It weighed more than 100 kilograms and lived at a Brisbane homestead, then a shopping centre, before finding a new home in the leafy suburbs of Canberra four years ago.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
But 10 days before a bronze statue was torn away from the Hughes shops, the huge, unique and solid bronze water feature was stolen from the front yard of a Yarralumla home.
Owner Hamid Heydarian was "gutted ... sick to the stomach" when he came home on Saturday May 21 to find his beloved water feature had disappeared.
"It is disgusting," Mr Heydarian said.
"You feel violated. That's really the only way to describe it."
Mr Heydarian said the fountain weighed "hundreds of kilos," was two metres wide and more than two metres tall.
He fell in love with it when he first saw it, impressed by its history and exclusiveness.
A motel owner had bought it from the front of a Brisbane shopping centre turned development site, but regulations forced him to resell it.
Having adored the stand-out piece for years, Mr Heydarian was shocked by his bare front garden at 2pm on the Saturday. He saw the fountain there just 28 hours earlier.
"You could clearly see from the tyre tracks that what they have done is driven up on the driveway and across the front lawn and up to the feature and someone managed to lift it," Mr Heydarian said.
"My view is that there would have had to be quite a few people or would have had to have a little crane mechanism."
He immediately contacted police - who inspected the yard soon after - but has heard no word in the months since.
A few days after the theft, a neighbour said they had seen a white truck out the front lunchtime on Friday but assumed it was the owners removing furniture as they were in the process of moving houses.
While angered and saddened that anyone would commit such a crime, Mr Heydarian would be most disappointed if the perpetrators had melted down the bronze to sell it.
He believed this was likely as it occurred shortly before a bronze public statue was stolen from Hughes shops.
ACT Policing said theft and property damage carries a maximum punishment of ten years behind bars.
Anyone with information is urged to contact police on 62567777 and quote reference number P1471943.
