Maritime NSW

There is a park in Drummoyne that I go through on a regular basis.  It's a nice big park - right on the water, and equipped with a good boat ramp, a footy ground, a playground and plenty of room for dogs, kids, cricket games and all that sort of thing.  It's also quite well used, and unfortunately, it cops a bit of abuse.

The problem is that the abuse never seems to get cleaned up.  All the rubbish bins have been vandalised - I noticed one had been ripped from its setting recently and tossed into the harbour.  Even plaques dedicated to former mayors of the suburb have been vandalised.

You don't want to know about the toilets and the stands around the oval.

The bins and toilets didn't really surprise me.  What did surprise me was vandalism around the boat ramp.  The boat ramp itself is pretty immune to damage - you'd need a case of dynamite to put a dent in it, but the signage around it is suffering.  

Now the boat ramp in question is pretty popular with boaties.  Whenever I go through the car park, there are a couple of empty boat trailers there, and I occasionally see a boat being winched into or out of the water.  Why have none of these people bothered to report the damage around the ramp which is so apparent?  

Here is my response to just one small bit of damage.

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20 April 2009

 Mr Steve Dunn

A/CEO

Maritime NSW

Locked Bag 5100
Camperdown NSW 1450

  

Dear Mr Dunn

 Vandalised signage at boat ramp in Five Dock

 I am writing to you because it is unclear from your website who I should be addressing this to.

 The photo below was taken at the boat ramp at Taplin Park, off Bayswater St in Five Dock Bay.  Can you please arrange to have to repaired or removed

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I got a letter back not long after to say that they'd fixed it.  I wasn't really that worried about the sign - what worried me was how hard it was to figure out how to contact the right person at Maritime NSW (their website is a dog in this regard), and that it seems that they are rarely patrolling their turf.  If someone from Maritime NSW did a regular sweep through this boat ramp say once a week or so, they'd quickly pick up on problems like this and fix them.

But I guess they are all too busy having coffee at Liquidity to get out and actually check on their infrastructure.  If they won't get out of the office to have a look, we'll just have to do it for them.  My big hope here is that someone in Maritime NSW thinks, "Gee, we should get out more regularly to check that everything is ok at our ramps".

Personally, I doubt it, but now that I know who to write to, I can continue to dig into my stamp pile to annoy him until they start to be proactive rather than reactive.  Simple vandalism like this really detracts from what is otherwise a lovely spot.