Vandals blight Torquay foreshore

VANDALS have struck along the Torquay foreshore, spraying tags on lamp posts, chairs and the historic gates of Taylor Park, but a full clean-up may have to wait until the end of peak season.

Last week, Surf Coast retailer Corinne Nigro emailed the Surf Coast Shire and the Great Ocean Road Coast Committee with photographs showing that furniture along The Esplanade had been tagged, as had “almost every lamp post between Fishermans Beach and Gilbert Street”.

However, a clash of responsibility between the various graffitied items has slowed the clean-up effort.

Replying to the email, a Surf Coast Shire administration officer said the council could “unfortunately only remove graffiti from our own assets, unless it is offensive then we will remove it immediately”, and noted that the land along the foreshore and the lamp posts were GORCC and Powercor assets, respectively.

In response to Mrs Nigro, a GORRC manager said vandals unfortunately came with the peak period but the authority had “a policy of removing any explicit or offensive material immediately”.

“However, due to our limited budget and the amount of graffiti we get, we are unable to remove all non-offensive graffiti immediately – this will be completed over the next few weeks as visitor numbers die off.

“We need to schedule works in an efficient manner that involves a whole day’s work for our contractors.

“We also know that removing graffiti in peak season often sees it replaced with more graffiti before the end of the holidays.”

GORCC has since hired a contractor to remove the graffiti from the furniture.

A spokesperson from Powercor said the graffiti report had been forwarded to the company’s maintenance team.