Saturday, October 25, 2008

Come to Sydney Olympic Park - and wreck it

The Victoria Avenue entrance to Sydney Olympic Park (or Bicentennial Park as it is also known) goes through a subway under a motorway.  When I went through it this week, the walls of the subway had large graffiti murals sprayed on them.  As did the gates to the park, which are closed nightly.


There are two odd looking sculptures out the front, and both of them had graffiti around the base.


Some of the signage just inside the gates was unreadable because the removal of graffiti had also removed all the text and maps!


A few examples of the stuff sprayed in the subway.


One of the signs just inside the park.

The good news is all this has been reported.  As I went through the park, I kept an eye out for an official looking office building, and when I found one, I went up to the front desk and let them know about it.  It turns out that the office that I went to was the wrong one - it was some sort of parklands organisation that rents space from the Sydney Olympic Park Authority, but the woman I spoke to didn't like the idea of graffiti within the park anymore than I did, so she said, "I know just who to report this to", and she went off to ring them up.

The bad news is that all this graffiti was sprayed around the front gate - including on the front gate - and someone from the Park Authority opens and closes those gates every day.  My question is this - had they noticed the graffiti, and if they had, did they bother to report it?  

I suspect that the answer is "no", otherwise that graffiti would not have been there when I went past.

The other bad news is that a horticultural contractor was working about 50 metres from this graffiti - you could easily see it from where they parked their vehicles - and it appeared that none of them viewed it as their problem.  I have seen that company in that location before - they take care of the garden beds at the BBQ area near the entrance to the park.  That's the problem with contractors who are brought in to do a specific job - they only care about what they are there to take care of, and don't take a holistic view of the park - which is an enormous shame.  

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