Courier journalists were threatened when we visited the latest Traveller camp in Dundee to investigate claims that locals are being intimidated.
A staff photographer and female reporter visited the Mill o’ Mains site on Monday afternoon.
The Travellers deny intimidation, but wishing cancer and Aids on us as well as telling me to perform a sex act on one of them shows some are happy to live down to their threatening image.
The camp has been set up around the outside of the park and, when we visited, two local parents trying to teach their young son to ride a bike said they were too intimidated to venture though the caravans into the park itself.
As we entered, we were soon surrounded by a pack of dogs off the leash. Soon an older Traveller and five children, aged approximately between seven and 15, confronted us.
The older man challenged our right to take photographs of the caravans in the public park but one of the older children denied they had thrown stones at local children and said he didn’t think anyone should feel intimidated by them.
However, the man then rounded on our photographer, wishing him a “slow and painful death with cancer”.
As we left we were followed by a boy of around 11, who picked up a shovel and threatened to smash the camera.
When I phoned the number on the side of the Kestrel Driveways four-wheel-drive vehicle parked in the camp, a man calling himself Mr Miller said he was in the park to buy a caravan from “Gypsies”.
He said he was aware a picture had been taken of his van and that we should have been assaulted with the shovel.
Then he called me a prostitute, asked me to perform a sex act on him and said if The Courier published his connection with the Travellers I would die from Aids.
Kestrel Driveways’ website claims it is based in Edinburgh but gives an Aberdeenshire number.
The man who answered said they had an office with no address in Dundee and asked if I had received a card through my door about my driveway.
He said Mr Miller’s comments were “unacceptable”.