By Roy Weavers

We received a report from a concerned local that someone painted "Pty Ltd" to deface the St Mary's by the Sea sign on Saturday Feb 27th.

As a result, this ended up in all the photos taken at their son's recent wedding because it wasn't picked up until they were leaving.  This senseless action hasn't done any real damage because the words have now been painted over and the photographer through the wonders of modern technology has Photoshopped the words out of all the photos.

But why on earth would someone do anything so infantile and pathetic?    According to our source it would seem that someone was trying to send a message to the family of the wedding party rather than the church.

The Port Douglas Restoration Society Inc. is a not for profit organisation that is run by a committee that anyone in the community can join to help run the church, including fundraising, wedding bookings, funeral bookings, maintenance of the church as well as making donations to worthy local charities.

In fact the matriarch of the wedding family along with Virginia Donovan was originally responsible for the relocation and restoration of the church.  Unfortunately, as is often the case with voluntary work there are very few members so it could be seen that this one caring family is controlling things and it is believed that the person responsible for the defacing of the sign may be someone who no longer gets business as a result of a committee decision.

Our contact who is a member of the Port Douglas Restoration Society, has suggested that whoever did this cowardly act on the day of his son's wedding should join in and help run the church rather than criticise the hard work of others.

Editor’s comments: I’m always amazed at people’s stupidity.  Whoever did this pointless act should have the ‘balls’ to deal with any grievance they believe they have against the committee, the family, the community or the world on a face to face basis.  The only person that gets hurt by facile anonymous actions like this is the community, ‘cos how stupid do we look to the tourists and non residents with petty gripes being aired over whose heads this type of childishness flies.

Painting on a sign will hardly solve anything, now will it?  If anyone has any information or saw anything suspicious please do not hesitate to contact the police or us and we’ll pass it on to the police.