WHAT started as a fun Saturday that was meant to be spent with her granddaughter, turned into an unexpected headache for Trish Dike, Secretary of the Nyora Raceway, and a costly day for the club.
They were heading to the track when Trish’s granddaughter noticed the raceway club’s Push Ute parked at the Nyora train station.
It should have been locked up at the club and they went to the track to investigate.
“They cut all our padlocks off of our gate. They cut the padlocks off of our containers. They stole all the keys to every piece of machinery that we had, like our generator shed, our commentary boxes, all of our water trucks, tractors, ute, fire ute, toilet block, pump shed,” said Trish.
“They took all the keys. They took our equipment. They took a drill, a grinder, a reciprocating saw. They took our bolt cutters. They took all the diesel cans and petrol cans.”
Trish went and spoke to those nearby, council workers and people at the cricket club. She put a post on Facebook and soon after found out who the culprit was and where he lived.
A Nyora resident had noticed the Push Ute parked in her neighbours yard the previous night and saw the same neighbour that morning loading the diesel and petrol cans in the back of the ute, before leaving at about 10.45am – aligning with the time others had seen the ute around town.
The club’s ute has their logo on it as well as large sponsorship graphics and a big push bar on the front, so it is easily identifiable.
Another resident mentioned they had seen a black car doing doughnuts around the recreation reserve the day before, which was later seen parked at the same location as the stolen ute.
Trish gave all this information to the police, who she spoke to again later on Saturday night.
“They said, yep, we’ve got the culprit, he was arrested. Because he dumped the car in Nyora, jumped in another car and was arrested at Leongatha, where they found him on the side of the road in the ditch,” recounted Trish.
“In that car was all of our stuff, except for a set of keys.”
Unfortunately, one of the missing keys belonged to the ute.
“We can’t move it; we can’t open the doors. We can’t unlock it,” explained Trish.
“I got a flatbed truck to tow it from the train station back to the race track, so we could lock it up at least, and have it safe, so we know he won’t go back and get it.”
Further concern arose when Trish was informed the offender was released on bail.
“He was out on bail with all of our keys,” she said.
The theft follows a previous break-in that occurred last year where items of value were also stolen, which the club didn’t get back and they suspect it may be the same person.
“He gets arrested. He gets let out. He gets arrested. He gets let out,” said Trish, frustrated at the lack of justice.
“We’ve got no fallback. It’s just coming out of our club (money). So, what we made on the weekend, goes on stuff like this. It cost us $1800 in locks.
“It’s just a pain in the butt because they steal all this stuff and then they don’t get in trouble for it.”
Trish extended her gratitude to the Nyora community.
“Without them and their help, we wouldn’t have got as far as we did. They came forward and said they spotted a lot of stuff. In two hours, I had an answer of who it was and where to go.”