DEVONPORT WATCH GROUP LAUNCHES PROBE INTO WONKY WHEELIE BINS

A Devonport Neighbourhood Watch subcommittee spent Tuesday morning investigating what one member called "deeply suspicious" wheelie-bin alignment on Vauxhall Road, with photographs already lodged in a shared Google Drive.

The bins were placed kerbside on Monday evening at angles the committee logged as "between 15 and 40 degrees off true". Auckland Council asks for handles facing the property. None were. One was, per the report, "practically sideways, like it had been drinking".

Vanessa Corbett-Wills, 64, who lives opposite and convenes the watch's Bin Integrity Working Group, said she'd clocked it from her bedroom window. "You learn to read a street," she told The Daily Yarn. "And this one was telling me something was off. Could be teenagers. Could be the new family at number 38. They're from Grey Lynn."

A neighbour two doors down, Hamish, said he'd put his bin out at the usual time and may have nudged a few others reversing the Range Rover. "Didn't think it was a federal matter. It's a bin. Goes on the kerb. Truck comes. Bin gets emptied. That's the system."

An Auckland Council spokesperson said collection had gone ahead "as scheduled" and that bin orientation, while preferred, was "not, at this stage, a prosecutable offence". Asked if it might become one, the spokesperson said they'd "take that back to the team".

The working group meets again Thursday. Vanessa has prepared slides. Hamish has been invited but is, reportedly, washing the Range Rover.