From the Daily Mercury:

Racist graffiti defaces Lamberts Beach toilets
05.06.2007

LAMBERTS Beach residents were disgusted to find their toilet blocks defaced with racist graffiti over the weekend. Swastikas, Ku Klux Klan references and “white power” slogans spray painted on the Ram Chandra Park toilet facilities disturbed and angered residents, who retaliated with a message of their own: It’s not okay.

“I’d like everyone to know that kind of behaviour is not acceptable,” Charlie Collins, who lives near the park, said.

“You wonder what these people get up to during the day if they’re doing this kind of thing at night - it doesn’t reflect very highly on their intelligence.”

Mr Collins said not only did he find the content of the graffiti offensive, he resented the fact the community would have to pay for the mess to be cleaned up.

“I think it’s disgusting,” Emily Johnston, who regularly takes her children to the park, agreed.

“I don’t want my children to have to look at filth like that.”

Vandalism costs Mackay City Council about $100,000 a year and spokesman Ken Furdek described the latest attack as “very disturbing”.

Lamberts Beach has already been hit once this year: in February, vandals destroyed a new, $10,000 picnic shelter. A Council parks crew began cleaning the facility early yesterday morning.

Mackay Police are investigating the graffiti, which they said was “unfortunately” not unheard of in Mackay.

“We’ve seen these kinds of racist graffiti attacks around Mackay sporadically for the last few years,” Police Crime Prevention Unit Acting Sergeant Nigel Dalton said.

“It’s not a common occurrence but it does happen.”

Acting Sgt Dalton said police took graffiti seriously, particularly when it carried threatening overtones, and handwriting experts could be called on to help investigate.

Mackay City Council said new facilities were often the targets of vandals. Other vandalism hotspots include: Slade Point, Mansfield Drive, Baxton Drive, Pompey Street and Council’s swimming enclosures.