Malicious damage to park infrastructure at Kingscliff

17 April 2018

Cenotaph also damaged in lead up to park official opening and Anzac Day

Police have been asked to investigate reports of malicious damage at Kingscliff’s new $22 million Rowan Robinson Park along the Marine Parade foreshore.

On Monday, a resident saw scooter riders using their scooters like hammers to smash anti-skating lugs off one of the blue tiled feature walls in the park, which is set to have its official opening this Saturday.

After the resident’s requests for the damage to stop were ignored, he took photos of the scooter riders vandalising the wall, which have been passed on to police. Council has also requested police to step up patrols of the park.

“Sadly, tiles on the Cenotaph were also damaged by bring skated on. This is not something many in the community would find acceptable in the lead-up to the opening and Anzac Day next week,” Council’s Manager Recreation Services, Stewart Brawley, said.

“Apart from the disrespect, this vandalism is disappointing as it may affect the type of community infrastructure we install across the Tweed in the future.

“”This is a flagship park and we tried to be more creative and not let vandalism dictate the design.

“We don’t want to have to go back to the plain, vanilla design required to ensure infrastructure is vandal proof,” he said.

Some seats in the park have been damaged to the extent that they will have to be removed and replaced.

“We just don’t have the money to continually repair things and ratepayers would expect their rates to spent more productively,” Mr Brawley said.

Anyone with information on vandalism at Rowan Robinson Park is asked to call Tweed Heads Police on (07) 5506 9499.

Downloads

Photo 1(JPG, 252KB)

Caption: Scooters were used to smash off anti-skate lugs at Kingscliff's new Rowan Robinson Park.

Photo 2(JPG, 151KB)

Caption: Damage to the tiles on Kingscliff's cenotaph from skating.