A community facility, costing upward of $150,000 per year to maintain, was destroyed by senseless vandals in Inverell on Sunday night.
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Inverell East Bowling Club’s head green keeper Clayton Rogers arrived to work to find numerous dents and scratch marks in one of three bowling greens.
On the second green, vandals had stolen a chair from the back deck and drove it at least 15cm into the ground, for no other reason then to be reckless.
Mr Rogers also found men’s underwear tied up the flagpole and the ropes undone to make removal of the undies that much harder.
He suspected the vandalism occurred between 11.30pm and 5am on Sunday evening.
“I was here between 7-8pm on Sunday night to do the sprinklers. Then I dropped back in around 11pm after that little bit of rain to calibrate the sprinklers. I was only about 15 minutes but I didn’t see anyone or anything then,” he said.
Inverell East Bowling Club general manager Nathan Hughes said the most disappointing thing was play would be affected due to the vandalism.
“It’s a community facility that takes an exceptional amount of time, funding and resources to ensure the greens are maintained for the whole town to use.”
Police attended the scene taking photographs, evidence and CCTV to review. Green keepers had to work double time on Monday to patch the greens however it will be at least 12 weeks before it can be renovated.
“We renovate the greens each year so from October until Easter we only play with two greens, rotating as each undergoes renovation.
“It takes about eight weeks for each green to be fully renovated but the green that is most damaged is the last scheduled to be renovated,” Mr Rogers said.
“Trying to operate with two greens, one of which was sprayed on Monday morning and was unusable, then to have this happen is very disappointing,” Mr Hughes added.
For now, the green has been patched, however the scratches which look a lot like the word “gang” will have to naturally grow out.
“They also stole eight boundary pegs and even went to the trouble of undoing our flagpole ropes to make it harder for us to get their undies down.
“They ripped out a light at the front and kicked in boards at the side of the building,” Mr Hughes said.
Anyone who may have information regarding the senseless vandalism is encouraged to phone Inverell police on 6722 0599 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
