There is a time for all things. Writing, reading, working etc… And for celebrating that I have finally reached the point where our home is safe from my local council threatening to demolish it. For the record, I believe they’ve been wrong from the start – but that is beer over the dam now.

So: the short version – leaving a lot out and trying to gloss the stress, the despair, the depression, the worry, the vast un-necessary expense etc…

We moved a house: something very common in US and even in other states of Australia. Here: you’d think I was scheduling a portal to Venus through which the danger of giant mutant slime worms was an ever-present probability.  I’ll eventually be telling the full story – but it’s been three and a half years of stress, obstruction, harassment and expense, for no particular benefit to anyone. No one is safer, the island has lost a lot of money for no physical gain. The bureaucratic documentation they already had (or are supposed to have) had to be recreated de novo, for the same thing 300 yards from where it stood before.  Bureaucrats gotta bureaucrat, I suppose, and I suspect that gives them what passes for a reason to be.

They were in the typical position of bureaucrats: fighting them in court would cost me a fortune I don’t have, and I could possibly have lost, thereby losing not only my home but the cost of fighting. On the other hand, they would be spending public (including mine) money and had nothing at all to lose, win or lose.

To go through the motions of making it my intransigence: they set me an impossible task – 6 months to do what in the normal course of red-tape can take up to three years, or I had to demolish. I pointed this out to them, but said I would do my best, even though it was knowingly set up to be impossible. And – by taking a high-risk strategy (these certifications are normally done sequentially, because one may well change for the next, and most people find themselves going back as well – The fire compliance doesn’t match the drawing of the site, and so on.  I did them in parallel, and mostly, got away with it.) it looked like I might succeed. But two documents had to come FROM the bureaucrat in question.  Of course, it still had to go through the Building Surveyor – one they had pushed onto me, who had assured me it would all be quick and simple.

And guess which two documents I still did not have a week before (when the last other document squeaked in.) deadline: Any ideas?

Three days before the fatal day, I appealed – to the entire council (elected and bureaucrat – so it could no longer be kept secret from the elected or the record.) asking for an extension, on the grounds these two documents – a plumbing permit and the development application – which I had applied for and complied with all the requirements for, still had not been received. Now there was a reason for this, on my part. You see, I knew that FOUR days before the deadline… THEIR legal deadline to supply the second of the two documents expired too (this was stretching their legal obligation to its most generous possible limit). No one ever holds them to this, because they make your life unpleasant. But… my life couldn’t be a lot more unpleasant.

Compliance with the law meant that, actually, they had no choice but to grant both permits forthwith, or go to a tribunal.  If they pressed ahead, I could still take them to the tribunal – and the penalties for breaching the Act setting this timeframe, were set out in the Act – my costs in getting the permits AND the permits would be automatically granted (this is important).

I got a sullen, threatening, nasty agreement… And then we came to granting the permits themselves. And here I faced amazing squirming.  Suddenly, suddenly, they were eager to oblige so I didn’t need that development permit. They wanted to do almost anything except… what the Act said they had to do: give me the permits with no further ado or go to the tribunal and have them give it to me. The various evasions made rightly suspicious, and I carefully read the conditions on the permit they didn’t want to give me… and oddly, pure chance I am sure, it granted me 2 (and half on request) YEARS to gain the paperwork they’d given me six months to complete, to reach the same stage. That’s barely reasonable considering how difficult it is and how long it takes… but a further 2 years, should anything go wrong. And being a LATER dated grant of time for the exact thing (I specified it was to dismount the house on truck and tailers on the site already, that they had threaten to make me demolish – so it either over-rode, or created a conflict of which had standing) it meant that their threat was questionable, and grudging extension was covered anyway.

I collected some interesting material on what they could have done to help (none of which they had offered before), and then said no, thank you, but I would actually just like them to comply with the Act. I am sure I was even more popular for that.

Well…the Act prescribes what timeframes they have to raise questions, raise a fee, ask for extension of their time etc. They had all lapsed. The only legal option was just to grant both permits.  Of course, they didn’t do that, but attempted to proceed down the normal course of reasons to obstruct, trap, question, demand more surveys and certifications etc. Each of which I had to counter (1. They were not valid – outright stupid some of them 2) the time to raise these had lapsed.) – and eventually, like drawing teeth, I did get the two permits – the one worded with stuff beyond the authority she has, the other… problematic (for them). By this stage the petty bureaucrat had just about run out of clauses in the act to ignore or break.  It had taken a further 3 months – making the two permits which are supposed to take one month each, take four and half, and ten, respectively.

None-the-less we still had to pass the hurdle of another government cunning plan – the Building Surveyor. You have to have one, you pay them. But you can’t fire them… and they tell you what to do, and decide whether they will grant the piece of bureaucratic approval to allow you to get a building permit. I believe they can be quite useful. They can also be very close to the local planning officers. You can’t make them do anything, and they can raise new hurdles very easily. They have been granted absolute power over the process. Absolute power is always good, isn’t it?

That phase has taken the last 11 months. I didn’t think it would ever pass this stage.  They could always raise some new, massively expensive or difficult hurdle – and did, for four months. Incidentally, at this point the individual handling it retired, which meant it got given to someone else who doesn’t have anything to do with the island. No more obstructions – they just didn’t finalize it. Seven months later, endless promises, and very politest and most tactful I could manage nags… getting more stressed than ever, and it is finally, finally done.

There is still work to do, as in physical work – but at least the threat is no longer their bludgeon. It means the world to us, especially in the Australia we find ourselves in – with a major housing and cost-of-living crisis.  Having a secure home, a little farm, our own power, water, and food, is a vast comfort that I wish everyone could have. After 14 years of uncertainty, we have a place that doesn’t cost us much to live in and on, meaning even on a writer’s income I don’t have to worry all the time. Worry, for me, has been a creativity killer. If you’re a fan of my books – well, Flinders Council has reduced my output by at least three if not five books.

So: now I should be plunging ahead like a runaway mule… And I will. But right now, I am experiencing the lightness of not living with the threat of my home being demolished.