When we moved into ‘Chateau Skull’ fifteen years ago after buying it on the spur of the moment. It was an ‘impulse buy’, so impulsive that I only had fifteen dollars in my wallet when I put in the winning bid at the auction. I was a little taken aback when the auctioneer asked me for a deposit. He was, however, a very trusting person and arranged for me to get the money on the Monday, that being a Saturday.
I suppose that I should have noticed at the time, that the Chateau was situated next to a two storey block of twenty four flats. However, caught up in the euphoria of the moment and overwhelmed by my own audacity, I think at the time I was the only bidder and bidded myself up another couple of thou.
When we bought the place there were quite a few trees around the place which hid us from the neighbours. There was an old Sycamore tree and another type of English style deciduous tree and two Cherry Trees in the front and a Peach, Plum, Apple, Fig and a Lemon tree in the back with some assorted Australian Evergreens scattered along the border.
At first we had a few problems with the neighbours, because some of the flats were government owned and let out to an assortment of what can best be described as misfits and loonies. Eventually though, the government decided to sell them off to private owners, who mainly bought them for their own use or as investment properties.
For a few years everything went swimmingly, the trees grew taller blocking out the flats completely from our view, the neighbours were happy picking the overgrowing fruit and having greenery to look out on. We were happy with the fruit and the privacy to sunbathe in the warmer months and dine al fresco.
Then along came the dreaded ‘Global Warming’, which has resulted in a drought lasting for over a decade, this area is mainly clay and basalt rock and the drying out has resulted in the buildings foundations moving. The flats next door were built on shonky foundations and had inadequate drainage in my humble opinion. This has resulted in large cracks, so large in fact that herds of Wildebeest could charge through, if they so desired. Luckily for the flat dwellers, such herds do not exist in Albion.
Armed with an engineers report, representatives of the body-corporate arrived, stating that the cracks in the flats were caused by the roots of the trees sucking up all the moisture and demanding their removal. I considered fighting this, but it would have cost thousands, getting alternative reports and court costs etc. So we decided to allow their removal, provided they paid for it and replaced the trees with others with less intrusive roots.
Looking on the bright side of things, some of the trees were forty foot weeds, the figs, pomegranates and lemons were inedible, the apples weren’t much better and I was sick of plum jam. The leaves were blocking the gutters and we have got a new landscaped garden with Acacias, Japanese Maples, Magnolias and other such exotica and I’m too old to worry about getting a suntan anyway. Not to mention the fact that I’ve been getting fit working my mattocks off weeding and barrowing cubic metres of mulch.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull.
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com/neighboursparttwo
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