By BLAKE METCALF-HOLT
LATROBE Valley Beekeepers Association have again been the victims of another hit.
The community gardens at Moe’s Joe Tabuteau Reserve, once featuring vibrant metal constructs scattered among its equally beautiful flora, were stripped of its artwork following two incidents over the last few months.
Most recently, the community group discovered that one of its remaining major pieces – the recipient of a community award for its unique and large spiderweb design – was broken off one of the garden beds and pinched when the grounds were vacant on the afternoon of Monday, February 15.
As organisers of the Moe Earth Market, which had another successful outing the Sunday before, members came to realise that they had again seen artwork stolen from their community garden.
“It’s just disappointing for a community group who spends a huge amount of their time … we spend hundreds of hours of our time each year trying to do things for the community,” LVBA President, Sean-Paul Smith told the Express.
“It sort of breaks your heart when we have a working bee on the Saturday before (the market) and we’ve bust our chops in the heat, brushing, cutting, and cleaning and mowing … to get everything looking spruce in the garden, to then have all the artwork, that looked great, flogged.”
Smaller pieces were looted from the community gardens back in October, and with three major pieces remaining, the most recent incident saw two items attempted to be stolen.
The perpetrators tried to dig a large metal flower out of one of the garden beds, which was secured to the bottom, before moving on and ripping off a hexagon-shaped piece with a spiderweb design at the centre.
The piece that was stolen was created by LVBA member Mark Medew and received recognition with a community award.
All pieces that featured in the community gardens were either donated or purchased by the local beekeeping group, with most of the artwork personally made for it to be situated there.
These items were also secured tightly in the garden beds, with the hope to prevent these things from happening.
“We went through a lot of trouble of putting welds down the side of it (the stolen piece), put it into the garden bed … they came under the cover of dark and popped them out,” Mr Smith said.
The community gardens were developed over the last three years through a grant from Latrobe Health Assembly.
He added that the annoyance of the perpetual attacks, including other acts of vandalism such as graffiti and attempts to break into the work shed, begins to hinder on the work they wish to continue to do.
“When you put effort into the community, you do it because you care,” Mr Smith said.
“This is not a paid job for any of us, and we do it because we love where we live and to make it better.
“In some ways the event (Moe Earth Market) we did was undoubtedly where somebody has went ‘oh, I’d like that’ during the event.
“So, you can’t stop poor performance and poor behaviours of people, (but) we’ll keep pushing it through.”
The LVBA are in the midst of jumping through hoops to acquire proper surveillance for the premise as a means to stop similar incidents occurring.
The community group is also seeking to further expand its carparking at the site.
After they converted three former netball courts due to the demand of the earth market, the area still needs further parking space to create better accessibility for people to get to the gardens themselves, which houses their beehives fenced off behind it.
Established in 2018, the LVBA has been located at Joe Tabuteau Reserve since 2020, after the Moe and District Netball Association moved to a new facility developed at Monash Reserve, Newborough.
The LVBA allows other community groups to use their space for free and helps to support other events in the area.
A permaculture day will take place on March 22 alongside Food For All Latrobe Valley, as a part of National Permaculture Week.
If anyone has seen the stolen spiderweb piece or has any information, get in touch with the Latrobe Valley Beekeepers Association on Facebook or email: LVBA.communications@gmail.com
