Legendary surf journalist dragged from car in wild unprovoked assault by teen gang as “other motorists parked at the rest stop ignored his screams for help during the terrifying attack”

“There was a guy watching but he told me later he was too fearful to get out of his van”

The former Tracks editor turned PR face off the Yeppoon wave pool Wayne Dart has described a wild ol night after he’d stopped to sleep in his car on the run from Sydney to the pool in Central Queensland. 

Dart, who is fifty-four and who has a decent sorta striking game after twenty years of belting cunts in Muay Thai, had parked at a rest stop near Moree in Northern NSW and was about to go to sleep when his door was ripped open. 

“These guys had driven into the rest area and were trying to open vehicles that were parked there,” Dart told the Courier-Mail. “One guy ripped my door open and yelled back to his mates, and it was on. As I was yelling at them, two of them grabbed me out of the vehicle and I landed on the road on my face. I was yelling out ‘help’ at the top of my lungs to other people in the rest area and swinging (punches) as much as I could. At one point, I grabbed a flipper to defend myself against what I believed was a knife they were carrying.

“I was fighting four of them at once while the other one was going through the car looking for my keys, wallet and phone – whatever they could lay their hands on.

“The guy was yelling out ‘I can’t find anything’ and his mates were going ‘keep looking’. Not one person in the rest area came to help – there was a guy that was watching but he told me later he was too fearful to get out of his van – so I was on my own.

“I managed to turn the tables on them a bit and they started to get on the back foot, realising I wasn’t going to stop fighting. They tried to get me on the ground but I wasn’t going down because I knew I’d be in all sorts (of strife). Once I got a couple of punches into one of the bigger guys, they started to panic a bit. I assume not many people fight back, but I did.”

Eventually, Dart fought ‘em off, even serving a little hot curry of his own. 

“I ripped the car door open and was punching and kicking the driver and doing everything possible to stop him leaving, and the same with another guy who got into the back. By this stage, I was in a worked-up rage and they panicked so much they accidentally left one of their mates behind. I went straight up to him and had hold of him and they reversed the car back to get him.”

Police arrived soon after and arrested the gang, five kids aged between fourteen and eighteen, using road spikes. (Cops allege the pack had ripped off a VW SUV earlier in the night and during a wild car chase had driven “directly” at cops.)

Dart ain’t happy as you might imagine. 

“The legal system just seems to be a revolving door where you’ve got these constant repeat offenders, in and out of jail. You’ve got these young hoons becoming increasingly violent, with no fear of rebuttal for their lawlessness and no knowledge of how to be a decent community-focused human.They seem to be doing it for sport, for the thrill of the theft more than anything. They only got away with my mobile phone and they chucked it into some bushes about 200m from the rest stop.”