Gary Blackwell was not a happy man when he arrived at work on Friday morning.
For the past eight weeks, his company, Blackwell Excavating, has been working on a dairy conversion on Thompsons Track without a problem.

But overnight on Thursday, a person or persons entered the property where machinery being used in the conversion had been left and vandalised two graders, a digger and a diesel tanker, causing thousands of dollars worth of damage.

Every window was smashed and fuse boxes and the diesel tank were tampered with and Mr Blackwell was getting a mechanic out to find out whether any of the engines had been interfered with.

The machinery was visible from the road, but the culprits wouldn’t have had an easy job getting on to the property, Mr Blackwell said.

He believed the Blackwell Excavating machinery and that belonging to Ellesmere firm Densem Contractors Ltd may have been deliberately targeted for reasons unknown to him.

“They’ve made a special effort to get in here because it’s not easy,” he said.

“It is visible from the road but you’ve got to find the gateway to get in.”

The machinery was parked about 1km off the roadside and there was a small culvert crossing that was only installed on Thursday, that even those working on the site had to really look for to find. Even once on the property, there were water races and other farm obstacles to get past before reaching the machinery, so those responsible were likely to have been in a 4WD.

While the cost of the damage caused was believed to be in the thousands, it also meant no work could be done on the conversion on Friday and Mr Blackwell believed he and his fellow workers would not get going again until today.

Police were alerted and a glass company was called to try and replace the windows as soon as possible, Mr Blackwell said.

It was the first time Mr Blackwell’s business had been the victim of such an attack and although he said it was always on the cards when machinery was left parked at a work site, those responsible for Thursday night’s appeared to have targeted the site.

A worker found the damage when he arrived at work at 7.45am on Friday after the last workers would have left the area at about 6.30pm on Thursday.

But with Thompson’s Track being a busy route, it was hoped that someone may have seen or heard something that could lead to the apprehension of the culprits.