ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

A block of cheap flats in Betoota Heights boldly displays the year the building was built – in a manner that suggests it’s still going to be a block of year flats in a hundred years’ time.

The former Medina serviced apartment complex on the corner of Monterey Road and Hinze Street has already been found to be riddled with concrete cancers and construction defects.

Many residents say the waterproofing on the floors above was ‘less than stellar’ during construction and one apartment on level six was condemned by the shire council in May after cracks appeared on the balcony floor.

The company who developed the site has since been liquidated and the directors are not residents of Australia.

Which is lucky for them, said one resident who spoke to The Advocate this afternoon, because if he knew where to find them, he’d shoot them all and wait for the cops to come get him.

“I’ve already thrown a pot of brake fluid over the agent’s car who sold the place to me. He fucking knew it was half fucked. He knew I was too dumb to get the place inspected before I impulsively purchased it because of my fear of missing out,”

“But if I find the people who built it. I’d leave everything I have to the Salvo’s, head down to a rough enough pub in the Ponds with two or three grand in used $50 and $20 notes. Ask around for a piece. Meet up with a bloke inside a late model Subaru in the carpark of the French Quarter metro station. Do the deal, get the snub-nose .38 and start saying my goodbyes to the boys. I haven’t got any family or anything so I’m at peace with that. I’d find them and just fucking do them in the street, I’ll fucking blow their fucking brains out. Like full-on muzzle to the forehead and a hand out to keep the spatter off my face. I don’t care. I’ll sit in the gutter after I’m done and wait for the cops. Plead guilty and do my 50 years. I don’t fucking care,”

“But lucky for them, I don’t know where they are.”

At this rate, the shire council expects the whole building to be condemned and demolished in the next 50 years – or until the Mayor buys the building.

Our reporter knows where they are and hopes that the particular resident who gave The Advocate the quote above doesn’t read this and come down to the newsroom to demand some answers.

More to come.

