Far-left anti-Australian extremists have vandalised a war memorial in a tiny country town in Victoria, just weeks after a similar attack in the same region.
Locals in Dobie, which is located about 180km west of Melbourne and has a population of just 42, were horrified after discovering on Friday morning that two monuments at the Dobie Memorial Park had been damaged overnight.
Memorial stones were defaced with indigenous activist slogans “land back” and “lest we forget the frontier wars” in red spray paint, along with an outline of an aboriginal flag.
A bronze plaque bearing the names of local men who fought and died in war was stolen, the stones were cut into with a power tool, and several trees were uprooted and stolen, West Vic News reported.
Ararat Rural City Council Mayor Bob Sanders visited the site and said the attack was “really disgusting behaviour”.
“Who attacks a war memorial, a place that honours the brave people who fought in war?” he asked.
Mr Sanders told ABC News the attack has left the whole town “devastated” and said the offenders “need to understand the desecration of sites like this certainly doesn’t help anybody’s causes … it just alienates people from each other more”.
The incident occurred less than a month after the slogans “death to Australia”, “death to the ADF”, and “blood on your hands” were written on war memorial plaques in the town of Beaufort, about 40km away.
Days before that a thief stole a bronze slouch hat and rifle from a brand new Anzac memorial in Melbourne, and the incidents are among dozens of similar attacks carried out by far-left extremists around Australia in recent years, mainly preceding Australia Day and Anzac Day.
Few arrests have been made, while similar anti-Australian rhetoric is promoted at public schools and in “invasion day” protests every January 26, which are encouraged by left-wing politicians and the national broadcaster, the ABC.
Header image: The damage to one of the Dobie monuments (West Vic News).
