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The second of the two houses built on the block next door is full now, I'm not sure how many people have moved in but they had all their friends helping unpack the truck — the only way to move house, the more friends the better!

That makes two houses with three car spaces that now contain somewhere between six and eight people and who knows how many cars... I guess parking in the street could get even more shambolic than usual if they start parking out the front where customers of the singing school park illegally.

More rubbish though; just like when the people in the other house moved in, they've bundled up all their house-moving rubbish and dumped it out on the footpath — its in a bin — but they've picked the council green-waste bin, and they've put it out four days early. Seems to be a common problem; “chuck it out on the street, not my problem any more.”

More fun and games with Telstra; phone, email, phone — no, yes, no.

Seems to be differences in the emphasis in the email and phone calls as to the whether it can be relocated (email from sales department) and who requests and pays for it (support and faults department)

Today's call, I stated the same question as last Friday and was again told verbally: The lead-in cable is Telstra infrastructure and neighbours are forbidden from touching it ($50,000 fine if they do so).

I then explained that I'd received an email from Telstra stating that our lead-in cable would have to be relocated, and that the neighbours did have this right:

  Thank you for your email dated 18/5/07, regarding your lead-in cable.

  Your lead- in cable will need to be removed or relocated onto your own property. Your
  neighbours do have the right to remove this cable as it is on their property.

  For more information on this matter please phone us on 13 22 00.

Telstra staff on the phone said "Huh?"

I expressed my concern that this appeared to be the opposite of what she'd just told me, and of what I'd been told on Friday. She discussed this with her supervisor and returned to state that:

• the cable can be relocated, if arranged between neighbour and Telstra
• as we have not requested the relocation, we will not be billed
• the neighbour cannot pass the Telstra bill on to us

Aw crap, what are they playing at? We found the following unsigned letter with quasi-legal wording in the letterbox today:

  16th May 2007

  Owner
  XX XXXXXX XXX
  Oakleigh Vic 3166

  The Residents
  XX XXXXXX XXX
  Oakleigh Vic 3166

  Dear Sir/Madam

  It has come to our attention, that you have a Telecommunication wire, trespassing
  across our property. As we have never given you permission for this to happen, we
  want it removed.

  We noticed that you already have a pole outside your house, which would be more
  suitable for that wire to be attached to.

  We will therefore give you seven (7) days from the date of this letter to remove it
  from its orginal site and have it re-attached to the other pole. If that has not taken
  place by the expiration of the deadline, then we will be removing it ourselves and any
  cost that is born as a result, will naturally be passed on to you, so it will be in your
  best interest, to act promptly.

  We thank you in advance for your anticipated co-operation in this matter.

  Your faithfully

  OWNERS

The cable they're talking about is the Telstra phone cable, it has quite possibly been there for forty years! I was fairly sure that there's nothing wrong with it, but rang up Telstra anyway to check.

It caused a bit of fun and games with the enquiries line, not your routine query it seems!

Yep, the Telstra cable is Telstra infrastructure, and in a magnificent quote “The infrastructure can go where it wants.” Any "issues" that they have with it are between them and Telstra and they should contact Telstra about it.

The cable can be relocated if they wish, however the costs will be born by them, not by us and not by Telstra.

Of course, none of this could possibly have anything to do with the fact that we keep asking the building company to come and finish fixing the fence that they half took down months ago, now could it...?

A trip out of the house in the early afternoon to collect a few things, we returned to discover that some idiot had parked their car sideways across both our driveway and the neighbour's — and that the neighbour's landlord's car was parked in fron of that.... Tooting on the horn brought nobody out of the house so we parked in the street and went inside.

Five minutes later as I'm in the back garden the old Greek landlord comes out into the backyard showing two young Greek guys around — he's waxing lyrical about how it isn't a wide block but it is a long block of land.... Hmmm, is there more development afoot? There's two things you can do with a house like this; renovate it to a classic federation cottage, or bulldoze and build big brick boxes. These guys don't look the federation cottage type, I wonder if we'll be seeing another building permit soon... and this one would be a major eyesore and barrier to our place, not to mention leaving us feeling like we are in a canyon if it is more than one storey!

A little later I watched the two young guys get into the car and leave, unblocking our driveway. Ridiculously, half an hour later I met the landlord as he was leaving and asked if he knew who had parked the car that had blocked us in. “Car, car, I no see no car here...”. He shrugged and walked away, lying through his teeth.

We shall see....

According to the proverb; good fences make good neighbours, apparently. Seems we don't have good neighbours though! Latest on the development front; as Jo was walking out the door she saw that the builders are taking down the fence between our block and theirs! First we have heard of it was when the builder came over and asked whether or not we had a dog! No idea what the answer would have been if she said yes, since they had already removed all the poles and were starting on the sections of the fence palings.

A telephone query to the council for rubber-stamping building permits reveals that we should have inferred that the fence would be removed from the placement of the proposed development's walls, and the developer should have have received verbal approval before starting work on the fence this morning. Apparently the fact that Jo didn't tell them to stop and put it back classifies as verbal approval!

The whole planning and objection process appears heavily weighted in favour of the developers. On their side they have the developer, builder and surveyor creating the plans and knowing all the ins and outs of the rules, on the other side are the neighbouring residents who are presented with a fully developed plan and meant to infer everything from that with the help of the council. Apparently all we had to do was ask the right questions of the council at the time! I pointed out that we didn't even know the right questions since we aren't developers or builders.

We really couldn't care about that section of the fence anyway, it is hidden flush up against the house. What we do care about is the complete lack of notification and communication that appears to be displayed at every step of the way.

An interesting conversation with the local council's planning office today; I decided to call them up and query our neighbour's actions on Saturday of cutting down the tree that was expressly retained on their planning permit. Half way through explaining the permit's application, objection, granting history the women interrupted with “...and let me guess, they've cut down the tree.”. When I replied yes, it was met with “Why does that not surprise me in the least — oh, I shouldn't say things like that, um hang on, I'll put you onto the planner officer responsible for that case.”

Explained the story again, and once again was met by an unsurprised audience. It sounds a little too common to leave the trees in the plan to make it all look green and friendly and environmentally responsible, then once the permission arrives, to bulldoze the lot and concrete it for ease of development. The Senior Statutory Planner will investigate further and call me back....

Three in the afternoon and the SMS comes in: “Large orange bulldoser (sic.) has just arrived on the back of truck!” Two and a half hours of crashing and grinding noises and now there is no house.

No chance now of rescuing even a cutting from their enormous Blue Moon rose — now buried underneath several tonnes of bricks and rubble.

The house next door is finally going, the inexorable pressure of the developers. Executive summary is to bulldoze the old house and build two, two-storey town houses on the block. Flatten the garden and cover what's left with concrete carparking. Our objections to council of a two-storey townhouse looking straight down into our garden overruled, not even acknowledged in the planning approval that we received once the ruling was made. Last night we came home to realise that pieces of the house are starting to go; a hole where the airconditioner was, boards missing near the roof, what'll happen over the weekend?

How will the building affect us? How will the building affect us?

Both noun and verb, I'm not looking forward to three months' worth of being woken up at 6am by builders crashing about, not sure what the final appearance of the two houses will be, just how intrusive they'll appear from our garden....