“It’s lucky it didn’t burn the place down,” he said.

Showground caretaker Bev Harris spotted two young men on pushbikes trespassing shortly before discovering a burned chair near the entrance to the dining room under the grandstand, and has reported the matter to police. To provoke matters further, fresh evidence of a fire started in a wheelie bin was found later the same day.

Mr Petrie said the advice of the police was to ‘keep an eye on them’.

“But you can’t stop them,” he said.

This attack follows a spate of damage done to property on the showground last year, including broken locks, windows and lights, vandalism of the toilet units in the CWA Mothers’ Room and destruction of air ventilators.