By Tyler Wright
Tecoma business are at the forefront of an increase in vandalism and tagging in the area as the easing of restrictions in Victoria paves the way for night time activity.
Megan Walsh, owner of Full Bloom Psychology, said vandalism at the front of her practice has been significant since its opening in July last year – and owner of the building she works in has already had the brick outside the property cleaned.
“It’s just getting more and more and more [prevalent].”
“I moved up here because I thought it was a nice quiet community, family-friendly, good for my clients dealing with trauma,” Megan said.
But the reality has been quite different, and she has even considered moving her practice elsewhere.
“Often I’ll show up to work and there’ll be smashed beer bottles on the ground in front of the door,” Megan said.
“[At times], there’ll be McDonalds everywhere.”
“I do work with people who are often quite traumatised, and so they come here, and a few of them have said ‘oh, there’s graffiti everywhere – is this a bad area?”
“I think probably the thing that people that are doing it don’t realize is that it’s costing thousands and thousands of dollars for us to fix it.”
Director of Environment and Infrastructure at Yarra Ranges Council Mark Varmalis said the Council’s graffiti team have spent “significant amounts of time” in Upwey, Belgrave and Tecoma recently responding to the spate of graffiti on council assets.
“We had a big growth following the Covid lockdowns last year and there seems to be a steady stream of graffiti across various towns since this time. It’s been a challenge to keep up with the removal on council assets mainly in parks and on streetscapes,” Mr Varmalis said.
Council has an in-house team with purpose-built utility vehicles to address graffiti on all Council assets.
“Our team has adopted a zero tolerance approach to graffiti and response times have improved, resulting in offensive graffiti being removed within 48 hours of reporting. We aim to remove all other graffiti from Council assets within five days,” Mr Varmalis said.
“Community members continue to support graffiti removal on private properties and businesses, and portable graffiti removal kits are available from Council’s Community Links for community use.”
Megan Walsh offered the suggestion of having local artists, like her partner, paint a mural over spray-painted tags to deter offenders.
“It is an important part of culture, especially hip hop and skate culture and it’s always been really closely linked to graffiti. But here it’s a business -and they probably can’t afford to paint it.”
“If anybody is interested in doing any kind of mural or anything like that. That will be good,” the Salvation Army’s store manager said.
