IT’S worth mentioning that Aileen Hughes didn’t contact us here at the Sentinel-Times. We contacted her.
It was by chance that one of our journalists, who attended the farmers’ rally at Wonthaggi on Friday, June 13, came over for a chat with Eastern Victoria MLC Melina Bath, after the rally, and met up with Ms Hughes by chance.
Of course, we know Aileen from her 20-year stint at Southern Saddlery in Leongatha and her years on the camp draft and agricultural show circuit.
The two had been talking about Ms Hughes’ impasse with the South Gippsland Shire Council, in relation to a historic issue about occupancy of her home in Meeniyan, and included us in the conversation.
We visited Ms Hughes at her home, on the edge of Meeniyan over the weekend, and found it to be a thoroughly idyllic place to live, with a cosy, self-contained unit, albeit built by a licensed builder inside a farm shed on the 6.9-acre site, warmed by a slow-combustion heater, with yards outside and room to exercise her rescue horse ‘Darcy’.
Let us be clear from the outset, like the Environmental Audit Overlay imposed on completed homes in Wonthaggi’s north east last year, this is not an outcome that the community wants to see.
Kicking a pensioner out of her home, in the middle of a housing crisis, or just as bad, threatening to do so, is simply not an option.
And stepping back from where this train wreck scenario was going a year or so ago, shire officials had to see the potential for the upset and mental anguish it has caused. You’d think, after what happened at Turton’s Creek in May 2014, they would have come up with a way to manage these situations better.
That’s not to say the shire is doing the wrong thing, technically. Ms Hughes acknowledges herself that she can’t produce an Occupancy Certificate for the home, although she does say that in 1994, when she approached the Woorayl Shire about adding some self-contained amenities to the shed, including a kitchen and septic toilet, that they provided their approval.
Certainly, the rural-lifestyle property would likely be worth enough money to buy a modest unit elsewhere but Ms Hughes, a person of very modest means, at almost 75 years of age, doesn’t want to live in town. She never has. She loves it just where she is with the magpies and butcher birds to keep her company, autumn trees turning golden, red and brown and ‘Darcy’ calling to her as she arrives for his morning feed.
The shire, we’re told, doesn’t want to pay for the building report that would detail whether the home is habitable or not, and Ms Hughes can’t afford to do so. So, here we are, in an impasse that’s caused upset on both sides, set to go to the Magistrates’ Court next month for who knows what outcome.
This is not what we want to see from our local council. Call off the action today and find some other solution, maybe approval for a caravan or agreement that her house is every bit as good as a granny flat. Simply doing nothing would be a better outcome for all concerned.
