Late-night bin rampage left Molong Vinnies Shop volunteers to clean up malicious mess

"Our rubbish bins were everywhere, and they'd broken into the big skip bins out the back as well," said Mrs Mulhall.

Holding multiple roles within the community and president of the Molong Vinnies Shop, Mary Mulhall, posted a message on Tuesday morning, to the town's popular Facebook page 'Spread the Word in Molong,' venting about how the lack of regard from the unknown offenders had left time-giving volunteers with an unfair workload.

"Whoever the people were that did this, they clearly don't realise that volunteers put a lot of time and effort into keeping everything clean and tidy," she said.

"The Vinnies Shop people are already giving their time as volunteers and helping others in the community, so to have [the offenders] come along and destroy everything, it's really upsetting."

Mrs Mullhall said that someone in the community had knocked-off work late on the Monday night, and after seeing her post on the social platform the following morning, contacted her with their suspicions.

"Someone messaged my phone and said that they'd finished work, and had seen a couple of kids hanging around the back of the property who looked to be teenagers," she said.

With twice-daily checks carried out by volunteers of a morning and early evening, a window of opportunity to damage the charity property's waste containers was taken up by the unknown offenders, who Mrs Mulhall is also of the belief are of adolescent ages.

"I don't think [the offenders] get it at all, and I think it's kids being kids, just boredom," she said.

"But to cause malicious damage - throwing things around with strewn rubbish and breaking the pin of a locked skip bin - now, I think that's taking it too far."

The volunteer on-duty for Monday morning's check went there to bring some of the rubbish bins in off the street, and was the person to alert Mrs Mulhall to the damage after discovering the mess first-hand.

"We were so lucky to have some men just get in there and start cleaning up the mess so it didn't blow away with the wind into the streets," she said.

"And our lovely volunteer who found everything, Michael Cass, spent the good part of his morning cleaning up after them."

After many of the community were informed of the malicious event by Mrs Mulhall's Facebook post, local Molong butcher next-door to the shop, Reg Maxwell, went down and repaired the skip bin.

"The reason the skip bins are padlocked are because some people throw their rubbish in there, and then we have to pay to have it emptied," Mrs Mulhall said.

"[The unknown offenders] had taken all the pins out of the locked skip bin to break into it, so Reg Maxwell came over and fixed the skip bin for us," she said.

"So I want to thank both Michael Cass and Reg Maxwell for their help, because it was a lovely thing to do given the situation."

Mrs Mulhall had another note to add, though it was directed to the unknown offenders; which she said she has some pretty good leads on.

"I've got an idea of where I might find [the unknown offenders]," she added.

"So, if they're young kids, I'm going to get them to come down and mow the lawn or sort some of the donated clothes for a couple of weeks; and then they'll know what it really means to get their hands dirty around a charity shop."