The changing face of graffiti

Here's a bit of old school graffiti. This is the sort of stuff that I have always thought of as graffiti - that is, spray-can based. There's nothing artistic in any of this, even though it was all done indoors and out of sight, allowing plenty of time to create a masterpiece if the vandal had any talent.

This is what it has evolved into - the spray cans in our area seem to have disappeared, and have been replaced with fat textas. Gone are the bright colours - it seems most vandals can only get their hands on black ink these days.

I don't know what is driving this - whether it is the tougher retailing laws, or tougher laws regarding juveniles caught with cans, or Police stopping and searching likely teenagers. Whatever the cause, I'm not seeing anything like the amount of spray paint that I saw a year ago.

Textas are useless on a rough surface, so the spray paint drought is restricting vandals to a small number of smooth surfaces. Can't complain about that.

There goes the teenage drop-in centre

We don't actually seem to have an official teenage drop in centre around these parts. So as with all things, if one doesn't exist, fertile minds will create one.

This particular building has been abandoned and empty for as long as I have lived in the area - but just recently, the developers have moved in and demolition has commenced.

The local vandals weren't deterred by security fences or boarded up doors. As you can see, they've been plenty busy on redecorating the interior.

Most of the windows have been broken, and there is evidence in several locations of fires having been lit inside.

In a year or two, all of this will probably be replaced with modern apartments like those in the background.

I was wondering how the stone blocks were being removed - with a very big saw.

Right now, the only residents at this site are a couple of ducks.

Four for the tip

Nothing to do with me - I found this abandoned car this way. The Council slapped a sticker on it recently, so it is close to being towed to the tip.

Rego expired a few months ago. Although it doesn't show in this photo, the car is well covered in leaf litter and looks like it has not moved for months.

Rego expired a few months ago. The woman who owns the car saw me photographing it and asked if I wanted to buy it! No, I just want it off the street.

Rego also expired some 6 months ago. Again, the leaf litter on this one was pretty thick, especially on the windows, indicating it has not moved in months.

These three cars were all within a few hundred metres of each other in two streets. I found all four during a short walk around an unfamiliar suburb.

Keeping track of things

As the Democrats used to say, you need to keep the bastards honest. Every time you log a graffiti incident on the Energy Australia website, they should reply with an email giving you the job number for cleaning it up. Here's a sample:

A month ago, I started to wonder whether all my jobs were being logged properly, as I was noticing that some kiosks were cleaned up pretty quickly, whilst others never seemed to get done. I therefor started tracking everything I logged in a spreadsheet.

What I've found is that most of the incidents have been logged by Energy Australia within 5 days, and generally cleaned up about 2 weeks later. I haven't been back to every site to check whether they've been cleaned or not, but as I go past them from time to time, I have a look at how they are going.

Interestingly, I logged 5 incidents this week. I got two emails back yesterday - one for an incident logged on the 4th, and another logged last night. However, the three in the middle have gone walkabout. I really wonder whether their system is eating some of the incidents, or whether they are simply failing to log them.

If I don't get a response within a few weeks, I contact Energy Australia and follow up over the phone. I shouldn't need to be doing this, but unless I am absolutely certain that they are on top of things, I'm going to check and check and check again.

The good news is that the cleaning efforts of Energy Australia appear to be bearing fruit. When I first started doing this a year ago, all their substations and kiosks were a bloody disaster - coated in graffiti half an inch thick. Now, most of them are clean and green. Yes, graffiti does creep back, but in nothing like the quantities they used to attract, and the attacks are much less frequent.

Police + people who do something = action

Tonight, I attended the quarterly meeting of our local CSPC - Community Safety Precinct Committee. It's where the Police, local councils and residents get together to discuss issues of concern and how to deal with them. I think this is the 4th meeting of our CSPC, and in my opinion, it's been very productive.

We saw attendance by the public go up by 100% this week - Councillor Helen McCaffrey convinced a fellow Rotarian to attend, so there was Ray and me. It was nice to not be the sole member of the Great Unwashed for once.

I get a lot of value out of these meetings - which only take an hour or so - because you find out a lot of stuff that never makes it into the paper (presumably because it is considered to be too boring or trivial to capture the attention of most readers). I've also found that if you raise a problem, and it's viewed as being legitimate, then it will get attention from both the Police and Council. Things actually get done - it's not a talking shop. Well, actually we talk a lot, but it's useful and productive talk. Pity about the lack of biscuits this time though. I must remember to take a packet of chocolate ones next time.

I'm pleased to say that a few items that went on the table at the start of the year are now bearing fruit. The Police asked for some kit that would assist them in catching crooks, and Council approved funding for it last night. We also suggested that Council take a different approach to removing graffiti (ie, remove it and then tell the owner afterwards, rather than asking permission, providing a quote blah blah blah) and that has made a huge difference to graffiti removal.

The committee also had a look at what was happening in our local parks after dark, and as a result, the Police scheduled a lot more patrols through the problem areas. Arrests have been made and charges laid and as a result, the parks aren't getting torn up this year by people who lack the self control to have a good time without smashing up everything around them.

The meeting this evening was in Concord (it gets moved around Canada Bay each time to give local residents a chance to attend) and on the way home, I spotted three vandalised Energy Australia kiosks (which have all been reported). Just goes to show that if you take your eye off the ball for a few months, things can go to hell in a big hurry.

Soon to be scrap

Spotted this abandoned car about a week ago. Finally got around to reporting it today. The rego expired in early November, but it hasn't moved in months. Ta ta.

Is two weeks an adequate response?

I've been keeping a rough track of how Energy Australia has been going in regard to cleaning kiosks around the inner west. I started a spreadsheet back in November, and every time I report a vandalised kiosk, I keep track of when I reported it, the reference number, address and so on - and then note the date when it is cleaned.

Not long ago, it was taking Energy Australia nearly two weeks just to get around to logging my reports, and then a further two weeks to send someone out with a paintbrush to clean things up.

Now, they are logging the reports within 4 days, and cleanup seems to happen within 10 days in many cases, giving a 2 week turnaround time.

The problem with this is that I read an anecdote not long ago that said if you cleaned a site within 2 days, there was a 90% chance it would remain clean. If you took longer than two weeks, there was a 100% chance of repeat graffiti.

What I have noticed over the last year though is that although Energy Australia kiosks are still being hit, they are being hit much less often and the volume of graffiti is much lower. Cleaning seems to discourage a lot of vandals. Not all, but many. Which is better than nothing.

Going, going...

I reported this abandoned car to Leichhardt Council last week. When I went past on Tuesday, the car had gained an orange sticker on the windscreen which tells the owner that the Council intends to get rid of the car within 30 days.

A day later, the car was gone.

That was quick work. One email. Gooooooorn!

Telstra partly clean up their act

For a long time, the most heavily vandalised site in Five Dock has been the Telstra exchange. It's been an eyesore for as long as I have lived here, and Telstra has been consistent in their resistance to doing anything about it. If a building is vandalised, Telstra's own internal policies say that the graffiti should be painted out once a year - but this site has not been cleaned since at least May 2008, when I first contacted Telstra and asked them to do something about it.

Imagine my amazement when I drove past it earlier this week and found that the front wall had received a coat of white paint.

It's only a single coat of thin paint, and at close range the graffiti is still visible under the paint, but it's a start. They haven't done anything about the graffiti on the building itself - they've only removed perhaps 1/3 of what needs removing. But the most egregious part is gone.

I hope we don't have to wait another 18 months for them to tackle the next bit of graffiti on the building.

It is of course possible that Telstra had nothing to do with it, and either Council or someone else got sick of it and painted the wall themselves.

The stupidity of just painting the wall and leaving graffiti elsewhere is that the remaining graffiti acts like a bit, fat tempting target to vandals. It is the equivalent of a "kick me" sign.

Scrap the car

It's been a while since I've spotted an abandoned car around any of my usual haunts. Found this one today on Lilyfield Rd. The rego expired back in June, one tyre is almost flat, the windscreen is broken and it's looking very unloved.

I always take a photo of the rego sticker and email it to the council concerned - that way, they can be sure that it is worth following up on the abandoned car report. If they can see that the car is long out of rego, it means they can take immediate action to start the process of getting rid of it.

Bye bye, clunker.

Are Council graffiti strategies working?

My compadre has pointed me at this fascinating report by the Department of Justice on the results of some Council anti-graffiti demonstration projects that were carried out in 2007-2008.

How typical of government that a report on projects that appear to have wrapped up in 2008 is finally released almost at the end of 2009!

It's fascinating because in all of its 29 pages, I am unable to find any conclusions as to what works and what doesn't. I was expecting to find a precise at the front which would summarise the outcomes of the demonstration projects, but that was not to be.

After wading through the report, my conclusion is that rapid removal of graffiti generally works, particularly if undertaken in conjunction with design changes that harden the target.

There. 29 pages condensed into two lines.

The challenge of course is putting those two things into action - rapid removal and target hardening. That requires a lot of basic grunt work on the ground, rather than sitting around in air conditioned offices writing reports.

Why am I not surprised?

Two teenagers, suspected to be graffiti vandals, arrested in Blue Mountains as 750 spray cans found


During the search warrant at 2.45pm yesterday, police allegedly located 756 cans (40 boxes) of spray paint of various colours, 91 marker pens, tools, a circular saw and other construction items in a garden shed in the backyard.


"After the break in where items belonging to the construction company were stolen, police in the Blue Mountains area noted there was more graffiti on public and private property,” said North West Metropolitan Region Commander, Assistant Commissioner Denis Clifford.


I have long wondered whether there is a link between graffiti and more serious crime. One story like this does not prove that graffiti is just the tip of the crime iceberg for all vandals, but it at least shows that for some criminals, graffiti is just part of their portfolio of criminal activities.

Battle lines are drawn

The latest government proposal to crack down on vandalism draws some more letters to the SMH:

Art of the matter: is graffiti vandalism?



Kay Orchison (Letters, November 10) has a strange understanding of our system of government and law if she believes an elected legislator, in proposing legislation, is ''interfering with the legal system''. I don't necessarily agree with Nathan Rees's legislation on graffiti sentencing, but I certainly defend his right to propose it. Kay possibly thinks that function is the preserve of judges. Not yet it isn't.

Gary Howe Elizabeth Bay






I am a Sydney bus driver. Alex Dudley (Letters, November 9) wants us to ''get some perspective'' and believes graffiti vandals are angst-ridden and misunderstood. Don't ascribe any justification to this mindless, premeditated, malicious defacement of public and private property, to be expunged at taxpayers' and owners' cost.

They do it simply because they can, egged on by their peers, expressing nothing worthwhile and with little chance of being held to account for the anger and distress caused. We provide clean, modern, vehicles with qualified and courteous drivers and to find evidence of graffiti vandals' ''work'' makes me sick. It's like having them spit in your face.

Still, not many train or bus windows are ''etched'' in Coolatai, I guess. How's that for perspective?


John McLean Wentworthville


I'm with John McLean on this one. Vandals are not running around spraying things with paint because they are putting up art - they are doing it because they can, and because they have no self control, no perception as to how their activities affect others, and no sense of right or wrong. They are doing it for the rush and for the notoriety that it brings amongst their peers.

That didn't take long

I predicted yesterday that the SMH would lead the charge against juveniles being locked up under proposed anti-graffiti legislation.


I was thinking that they'd get upset when the first case went to trial.


Silly me.

Writing on the wall for enforcer Rees

So Nathan Rees thinks he can buy votes by punishing children with prison sentences (''Rees cops spray over graffiti laws'', November 9). As ugly and annoying as graffiti tags are, I would rather live with every flat surface on the planet covered in them than see a single child imprisoned for six months.

Mr Rees ought to look at how zero tolerance policies have fared in the US, and how many lives have been ruined by them. He is interfering with the legal system, threatening our families and undermining his party's credibility (what little it retains).

Mr Rees said: ''I'm putting graffiti vandals on notice - we have you in our sights and the community, police and business are right behind us.'' All the people I have spoken to are part of the community. None of us agree that imprisoning children is an answer to anything.

Police and business may well be behind Mr Rees. ''The community'' is not - or if we are, he ought to watch his back.

Kay Orchison Marrickville

I heartily agree with the war on young people. Let's leave graffiti to the more mature political activists - I want messages, not mindless decoration. Ah yes, I still have fond memories of the ''Out Menzies!'' exhortations along the Sydney rail network in the 1950s.

Ron Saunders Wyoming

I would have thought that the message was pretty simple - if you don't want to get locked up, don't mess with property that doesn't belong to you. Don't break the law.

Will the government have the intestinal fortitude to follow through?

According to the news today, the state government is going to get really tough on graffiti vandals.

CHILDREN carrying spray-paint cans without a legitimate reason could face six months in jail under a revolutionary graffiti crackdown by the State Government.

It's all very well passing that sort of legislation. It's another matter entirely to put it into practice. I will bet that when the first juvenile is charged and put away under this new legislation, the SMH will be at the forefront of the attack on the government for locking up juveniles.


It takes a whole chain of people to lock someone away. The Police have to be willing to lay charges, rather than issue a caution. The Prosecutor has to be willing to prosecute fully and ask for a custodial sentence, rather than wimping out. The magistrate has to follow through with ordering jail time, rather than 3 weeks of supervised finger painting.


It's very rare that all those ducks line up. Somewhere along the line, one or more of these groups bottles it, and vandals walk free to carry on their merry trade.


I am not arguing for or against jail time - I am simply saying that it is easy to talk tough; it's much harder to turn tough words into tough actions.


An interesting development is the "clean up" day, where community groups will be issued chemicals and cleaning equipment. I wonder if they'll let us clean the Telstra exchange building in Five Dock? I hope so. The clean up day will be worth it if the only thing we do around here is remove the endless build up of graffiti from the local Telstra exchanges.

Lacking in energy

Yes, I've been quiet for a few weeks - because there has been little to report. Thanks to the wet weather of late, not much damage was wreaked over the school holidays. I've made my rounds of the usual trouble spots and seen nothing worth following up.


The only thing I have noticed is that Energy Australia is taking 11-12 days to process vandalism reports. It used to take them a day or so. They have no hope of removing graffiti within 2 weeks if it takes them nearly two weeks to look at their web reporting system and log an incident. I bet that before long, the following will happen.

• I will report some graffiti
• 12 days later, Energy Australia will get around to reading my report
• A week after that, I will report the graffiti again
• A day later, a contractor will remove the graffiti
• 12 days down the track, Energy Australia will read my second report and send a contractor out to perform a clean up
• The contractor will report back that there is nothing to clean - the report is a dud
• Energy Australia will start to think that false reports are being logged
• Trust will break down

That would be a lousy outcome.

How slow can the wheels turn?

I conducted a graffiti survey of the Five Dock shopping area with a Council staff member last week. During that survey, we noticed graffiti on the signage outside Five Dock Public School. This is not the first time this has happened - I have reported graffiti on school property a number of times over the last few years. Or should I say, I have attempted to report graffiti on school property.

The Education Department makes it insanely difficult for members of the public to report graffiti. When we first moved into the Five Dock area, we were visited by the bloke that ran the neighbourhood watch scheme for the Five Dock Public School. He asked us to keep an eye on the school grounds, and to report anything of note. We were given the obligatory fridge magnet, and over a two year period, we saw two groups of vandals being caught by the Police in or around the school grounds.

I won't go into the convoluted process that the Education Department forces public schools to follow in order to get graffiti removed, because it is much too boring. I am so over it, when I saw this spate of graffiti, I didn't bother trying to follow it. Instead, I emailed these photos to the Minister for Education and told her to take care of it.

I sent that email on Thursday. It is now Wednesday, and the graffiti is still there.

Looks like even the Minister has problems getting the Department to undertake the exceptionally simple task of organising someone to wipe these signs with a rag and a bit of metho. I know that method works - I have cleaned these signs myself that way, and each took a minute at most.

What is perhaps more annoying is that there are staff at the school this week (even though it is school holidays). Some construction work is underway (Julia Gillard pouring our money into a large pit presumably), and staff are on site during the works. I can't understand why it is beyond one of them to walk around the school once a week looking for this sort of damage. The school is small - you can drive around it in a minute. Is it really that hard to drive around the school when arriving or departing, doing a quick survey as you go? Or do the teaching staff view this sort of things as somebody else's problem?

Canada Bay CSPC meeting tonight

Tonight, as in Wednesday 14 October.

The CSPC is the Community Safety Precinct Committee - a public forum that brings the Police, local councils and members of the public together to discuss...... community safety. (Warning - if you click on that link, it takes you to a 14mb PDF which takes a while to download).

6.30pm, Five Dock Library.

I have the easiest job in the world

I occasionally get asked how I find the time to report all this graffiti and pot holes and broken signs and downed power lines and fallen trees and abandoned cars and piles of rubbish etc etc.

Easy - it doesn't take much time at all! I don't spend my days roaming the streets like some sad person with nothing to do. I spot this stuff during the course of my normal routines - going to the shops, taking the kids somewhere, going to work, visiting friends and so on.

If heavy rains have opened up a large pot hole on the main street through Drummoyne, and I go crashing through it in my car whilst driving up to the supermarket, then I don't just ignore it. When I am stopped at a red light, or I've reached my destination, then I'll scribble a quick note on the sticky pad that I keep in the car, noting the problem and location. After I get home, it only takes a minute or two to go to the appropriate website and report the pot hole.

It isn't that hard! I'm not the poor sod that has to go out there in the rain and shovel tar into the hole, or the bloke that has to clean away the graffiti or fix the street signs or trim the fallen trees or tow the abandoned cars away. I'm sitting in front of my computer, warm and comfortable whilst other people do all the hard work of actually fixing the problems. Reporting them is a breeze.

If you can read the paper online, or order a book, or search for and find a cinema where a particular movie is playing, then you have the skills to find out how to report things that you might see. If you see say a bank building with graffiti on it, it's pretty easy to find the website of that bank and to lookup the "contact us" page and find out how to report the graffiti.

Apart from a pen and pad of sticky notes, the other tools of my trade are a compact digital camera and my mobile phone. I do a lot of walking, and I always have the phone with me - and it has a camera built into it. The quality is not that good, but it's sufficient for me to photograph a problem, such as a vandalised RTA cabinet, and clear enough for me to make out the asset tag. I always take a photo of the street signs at the nearest intersection, so I have a memory jogger of where the problem is located. Once a week or so, I upload the photos to my PC, sift through them and log a batch of reports. I might have to refer to Google Maps to nail down the location, but the photos usually do the trick.

How hard is that? If you walk for exercise, or have a dog that needs walking, then all you have to do is make this promise to yourself - "I am not going to walk past that mess for the 50th time this year and do nothing about it. I am going to photograph it, go home and report it."

That's it. A few minutes out of your day. Depending on what the mess is, and who you are reporting it to, you should get the pleasure of walking past it in the near future and seeing that the mess is no longer there. You can then think, "I did that", and you'll find that you walk with a spring in your step from that point on.

Try it. You might like it.

Mindlessness at its worst

A playground in Drummoyne.

Every flat surface has been covered in graffiti.

Every rubbish bin in the area has been vandalised. Every power pole has been vandalised.

Our council goes to a lot of trouble, and spends a lot of our money, to make our parks and public spaces as beautiful and pleasant and user friendly as possible.

And then these jerks come along and spoil it for everyone. What kind of sad mentality is that?

All you have to do is ask

When the weather is good, I'll sometimes take the kids over to the park that runs along the Hawthorne canal in Haberfield. Last time I was down that way, I noticed that the fence on the bridge over the canal was very rusty and had broken in places.

I wrote to Ashfield Council and pointed this out to them, and discovered today that they had fixed the broken fencing - and replaced some other sections of fence as well.

I keep on saying that organisations like our local councils do not have a "magic eyeball in the sky" that sees little problems like this. Councils rely on residents reporting problems to them - things like pot holes in roads, uneven foot paths, fallen trees, overgrown shrubs along tracks and so on. I don't expect these things to be fixed immediately, but they'll never, ever get fixed if councils don't know about them.

Desperation?

This might look like a lot of graffiti, but trust me - for this site, it's a pittance. It's been some months since I have been back to this location, but I have noticed a few trends since I started asking the RTA to clean it up.

First, after each cleaning, it is taking longer and longer for the wall to fill up with graffiti, and there is less of it. The density of graffiti is perhaps half what it was a year ago. When it does return, it takes 3 or 4 times as long for the same level of graffiti to be re-applied. Constant cleaning is demotivating some vandals.

Secondly, the vandals have moved away from spray paint to other forms of markers. This wall used to be 100% spray paint. From what I can tell, the current crop of graffiti is 0% spray paint. I don't know if that is because spray paint is harder to acquire for nefarious purposes, or because this particular group has a thing for other media. As you can see from the image above, some of the markers that they are using wash off in the rain. Are they getting desperate?

Thirdly, the markers that they are using are not as effective as spray paint. The one above appears to be a fat crayon, and that is easy to remove.

Tell me though - is there one scintilla of artistic merit in any of the items above?

1 in 10,000

Never let it be said that I am a stick in the mud - someone that enjoys looking at boring, grey utility cabinets on the side of the road. I have been gently prodding the RTA and Canada Bay Council over the last few months to get an arts program going to brighten these eyesores up; and to make them less palatable canvases for vandals. The RTA and Council are quite open to the idea, but there is much paperwork to be done before anything can start. Unless someone can find a magic pot of money, it might have to wait until next financial year.

Here is an example of a cabinet that has been "arted up" in a non-authorised manner. Frankly, I quite like it. After viewing thousands and thousands of meaningless, badly scrawled tags, this is a revelation. When viewed against the muck scribbled on the side panel, this cartoon is a work of art comparable to the Mona Lisa.

I suspect that it is unauthorised due to the messy production qualities.

The front panel has been prepped by being painted with a darker shade of grey than these cabinets normally have - but the brush strokes are rough and hurried. Sloppy even. The cartoon has not been painted onto the cabinet - it is actually a cut out. The shadow has been painted onto the prepped surface, and the cut out cartoon then glued onto that. It hasn't been glued on very well - it's peeling at the top. Some sort of varnish has then been hurriedly applied over just the cartoon - presumably to prevent it from being vandalised!

Being a fan of cartoons, I like this piece. I'd prefer that it was authorised, but I'd rather have this sort of stuff going up instead of idiotic tags.

Of all the so called "graffiti art" that I have looked at over the last two years, I have only seen two examples that showed some level of artistic talent. This is one of them. 99.9% of graffiti around our area is not "art". To call it "art" is a vicious and nasty slur on all artists. It is juvenile territory marking and adolescent boasting of prowess and 'fearlessness' (which is why it is done at night, when no one is looking), and it should be recognised as such.

I am not reporting the above piece, because it stands as a reminder as to what art is and what graffiti isn't. It clearly shows that almost all graffiti around here is trash, and displays why graffiti should be removed as rapidly as possible.

I hope the person or persons that did the above work sign up for the RTA/Council program when it gets off the ground. There are lots of boring utility boxes at intersections in Canada Bay that could benefit from their talent.

More willful blindness

A post office. Location - inner west.

The letter posting box out the front has been this way for weeks. It's not like this is out in the sticks with no Australia Post employees around. At least two of them walk in and out of that door 20 feet away several times per day - yet they fail to notice this. Or they notice it, and don't bother to report it.

On top of that, a contractor arrives once a day to empty this letter box. He parks right in front of it and sees it from this angle. He fails to see it, or report it.

Everyone thinks it is somebody else's problem.

There's none so blind....

...as those that will not see. Five seconds after taking this photo:

I turned around to see this car waiting at a red light. An Energy Australia car. The company responsible for the defaced kiosk that I was standing next to. The driver, presumably an Energy Australia employee, was no more than 30 feet from a bit of vandalised Energy Australia asset - and I guess he/she couldn't give a stuff.

I watched where the car went after the lights turned green, and walked a few hundred metres of that same route. Along the way I saw this:

Not this - this was in the other direction.

But I also saw this.

How willfully blind do you have to be to drive past 3 clearly vandalised assets that your company owns, and to ignore them all?

It would be even worse to find that the employee in question lives in this area, and passes these same assets twice a day on their way to and from work. That would be really dedicated blindness.

Getting bent

Some rather frisky fellows have taken a stroll down one of our nearby streets and bent all the street signs as they've passed. I counted half a dozen today where the signs are pointing at the ground rather than up the street in question.

"So what?", you say. "What's a few bent street signs?"

Someone from Council will have to come out and fix them up, that's why. Signs are there for a reason - to provide directions. When they are no longer able to perform that function because they are damaged or worn, then they have to be fixed or replaced and returned to a state where someone unfamiliar with the area can use them as intended.

What will it cost though to send someone out to fix them?

Well, it's probable that it will not be one person, but two. Someone to climb the ladder and someone to hold it. Plus you have the cost of providing a vehicle (such as a Falcon Ute), a ladder, tools, mobile phones and so on. Then you have the back office costs of supplying a supervisor to allocate and control the work, a depot to work from, offices in the depot for the supervisors and tool storage and so on.

I'm thinking sending a crew out to fix a bent sign will cost at least $250 if it has to be replaced. They might do one trip, determine that the sign is beyond repair, return to the depot, order a new one, then revisit to fit the replacement sign. That's an hour of travel time all up, another half hour or more on site to remove the old sign and put the new one up, plus all the on-costs of superannuation etc etc.

Once again, you say, "So what, the Council has plenty of money."

No, the Council does not have plenty of money. The only way for the Council to get plenty of money is for it to take more money from you and me. Or just me, if you are the type of unproductive person that enjoys breaking public property. If you think $250 is not a lot of money, then you are making a lot more money than me. Prove to me that it is not a lot of money - pay the full cost of replacing all those bent signs. In cash. Out of your own pocket.

Oh, so suddenly that's a lot of money, is it?

If there is one thing worse than people referring to a problem as being someone else's, it's spending someone else's money. Government money always seems to be free, and there appears to be plenty of it. It is not somebody else's money - it is our money, and I wish people would remember that. When public property is damaged, it is our property that is damaged. We, the public, paid for it, and we, the public, have to pay to put it right.

Didn't take long

This house used to be painted white, and it was covered in graffiti on both the front and side. A few weeks ago, a fresh coat of pink paint was applied.

Here I was, thinking that painting over the existing graffiti might deter vandals from striking again. Well, as Canada Bay Council point out in their newly released Graffiti Strategy, if you leave graffiti untreated for 2 weeks, there is a 100% chance it will come back. However, if you get rid of it within 2 days, there is only a 10% chance it will come back.

This is not some anonymous public structure, like a letter box, or an abandoned building, or a hoarding, or a business. This is someone's home. Those windows are someone's lounge room.

There are those out there that think graffiti is a victimless crime, and that we should just accept it. My guess is that the people advocating that idea have never had graffiti applied numerous times to the wall outside their lounge room, or had to put up with drunken yahoos carrying on at night every weekend in the park just over the road.

In their world, graffiti always happens to someone else.

Eavesdropping - again

From time to time I'll overhear something on the bus that piques my interest. 98% of the generally one sided conversations that you hear are as inane as listening to someone reading out a shopping list or describing how to disassemble a carburetor. But when a couple of feral looking teenagers sit down in front of you, it's time to perk up and listen in. That might seem nosy, but the volume that they interact at means that generally anyone sitting on the bus next door would be able to hear them, even if they were wearing a set of noise reducing headphones.

The latest pair to deafen all and sundry in the vicinity were on their way to the Five Dock Park skate ramp. I was coming home from work early, and it was a school day, yet they were on the bus at 1pm. From the content of their chatter, I discovered that they should have been at school, but their attendance was patchy at best.

After a few minutes of talking about vandalising this and that, they moved on to complaining about a certain pole in the skate park. According to them, the pole is placed in such a way to inhibit certain manouveres, much to their annoyance and distaste.

After describing the stupidity of the pole, they then started discussing ways and means of removing it - sawing it off with a hacksaw, bending it back and forth until it snapped at the base and finally angle grinding the stump out of the concrete.

Clearly, the two of them were incapable of actually doing any of this - it was just wishful thinking on their behalf. I felt like leaning over the seat and telling them how to contact Council and how to make a request to have the pole removed - but then they started talking about wrecking private property with spray paint, so I left them to stew in their discontent, happy in knowing that their skating will forever be marred by that pole.

I'm sure Council would remove said pole if a reasonable case for its amputation was made via the proper channels - the proper channels being sending an email to the address which can be found on the Council website, or phoning the number listed on the Council website, or writing a letter to Council. However, such simple actions seemed to be far beyond their ken - particularly the task of writing a legible and comprehensible request.

And that's just tough.

Third time lucky

Over the last few weeks, I've tried several times to get someone to take an interest in fixing a listing light pole along the City West Link. The pole looks like it was hit by a truck back in early August, which tipped it back somewhat as well as twisting it through 90 degrees. The pole appears to be slowly tilting towards the water, and it would be slightly embarrassing to those concerned if the foundations gave way one day and the pole crashed down across the running track and landed in the harbour.

After reporting it twice to Energy Australia and once to the RTA, I have finally received a response from Energy Australia saying that they will attend to it within 12 working days, which is their standard service level etc etc. I hope the pole stays upright that long.

The City West Link is one of Sydney's main roads. In any given week, dozens of RTA and Energy Australia employees must drive along it, passing the light pole in question. That includes those going to and from work, and those driving around in company vehicles during working hours. Did any of them bother to report it? No, because that would be somebody else's problem.

RTA vs Energy Australia; somebody else's problem

Five weeks ago, I noticed this broken light pole along the City West Link in Haberfield. A car or truck appears to have run off the road, colliding with the pole with enough force to push it back, twist it around through 90 degrees and snap the light fitting off the top of the pole.

I reported it to Energy Australia, and let a month go by. Nothing happened, so I reported it again.

My compadre has since suggested that these poles are taken care of by the RTA rather than Energy Australia (who look after about 98% of the light poles in Sydney).

I've now reported it to the RTA as well.

Energy Australia have been pretty hit and miss lately. In some cases, they'll clean a kiosk within a few days of me reporting it. Then a swag won't be cleaned at all. I don't know whether their system is "eating" a bunch of my reports, or some other gremlin is loose in the bowels of their bureaucracy.

If this is an RTA problem, why didn't Energy Australia make the effort to either:

a. Pass it on to the RTA, or

b. Tell me that it was not their problem, and that I'd have to report it to the RTA.

Like I said, very hit and miss at present. I have this feeling they've just said, "Somebody else's problem" and binned my report.

Getting busy again

Vandals must be fair weather creatures. At the first sign of a bit of cold, they disappear indoors and don't emerge for 4 or 5 months. However, once things warm up, they emerge from their caves and go to work with a vengeance.

I've reported a couple of Energy Australia kiosks twice over the last few weeks. They get cleaned up quickly, but are then hit again within a short period of time. I'm starting to forget which ones I have reported and which ones I haven't - the Energy Australia website sends you an email when you report a problem, but it doesn't include a description of your report in the email, so I can't tie reference numbers to assets. Small problem, but annoying when you are making dozens of reports.

For instance, I reported a light pole along the City West Link that had been smashed up by what appeared to have been a truck. It still hasn't been fixed, and I can't tell if that report has simply been lost in the Energy Australia system, or whether they take months to fix mangled light poles.

The playgrounds around this area have also been hit every week for the last few weeks. Council is very good about cleaning playgrounds - the mess usually seems to be gone the day after I report it. I might get around to putting in a report at 11pm at night, and it will be gone by the time I am on my way home the following day. There's no flies on our Council in that regard. However, the message isn't getting through to the parents of the young kids that use these playgrounds that if they report a problem to Council, Council will fix it.

That's not just graffiti - that includes worn out or broken equipment in the playground, or broken safety fences and gates. Council even replaced a rather holey shade cloth over a playground that I reported during winter.

Another week goes by...

Spring is here, and the vandals have emerged from their winter hibernation and have started stalking in their old habitats. After a few months of not seeing much to report, the first week of Spring has taken me back to my old levels of activity. There have been letter boxes, Energy Australia kiosks and RTA assets galore to report, all freshly covered in the colours of the new season.

The true mark of the turning of the seasons is the reappearance of graffiti on the grandstand in Five Dock Park. During the warmer months, the area around the grandstand is a favoured mating ground for the younger members of the species. They congregate, engage in drinking rituals, attempt to chat up the opposite sex and then leave their markings on the grandstand, much as dogs mark their territory by cocking a leg. The first tags of Spring appeared after Saturday night, perhaps after a festival of the equinox.

I can see a busy few months ahead of me.

The week that was

Things have been quiet this week. I've only reported one vandalised bus shelter (to Council) and one vandalised Energy Australia kiosk.

I think there are two reasons for this.

The first is that I haven't been travelling around as much as usual - work generally takes me to a variety of places around Sydney, but that hasn't been the case of late.

The second is that Energy Australia, the RTA and Australia Post have done a pretty good job of cleaning up their assets in this area, and the graffiti simply hasn't come back yet. There is nothing worth reporting in the places that I've been visiting.

The exception of course is Telstra, who are utterly useless. I need a major motivational boost before I start chasing them again.

I read a letter to one of the newspapers this week from a reader that was upset that the RTA had not removed graffiti along a certain stretch of road. I haven't been able to find that letter online, and I can't remember which paper it appeared in. I was going to write back saying, "All you need to do is contact the RTA and ask them to remove it - writing a letter to the paper won't fix anything".

They did have a point though - the RTA regularly patrol our major roads, but they never bother to report and act on graffiti along the noise walls etc. That really annoys me.

Unusual way of feeding the birds

I know there are lots of people that like to feed birds. They save old bread and give it to pigeons or ducks, and we have a bird feeder for lorikeets in our backyard.

Some people take a different approach. They favour feeding seagulls with McDonalds scraps. Their method is to eat their dinner in a car park by the water, then toss what's left out the window. The birds pick through the wrappings pecking off what they can, and then the rubbish is left behind to blow into the harbour.

An alternative method is to have a "picnic in the park", and then leave the rubbish behind. I've circled a neat pile of it in the middle of this sports oval - that would have been a feed for 3 or 4 people. Note the proximity to the rubbish bins.

I figure this is usually done by teenagers or young adults who have always had mummy around to pick up after them. Or their mummy doesn't give a bugger either, and they have copied her slack and lazy ways.

On another note, I've put in the usual number of reports this week - two vandalised playgrounds, a few Energy Australia kiosks with graffiti on them and the odd RTA traffic light cabinet. Energy Australia have been doing a good job of getting to their kiosks quickly and cleaning them.

Bronze medal

Back on 31 July, I reported three vandalised structures that are within 50 metres of each other - an RTA traffic light utility box, a letter box, and an Energy Australia kiosk. That was a Thursday.

By the following Monday, the letter box was cleaned. Australia Post got the gold medal. There was one working day between reporting and cleaning.

It took Energy Australia one more day to clean their kiosk - two working days.

The RTA were a bit slower off the mark. Here is that same utility box on Monday 17 August - still not cleaned.

Here it is on Thursday 20 August - clean at last. A turnaround time of 3 weeks.

Just think how much better things could be if these companies pooled their resources and had a single cleaner doing the cleanup. They could all be cleaned at lower cost to the taxpayer, and hopefully at the speed of the fastest organisation.

(Although knowing how government works, the combined entity would operate at the speed of the slowest company, and it would cost four times as much to get anything done).