Melbourne crime turns dream suburb into a nightmare
For months, Melbourne’s western suburbs have played reluctant host to a violent incidents involving young African-Australians.
It was the suburban dream — a masterplanned suburb with oversized housing blocks, landscaped parklands and walking trails — that attracted families in droves to Taylors Hill in Melbourne’s northwest almost 20 years ago.
And for a while their biggest complaint was that the local shops they’d been promised took a little longer to eventuate.
Yet on Wednesday evening, residents of the usually quiet Bronte Way in Taylors Hill faced a terrifying situation they had never envisaged.
As parents tried to tuck small children into bed, a police helicopter hovered above while heavily armed officers tried to disperse dozens of rampaging teenagers outside, all the while being pelted with rocks.
Those who dared to venture outside were sent back inside their homes, told sternly by police that it was for their own safety.
One young witness, a 17-year-old teenager, could hardly believe what he was seeing.
“There were just so many,” he said, describing how numerous rioters seemed unfazed by the police presence, even seeming to provoke them by disappearing around the corner only to come back after 10 minutes.
“Some said ‘What are you looking at, you white trash?’ … They said they wanted to break into our house.
“This was just so crazy; it went on for a couple of hours.”
For many months now, Melbourne’s western suburbs have played reluctant host to a series of violent incidents and scenes of affray involving young African-Australians.
Residents of Werribee, Tarneit and Caroline Springs have spoken about feeling increasingly unsafe, setting up community foot patrols when calls for a 24-hour police presence fell on deaf ears, upgrading their home security and, in some cases, sleeping with baseball bats beside their pillows.
Reports of aggravated home invasions around the corner tend to do that.
Taylors Hill residents have noticed their own perceptions of the suburb have altered in recent years. About 25km from Melbourne’s CBD, on former pastoral land, the suburb is as close to “Middle Australia” as you can get.
Skewing young demographically, according to the latest census, nine out of 10 households comprise families, with the most common family type being a married couple with, on average, 2.1 children.
As is typical for many newer suburbs, the houses are big and cars are the preferred mode of transport.
At Taylors Hill, 65 per cent of households live in homes with four bedrooms or more, while a quarter of them have more than three cars in the driveway. Unlike nearby Melton, Kurajang, St Albans, Derrimut, Albanvale, Kings Park and Burnside, Taylors Hill, while multicultural with many people citing their ancestry as Maltese, Italian and Indian, does not have a large African migrant population.
Still, groups of young people from African backgrounds like to gather at the local parks.
Taylors Hill mother Rocchina Pignataro said African-Australian youths would meet at the park at the end of her street to play basketball, listen to music and cook food on the public barbecues.
“It’s such a nice area here but the last few years the kids have become really bad,” she said.
Ms Pignataro said some of the young people caught up in this week’s rampage were still wearing school uniforms. “Where are their parents?” she asked.
Other local residents said groups of youngsters would congregate around the Taylors Hill shopping centre and the local McDonald’s outlet, which made people feel unsafe.
One woman, Helen, who did not want to provide her surname but who has lived in Taylors Hill for 13 years, has been concerned by recent developments.
“They’re everywhere; they’re breaking into homes,” she said, revealing that friends had been bashed during a home invasion in Caroline Springs.
“It’s pretty bad — I don’t feel safe,” she said.
Official crime statistics reveal there were three aggravated burglaries recorded for Taylors Hill in the year ending March.
The most common crimes were against property, with car thefts, thefts from cars, residential burglaries and criminal damage featuring large.
One resident, shaken after Wednesday’s incident, said she was worried about the suburb’s families, and also the homes they had worked hard for.
“We don’t rent, and we own our homes and we like the area,” she said.
“We shouldn’t have to feel scared.”
Additional Reporting: Samantha Hutchinson
