It was only in July that Nambucca Heads' Mann St was greened with mature native trees - a welcome beautification considering the starkness of that thoroughfare previously.
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But over the course of the weekend - likely Saturday evening - 26 of the freshly planted grevilleas, banksias, tuckeroos, flame trees and bottlebrushes have been snapped in two.
Steve Dibbens and his Generation Green team were there this morning seeing how they could salvage the situation.
"It's just wanton vandalism," Steve said.
"We'll remove the crowns from some of the trees to keep them alive - but they'll never be the same again."
According to Steve the trees will always remember the injury inflicted upon them and will struggle to keep their true form.
"I'm devastated," Generation Green's Tom Burke said after seeing the carnage this morning.
It would be one thing if someone came along and stole them for their own gardens, but this is just senseless.
The team's Pierre Wilkinson speculated that the perpetrator must have used a great deal of force to snap many of the inch-thick trunks in half.
"It's clearly not just a casual flick of the tree while passing - for some there would have had to have been a knee or a foot involved in breaking them in half."
And the rampage which started about six trees down from the water tower continues along the street for a few hundred metres.
Nambucca Heads and Valla Chamber of Commerce president Stuart Garvey said it was "disappointing, frustrating and costly".
"It's disappointing when council is doing their best to improve the appearance of the town."
But council's Greenspace Coordinator Tim Woodward said he's stopped being surprised by events like this.
"It happens all the time - usually it's a matter of when, not if," he said.
His crew has just recently had to replace around six mature trees at Stuart Island, and more at Lanes Bridge, "because someone needed to park an extra couple of metres closer to the reserve on the top of the trees we'd just planted".
"I used to get real cranky and lose sleep over this stuff - I mean, you give something good, and someone thinks it's their right to come along and destroy it for everyone," Tim said.
With each tree costing up to $300 to plant, when all the materials and labour are factored in, there has been thousands of dollars of damage done in one fell swoop.
"And that's taxpayers' money being wasted because people couldn't think of anything better to do with their weekend than destroy other people's property," Stuart said.
"It's only a small minority that do it, but they cause so much damage."
Tim doesn't believe any attempt at mitigation - like cages around the trees - would have helped in this case.
Likewise, using CCTV cameras to monitor and deter vandalism would be unfeasible because of the sheer scale of the area where the damage occurred, according to Council's Assistant General Manager Engineering Services Paul Gallagher.
But there is hope footage from the CCTV cameras at the servo opposite might yield some clues.
The matter is being reported to local police and council is currently offering a reward of up to $5000 for anyone who can offer information leading to a conviction, in line with their tree vandalism policy.
"We take this kind of thing very seriously," Paul said.
"And we're hoping someone's seen something - it is in an area of high visibility.
"We ask that if anyone has seen anything, to please report it to the police.
"We hope this is just a once-off thing. But hopefully this will encourage people to be more vigilant from now on."
The wanton destruction does tend to lead one to question whether this is why we can't have nice things in Nambucca.
But noone Guardian News spoke with today is willing to let the weekend vandalism discourage them from persevering to improve the town's facilities and environ.
"We've had a few people pull over today while we've been here mulching to offer their support and thank us for the effort we're putting in, so that is encouraging," Steve said.
"And someone said they'd already made a post about it on Facebook to see if anyone knows anything."
Paul Gallagher said council has received quite a bit of good feedback from the public about the plantings his team has been carrying out along Mann St.
"Most appreciate what we've been doing," he said.
And Chamber's Stuart Garvey said the actions of a small group of entitled individuals will never sway them from their course.
We've got to keep trying. There are more people here with pride in their town than those few without it.
- Nambucca Heads and Valla Chamber of Commerce president Stuart Garvey