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Statues, monuments, fountains, mosaics, murals and other outdoor cultural objects are enduring elements of Australian cultural landscapes. As part of the domain of public history, these outdoor cultural objects make claims for certain physical and social interpretations and renditions of historical events. They exist at the intersection of history and memory – these ubiquitous objects in the public spaces of Australian cities and towns reflect who and what communities choose to remember, how historical events are understood at particular moments in time and a collective desire to influence how that event will be remembered in the future. Importantly, monuments also show how national events and stories are understood and interpreted at a local level. This paper discusses the representation of frontier and settler histories in outdoor cultural objects erected in Queensland during the twentieth century. A brief historical survey operates as a backdrop to a questioning of the strategies of representation used in contemporary examples of commemoration, such as at Reconciliation Place in Canberra.