and why people continue to think about them, even after they have left them. It offers a new way to understand heritage because it highlights how heritage structures shift in significance and take on new meanings and shows how this relates to the complex and dynamic spatial contexts where they are sited. This is particularly important for contested or controversial heritage.