Escalation to Malicious Damage and Trespass?

For family reasons I have had to spend approximately 8 months away from Squatters Run. My few short return visits showed there has been no letting up in the harrassment. I believe the harrassment has now been escalated to include malicious damage and trespass.

On most returns to Thredbo this year there has been a little surprise waiting for me. Any one incident by itself may seem totally insignificant but together they indicate a continuing pattern of behaviour that has been ongoing over the years.

When I arrived back in late April to volunteer for the Thredbo Jazz festival I found the padlock to my parking bollard had been sheared off. Independent witnesses told me that whilst I was away people had been using my parking spot, without asking or receiving permission, for long periods of time. This coincided with work being done in the store-room/change-room (owned by one of the body corporate council members) that is adjacent to my parking spot.

I was told that the locksmith, who rebuilt the padlock, said it looked as though my padlock had been cut through with a grinder.

Also on this same day, I received an email from the strata management company (Alpine Strata) saying:

"Someone has reported to me that your car park padlock has been damaged – I realise that you will be back in town tomorrow – do you want to grab one on your way through?
Keep the invoice and send it through to me – I’ll get it sorted."

This email was quite a shock considering my earlier article (Who's Taking Responsibility For Their Actions?). And so, I responded with:

"Why would Alpine Strata pay for my own personal damaged property when I could not get payment for re-keying Squatters #4 after the key went missing when in the hands of tradesmen doing body corporate work?"

Alpine Strata's reply was:

"Alpine Strata was not going to pay for the replacement of your lock, one of the Council members saw the padlock and offered to pay, without giving any reason."

Well what's going on? My understanding is that it would be improper, if not illegal for me to accept a personal payment from body corporate funds if this were not a body corporate matter? So I must assume it was a body corporate issue that they aren't willing to tell me about or were one or more body corporate members a party to the damage and trespass? What's so secret that I can't be told about what happened to my own personal property?

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The day after the above incident I found 2 items of furniture, from the same store-room/change-room (as mentioned above), dumped in my tenants' parking spot.

As my tenants were arriving home late that night I moved the items into a parking spot owned by the same body corporate member who owns the store-room/change-room. I then went and spoke to his receptionist who said the items were only put there temporarily. A strange comment considering 4 days later, when I was leaving Thredbo, I saw the same items had been moved into yet another owner's vacant parking spot.

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I returned to Thredbo again for the June long weekend only to find a concrete block across the entrance to my parking spot.

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Then when I returned again in mid July someone had dumped 2 large bags of rubbish at the back of my tenants' parking space. It's not as though this location was on the way to anywhere else. In fact, the culprits had to go out of their way to dump their bags at the far end of the empty parking space (that's the back of the vacant space in the above photo). That night when my tenants reversed back into their parking spot their vehicle hit the bags.

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Another example of how things get dumped in and around my parking spaces (trespass, harrassment, hindering access, call it what you will) was mentioned in a previous article.

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There are some owners in Squatters Run who treat the entire complex as if it were their own. They park anywhere they like, they entitle themselves to things they shouldn't and that other owners are not even aware of and seem to generally have no respect for other owners in the complex. I will be far more explicit about some of these claims in forth coming articles.