GRAFFITI daubed across a Major Mitchell cairn was removed within hours of being reported to Loddon Shire last week.
Inglewood’s Steve Russell was travelling to Wedderburn about midday when he noticed the cairn on the side of the Calder Highway near town had been defaced.
He was among several people who reported the vandalism - a red cross over the plaque erected in 1930 by the Shire of Korong commemorating the journey of explorer Major Thomas Mitchell through the area on July 7, 1836.
The cairn was also daubed with the words Land Back, the slogan used by Aboriginal activists wanting indigenous sovereignty in Australia.
Mr Russell said: “I had been taking my wife up to Wedderburn for lunch at the hotel when I noticed the graffiti.
“It’s silly vandalism ... you can’t hold a grudge against people now. It’s wrong,” he said.
“We can learn from the past and not repeat it.”
Shire operations director Steve Phillips said graffiti had been removed by a council crew.
“We’re not sure who is responsible for monuments like this. If council didn’t clean it off, not sure anyone else would.”
More than 30 cairns or monuments were erected across Victoria from 1914 marking the journey of Scottish surveyor and explorer  Major Mitchell.
His third expedition crossed the Murray River into what is now Victoria, naming the land Australia Felix.
Mitchell’s surveying party fired on Aboriginal people crossing the Murray River, near Euston.
Major Mitchell cairns are also at Pyramid Hill and Fernihurst.
Aboriginal land rights activists have targeted colonial era monuments in Melbourne and Sydney in recent years with a statue of Captain Cook being vandalised and a monument to John Batman sawn in half.