After his car was allegedly broken into, Mr McLeod put up a post on Facebook inviting the offender out to a pub meal.
Photo by
Billie Davern
Most people would be enraged if thieves broke into their vehicle, but when it happened to Chris McLeod, he asked the perpetrator out for a meal at the pub.
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Mr McLeod, a 72-year-old local veteran, purchased the car he affectionately named ‘Basil’ when he was fixing his dance teacher’s vehicle.
“Lots of people around town had thrown parts at her car without any result and wasting her money, so I demonstrated to her what the real problem was and gave her the options to go ahead and fix it,” he said.
“But, she needed a car, so I went ahead and bought Basil so that she’d have a car because I knew I was going to take a long time.”
After his dance teacher no longer needed Basil, he loaned it to a couple from New Zealand who had just moved to Australia and needed a vehicle.
“(Then) Basil broke down here, came good and then broke down over in Yea,” Mr McLeod said.
Basil was parked on Station St, Yea, when it was allegedly broken into last month.
Mr McLeod was driving back to Seymour from dance lessons in the town when he discovered what had happened.
“It was quite late and I just went past Basil to see if he was all right, and he wasn’t,” he said.
“I thought they’d broken the window because the window was down, and then I realised I could see the bonnet was up a bit.
“I had a look and the battery was gone. In the dark I couldn’t see it, but the radio was taken. They’d also cut the wires to the wiper motor, took the bolts out of it, and then realised because of the bolts on the inside, they couldn’t steal the wiper motor.”
Mr McLeod's car Basil was allegedly broken into while it was parked on Station St in Yea.
Photo by
Supplied
Basil is a good deed car, purchased out of kindness, but it isn’t the only good deed Mr McLeod has done.
The local resident has historically been involved in community groups like the Lions club, for which he tows the Driver Reviver caravan, and he helps out with Hawthorn RSL Club’s Operation Veteran Assist, a veteran-led bushfire response initiative.
He also assisted with the establishment of the Cockatoo Rise veterans retreat at McArthur and has worked with the Goorambat veterans retreat.
Mr McLeod was initially upset when he found Basil had been ransacked, but his goodwill inevitably took over.
In a post on Facebook shortly after the incident, Mr McLeod wrote a message to the perpetrator(s): “I invite you to share a meal with me at a Yea pub as my guest, however many of you there may be”.
“I plan no retribution, I just want to meet under normal, social circumstances for lunch or dinner at your convenience. Hope you can make it,” he wrote.
As they say, ‘you put out what you attract’, and Mr McLeod’s positivity has been met with exactly that.
First, after he left Basil, rain came over the weekend, but when he checked on the car, he “found the window rolled up”, so water hadn’t flooded the inside.
“Somebody had been thoughtful enough to wind it up for me,” he said.
Then, he received overwhelming generosity in response to his Facebook post.
“I put up the same post on the Yea community noticeboard and a retired policeman from Whittlesea gave me another car for parts,” he said.
When Basil is fixed, Mr McLeod will be loaning the car again to a friend in Queensland.
While “nobody’s said, ‘yes it was me’,” in the comments of his post, Mr McLeod’s offer still stands for those who broke in to Basil.
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