A Middle Eastern Muslim family has been caught on camera using a war memorial bearing the names of hundreds of Australian soldiers as a playground, sparking anger from locals.
Video clips filmed by a shocked onlooker show a woman in an Islamic headscarf playing hide and seek with a child at the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial on Flagstaff Hill in Wollongong, NSW, on Saturday night.
Other members of the group can be seen sitting on benches while some adults and children play among the large stone monuments making up the memorial, running past the words “lest we forget” over the names of veterans who gave their lives in the conflict.
A Middle Eastern Muslim family use a war memorial bearing the names of hundreds of fallen Australian soldiers as a playground.
Follow: @NoticerNews pic.twitter.com/DcmdU2YUyV
— The Noticer (@NoticerNews) March 14, 2026
The local who filmed the videos told Noticer News there were plenty of other seating areas available but the group, described as being of Middle Eastern appearance, set up right at the war memorial and started playing hide and seek.
“It made my blood boil. War memorials aren’t the place for screaming and playing hide and seek,“ they said.
“I didn’t want to say anything out of fear of being arrested for hate speech.”
The memorial was unveiled in 1987 and bears the names of more than 500 veterans.
The incident comes after a series of recent vandalism attacks on war memorials and monuments around the country by far-left anti-Australian extremists in the lead-up to Australia Day, but no arrests have been made.
NSW raised the maximum penalty for damaging a war memorial from five to seven years’ jail in October last year, and Tasmania announced a similar proposal in February.
Header image: Left, right, the family playing at the Wollongong war memorial (supplied).
