Rangers and Police combined forces to to catch someone who cut a hole in a fence out at the cotter. Then they charged him for it.
“In October 2012 a male offender was detected using a portable angle grinder to cut holes in one of the security gates at Vanity’s Crossing,” Manager of Regional Operations, National Parks & Catchments, Brett McNamara, said today.
“The blatant act of vandalism increased the risk of contamination of the Cotter Catchment, with locked gates erected on both sides of the crossing in February 2012 as a precautionary measure to reduce the risk of an event which could compromise the water quality of the Cotter River. The Cotter River provides over 80 percent of Canberra and Queanbeyan’s drinking water.
“The vandalism not only damaged public property taking time and resources to repair, but also put one of the limited number of water sources in the ACT at greater risk. It is good to see a strong message sent from the ACT Magistrates Court in relation to this offence.”
Mr McNamara said the outcome underscores the strength of the positive and proactive working relationship between Parks and Conservation rangers and ACT Policing.
I wanted to know why a person would take an angle-grinder out to cut a hole in a fence. Johnboy suggested it was probably a 4WD’er who was upset because he couldn’t drive out there anymore.
This sounded odd to me, I didn’t know that there are people out there who consider driving a 4WD places that you probably shouldn’t a hobby. I said that sounded like a stupid hobby.
I was then instructed to look up 4WDing in the Brindabellas, so I did and I found this video:
I stand corrected. 4WD’s are bad-arse. Still I think this rules out a 4WD’er as the suspect, because if he had one of those he could have just driven over the fence, just like climbed right over.
Like magic.