TWO monuments symbolising Australia’s colonial past were damaged by protesters today ahead of an increasingly polarising national holiday that marks the anniversary of British settlement.

A statue in Melbourne of British naval officer James Cook, who in 1770 charted Sydney’s coast, was sawn off at the ankles, while a Queen Victoria monument in the city’s Queen Victoria Gardens was doused in red paint.

Images posted on social media showed the body of the Cook statue lying on the ground with the words “the colony will fall” spray-painted on the stone plinth where the statue formerly stood.