A graffitied penis scrawled across the Princes Highway at Bolwarra has become a bold – if crude – cry for help from locals who say the terrible, pockmarked quality of their roads have been ignored for too long.

The phallic artwork, spray-painted alongside the words “fix this”, appeared over the weekend near Nashs Road, on a stretch of highway riddled with potholes and rough patch jobs. 

Local Patricia Blackmore told the Brolga her husband spotted it around 8.30am on Sunday while taking their daughter to work in Portland.

“So I guess someone was busy on Saturday night in between rain showers,” she said.

Blackmore and her neighbour Robyn Phillips both live along the highway between Portland and Heywood, where the bitumen has been breaking down for the last two years. 

They say the road is not only frustrating — it’s become genuinely dangerous.

Drivers regularly swerve across lanes or off the road entirely to avoid the worst of the potholes, which exist in a 100km/h speed zone.

“What we’re finding is when you head towards Portland, the traffic has been going left to try and avoid those potholes, which goes over the top of Robyn and her husband's driveway,” Blackmore said. 

“They can't actually pull their cars out… they could easily get the front of their cars wiped out.”

Phillips said she’s contacted VicRoads at least three times this year, leaving her details each time — but hasn’t received a single follow-up.

“I did get one reply from a VicRoads guy who came out and took photos but nothing ever happened,” she said. 

Blackmore said the road surface is so bad she struggles to safely slow her Suzuki when turning in, and fears larger vehicles would have no chance of stopping quickly in an emergency.

“My little car is shattering and shaking trying to slow up to get in Robyn’s driveway,” she said. 

“There’s no smoothness at all… imagine a truck trying to pull up or avoid an accident.”

Compounding the issue, roadside vegetation hasn’t been maintained either. 

Blackmore said grass has grown so high along the verge that someone anonymously parked a lawnmower near the Portland welcome sign earlier this year in protest.

Both women travel the road daily for work.

“All the way along, where the overtaking lanes are, there are horrendous potholes and just patched up fix-it jobs that are so rough. Everybody drives in the overtaking lane,” Blackmore said.

Phillips said residents are fed up and have run out of options.

“We’re desperate,” she said. “We just want the road fixed. It is an accident waiting to happen.”

What’s being done?

In May, the Labor Government announced the state budget for 2025/26 would invest $976 million in a “Better Roads Blitz” to “fix potholes and upgrade road surfaces across Victoria”.

According to RACV's 2024 My Country Road survey, which garnered more than 7000 responses from motorists across Victoria, potholes and poor road conditions were identified as the primary safety issue by a staggering 64 percent of participants. 

That's up from 46 percent in 2021, suggesting the problem is getting worse, not better.

And with regions like Western Victoria being reliant on its roads, local motorists, like Blackmore and Phillips, can’t wait much longer to see progress.

The Princes Highway stretch from Warrnambool to Portland was specifically highlighted as one of the 12 most dangerous roads in Victoria.

During the federal election campaign earlier this year, improving the condition of local roads was a topic of major debate, with both independent candidate Alex Dyson and current member for Wannon, the Liberal Party’s Dan Tehan, acknowledging the dire state of roads in the region.

Recently, Tehan sent letters to state Premier Jacinta Allan, asking for her to “finish the job when it comes to the Princes Highway between Warrnambool and Port Fairy”.

The member for Wannon also encouraged locals to capture photos of potholes or road damage in their local areas, and post them to social media under the hashtag #FixVicRoads.

Danny Gorog, the founder of Snap Send Solve - an app in which people can log reports about issues like potholes and rubbish dumping with councils - told the Herald Sun the “data clearly showed the issue was widespread, but that new problem areas were also emerging”.

“If you look at Warrnambool and South West year-on-year, that’s grown about 31 percent,” he said.

“Shepparton is up 23 percent, Melbourne West is up 20 percent, Melbourne inner is up 38 percent.”