by Jackson Russell
THE Broadford Pony Club was the victim of a random act of vandalism on Friday, April 4 when fences around its dressage arena and between two of its paddocks at Broadford Common were cut, collapsing around 500m of fencing wire.
Broadford Police are currently investigating the incident. Senior Constable Steve Holcombe called the act “just spiteful behaviour”.
There are no cameras in the area and the one resident in the area around the time of the incident has said he didn’t see anything.
Police are appealing to anyone who knows anything about the incident to come forward.
Broadford Pony club secretary Lisa Haigh told the North Central Review the club recently installed $2000 worth of new fencing in March and will now need to spend around $700 to fix fencing that was barely two months old.
“It’s our time too, we’re all volunteers. We just replaced all the fencing down there,” she said.
It’s not the first time the club has been target by vandalism. For the last two months or so, the club has been finding sticks and tree limbs placed on top of their cross country jumps, as well as bricks and tyres placed strategically before and after the jumps.
Ms Haigh said she doesn’t know why the club is being targeted. “We don’t really have any problem with anyone. We deal with council a bit and no one’s made any complaints. We maintain grounds highly and we have working bees and try to keep it looking good,” she said.
Broadford Pony Club volunteers took part in an impromptu working bee on Saturday to fix the damage before the club meeting on Sunday.
“We had to try to get as many members on Saturday to fix it otherwise it wouldn’t go ahead because it would have been dangerous to horses and kids to not have that wire in place,” Ms Haigh said.
Mitchell Shire Council Mayor Rhonda Sanderson said council is working close with the Broadford Pony Club to assist them after this setback.
“It’s so disheartening for the volunteer members of our local clubs or community groups when they are targets of senseless vandalism such as this.