By NOEL MURPHY
BRIGHT yellow Sheriff’s Office bunting around the clamped rear wheel of a silver Hyundai on central Geelong’s Corio St grabs the attention of passersby.
“Been there for weeks now,” one tells me as I look about the weatherbeaten 1995 Excel sedan.
“The council must be missing out on heaps of revenue. And parking’s tight around here, it’s always hard to find a spot, so people are missing a park every day.”
At two dollars an hour, that revenue would be almost $350 for the month. But the car might have been there longer.
According to the Sheriff’s Office, the clamps would have followed a lengthy process in which outstanding fines were unpaid.
“Say you get a speeding fine, you get 28 days to pay, there’s probably a bit of a pause maybe after another 28 days a reminder is sent out then another 28 days, then a warrant,” a sheriff’s spokesman told the Independent.
“With people who have had warrants, it’s typically been six to eight months and they haven’t paid the fines or made contact to pay by instalments.”
For a car that’s effectively abandoned, it’s in surprisingly good order. It still boasts all its wheels and appears to have suffered nothing worse than long-term weather exposure.
Inside, a faded turquoise baby seat sits alongside various junk including what appears to be an upturned parking ticket on the front floor.
Autumn leaves in the gutter are jammed against the car’s tyres, windscreen wipers are rusted and the sharp incisors of the metal clamp on the back tyre look menacing.
Overall, it’s a bad look. But just how long the car will stay is unclear.
“If a vehicle has been clamped and the outstanding amount is not paid and no payment arrangement is entered into, the vehicle can be detained on the spot by the Sheriff’s Office to be sold at auction,” Sheriff of Victoria Brendan Facey said.
“The money from the sale of the vehicle goes toward paying the outstanding amount.”
