Rampage costs ski club dearly
SANDY Hook Ski Club members spent their Labour Day weekend cleaning up after a brazen thief who smashed and bashed his way through the clubhouse on Thursday evening.
The club will now have to pay an estimated $3500 to replace stolen equipment and repair damage inflicted upon the facility.
CCTV footage captured by security cameras shows a man taking a hearty swig on a can of drink at the top of the clubhouse stairs and then tearing down a speaker from an outside wall.
The perpetrator later ripped out wiring from a meter box, smashed lights and stole a new pressure pump.
Sandy Hook Ski Club president Col Patterson said the attack had been the latest in a series of incidents at the facility.
"It seems like not a month goes by without some sort of vandalism happening down here," he said.
"We're a not-for-profit, community organisation so it's a bit of a kick in the guts."
Sandy Hooki Ski Club undertook a major $160,000 renovation of its clubhouse on the Burnett River after it sustained substantial damage in the floods of late 2010 and early 2011.
Sandy Hook Ski Club committee member Cameron McCracken said club members involved in the renovation had been disappointed by the high incidence of theft and vandalism.
"We did a lot of work here to get it back up and running," he said.
"It took six months to do that renovation."
The club is now without toilet facilities and running water in its kitchen because of the theft of the pressure pump.
Mr McCracken said the club was lucky the meter box had been repaired before food stored in the clubhouse's freezers had spoiled.
"That would have been another few thousand down the drain," he said.
The club will pass CCTV footage of the incident on to Bundaberg police.
Sergeant Mick Ward said police investigations were continuing.
"People should be aware that police use CCTV footage extensively to find and prosecute offenders," he said.
