Bruce Kerr’s Creative Solution to Illegal Parking: A Tale of Instant Karma

In the bustling city of Rockhampton, Queensland, 58-year-old Bruce Kerr found himself facing a persistent problem at his IT business, Kerr Solutions. When a tobacconist opened next door on busy Musgrave Street, up to 20 people daily began using his private driveway as their personal parking spot, completely ignoring the clearly posted “No Parking” signs. The situation was more than just an inconvenience—it blocked his staff from accessing their own parking area and created a dangerous situation as drivers recklessly reversed onto the main road. After fruitless attempts to resolve the issue through official channels, with both local council and police claiming it fell outside their jurisdiction, Kerr decided to take matters into his own hands. Drawing on his background in mechanical engineering and decades of practical farm experience, he devised an ingenious solution: an automatic sprinkler system that would give unwelcome parkers a surprising shower.

The system, which took six months to plan and implement, is a marvel of DIY engineering. It uses motion sensors, cameras, piping, solenoids, different jets, valves, and a connection to the town’s water supply. The water is stored in a 400-liter capacity pressure vessel at very high pressure, thanks to a multistage pump. When someone parks illegally and triggers the sensors, they’re greeted with a powerful jet of water—particularly effective if they’ve left their windows down. “When the sprinkler comes on and smacks them in the face, you’re just thinking, well that’s justice, that’s karma being served,” Kerr explained. Since installing the system in late 2023, illegal parking incidents have dropped dramatically to just two or three per day, and those unfortunate enough to get soaked often take it in good humor, acknowledging they shouldn’t have parked there in the first place.

What Kerr never anticipated was the viral fame his sprinkler system would bring. He began posting footage of the water-based justice on TikTok under the handle “Rockhampton Chaos,” quickly amassing millions of viewers who eagerly await each new video of parking offenders getting their comeuppance. “Some people on TikTok are saying ‘I live for these movies’ and ‘this is the best thing on TikTok’ and ‘now that I found this it’s the only thing I watch’ and ‘when can you put on more movies, we want more,'” Kerr shared. The unexpected popularity has transformed his simple deterrent into something of a local attraction, with tourists stopping to take photos and local children playfully challenging the system with their scooters and bikes, delighting in the harmless water spray when Kerr activates the manual override.

One particularly memorable incident involved a worker who parked in the driveway to visit the tobacconist next door. Camera footage showed the shirtless man stepping out of a company truck, only to be immediately blasted with water, sending him scurrying back inside. When Kerr posted the video on TikTok, it reached over four and a half million viewers—including the man’s boss. As it turned out, the employee had claimed on his timesheet to be working at a mining site out west, when he was actually in town buying cigarettes. The timestamp on the video proved his dishonesty, and his employer later contacted Kerr to apologize and inform him that the worker had been terminated. “He said that he had already been let go because he received a few other calls about his bad driving… and decided that even though apparently he was a good worker, he was dishonest and he just wasn’t keeping up a good image for the company,” Kerr recounted.

Not all reactions to the sprinkler system have been positive, however. While most take their soaking with good humor, some have responded with hostility—vandalizing the system, throwing rocks, or coming into the store to verbally abuse staff. For these confrontational visitors, Kerr has yet another creative solution: “the horn of Gondor,” a reference to The Lord of the Rings. This extremely loud horn “usually disorients them and they forget what they even came here for,” he joked, adding that his business can “fix a lot of problems.” Beyond illegal parking, Kerr is now tackling another issue—people using the driveway’s alcove as a public urinal in broad daylight. While he’s keeping the details of his planned system upgrade under wraps, he promises TikTok viewers will see the results when it’s implemented.

The success of Kerr’s inventive approach has spread far beyond Rockhampton. He receives calls from business owners across Australia and even the United States, seeking advice on implementing similar systems to address their own parking problems. “There’s a guy who rang me the other day from down in Melbourne because they’ve got a similar problem at a storage facility down there and they wanted to know how to put it all together,” Kerr said. “I need to start selling plans to the system because there seems to be quite a need for it in other areas.” For now, his message to potential illegal parkers remains simple and tinged with his characteristic humor: “Come park here and cop a squirt, if that’s what they want to do. We’ve got the solution to their problem.” After 29 years of serving the Rockhampton community with his IT business, Bruce Kerr has unexpectedly found fame with a different kind of solution—one that delivers instant karma with a splash.