IN 20 years of trying to keep the Great Lakes graffiti free, Ted Bickford has never seen an incident as bad as the Tuncurry rockpool this weekend.
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Everything from the cafe, toilet block, barbecue and even rocks and trees were painted on.
It took about 11 hours on Saturday to clean the tags and would have cost thousands if Mr Bickford had not got to it.
Mr Bickford is known as the ‘graffiti buster’ and donates his time to clean up graffiti around the town.
He also educates and involves local kids in taking pride in their town and often takes them out to clean graffiti.
What Mr Bickford wants residents to know is that the offenders were probably tourists.
“What we have to get across is that this was not done by locals,” he said.
Mr Bickford usually sees the most graffiti during the holiday period because of the influx of tourists.
He believes a mutual respect approach is the best way to deter kids from spraying graffiti and so he usually does not call the police.
“I will call the police this time because they were from elsewhere and because it was such a large job to clean,” he said.
“People were absolutely horrified because we don’t usually get it. I got at least 25 calls about the incident.”
Mr Bickford will take CCTV footage from the cafe and photos of all the graffiti to the police.
He said one of the most important things to do when removing graffiti is to clean it within 24 hours before the paint gets hard.
It is also important that the offenders do not see what they painted, so they realise it is pointless to put them up.
With the holiday period on, Mr Bickford urged people to phone him as soon as they saw any graffiti on 0408 440 309.
In separate incidents, areas of Bulahdelah and the new Nabiac swimming pool were also graffitied over the weekend.