Despite yesterday’s hot weather, Bellingen’s swimming pool had to remain closed for the first half of January 1 due to another break-in.
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Swim Centre coordinator Nicolle Scott said when staff arrived to open the pool, they discovered people had scaled the fence overnight and left the grounds littered with empty cans and bottles from an boozy ‘pool party’ on New Year’s Eve.
The poles and flags that guide swimmers as they do backstroke had also been vandalised, but fortunately that was the extent of the damage, unlike on the October long weekend, when bins, rubbish and concrete blocks were thrown into the pool, cracking tiles and the pebblecrete, and windows and security grills were broken and stock was stolen from the canteen.
“It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as last time,” Nicolle said. “But they’ve broken our backstroke flags – snapped them in half. And the poles that are in the ground, they’ve snapped them off as well.”
Instead of opening the pool at 10am as planned, Nicolle had to ring council and the police to report the incident.
“Council came and got the bottom bits of the poles out of the ground for us, because they were a bit hard to get out,” she said.
Police attended and took evidence away with them, hoping to retrieve fingerprints, and the pool was finally able to open at 1.30pm on New Year’s Day.
Nicolle remains mystified as to why anyone would vandalise public property in this way.
“Why? That’s what I asked last time.”