By Cam Lucadou-Wells
The evidence is irrefutable.
Inspector Alison Crombie, who oversees the region’s traffic police, sees the swirls of heavy tyre marks in the turnbowl at Prospect Hill Drive, Narre Warren.
She is meeting with exasperated residents who have been plagued by hoons for the past 10 years.
They describe the close-calls such as when a lout’s car crashed through a neighbour’s backyard fence.
Then there are the drug deals, the loud smoky burnouts, the romps in cars and the incinerated stolen vehicles and piles of shredded tyres.
Residents tell Insp Crombie they were “dispirited” after years of reporting the lawlessness to police.
“It happens day and night,” a resident tells her.
“We’re over it. It’s got worse.”
Almost on cue, a green sports ute squeals its tyres as it drives around a corner 50 metres away from Insp Crombie.
She has a chat to the driver of a Holden sports vehicle who hasn’t moved from the dead-end for the past 30 minutes since she arrived.
What residents want is to close off part of the road with bollards to stop hoons parking at the turnbowl or tearing up the adjoining park.
Insp Crombie agrees – a combination of posts and concrete bollards across the road and nature strips would be a “relatively inexpensive” solution.
Police are meeting with VicRoads and Casey Council to work out possible changes to the road. Insp Crombie said she’d contribute her observations.
Six nights before the meeting, nearby households were choked with burnt-rubber smoke from a series of burnouts.
Meanwhile, two boys have been outed by a dog-walking resident while tagging graffiti under the footbridge at the road’s park.
At first they rush away from Insp Crombie and the adults, crossing the footbridge to the other side of Monash Freeway.
Then they summon the courage to inch their way back, detouring for a swing at the spanking new playground.
“The old one got burnt to the ground two years ago,” says a resident.
While the group’s attention wavers, the boys then scurry home like “little mice” as a witness put it.
One of the boys walks back outside. “Stop graffitying!” Insp Crombie says. “We know who you are.”
The boy replies: “I don’t know anything about it.”
Then there’s a curious encounter with a man who parks his heavy vehicle. He asks if the group has seen his stray poodle.
He reckons the drivers convene on an Endeavour Hills-based Facebook group, though he denies knowing any of them.
Their routes go through Fountain Gate, a nearby school and Endeavour Hills. On the long straight Prospect Hill Road, the cars reach speeds of “150-180 km/h,” even in the mid-afternoon, he says.
“They smoke the whole street.
“Every night, it’s on.”
The following day, the CFA are called to a fire in the adjoining park.
In Prospect Hill Drive, there’s never a moment’s peace.
