Out of house and home

Updated

They were homeowners who invested their life savings. Now many are walking away with almost nothing. And it's all legal.

Wantirna Caravan Park is a community slowly dismantling itself.

It's hard to escape the sense of a neighbourhood razed by natural disaster. Of lives abandoned mid sip of the coffee cup.

A year since developer Longriver bought the land for $35.6 million and announced plans to build townhouses, vacant blocks and house stumps have replaced neatly trimmed lawns and lovingly tended flower beds.

The groans of heavy machinery cut through birdsong as another home is hoisted onto a truck, destined for a new lease on life elsewhere.

Those that remain will be bulldozed along with the gum trees and the bottlebrush.

The man at the controls of the crane does this for a living and has moved folks en masse from caravan parks before.

But this job, in Melbourne's east, is the saddest he can recall.

"This is horrendous, what's happened here."

To be here now is to witness the end of a way of life.

A citrus tree stands laden with fruit that will never be picked. A pumpkin atrophies on the vine.

Mounds of junk are proliferating.

Here a discarded fridge, door askew. There a vase of plastic flowers on a left-behind couch. On the floor of a half-demolished living room, a Ned Kelly biography lies splayed open.

Propped against a car tyre, a watercolour frames a peaceful vista somewhere far from here.

The last days of chez nous

There's been seemingly little sympathy — from the Government or the public — for the people who made their lives here.

Residents have seen the comments left on the bottom of news stories posted online.

What did they expect? They never owned the land.

They remember the insults hurled out car windows as they held up signs by the roadside and collected signatures on a petition.

Get a job, ya mug.

Mostly yelled by young people. People fortunate enough — or ignorant enough, perhaps — to believe that what was happening to the park residents had nothing to do with them. That they themselves could never end up in this situation.

"Apparently we're all druggos, alcoholics, no hopers and unemployed," says Helen Smith, who works as a procurement officer and ballroom dances for fun.

Her neighbours include an ex-cop, a former social worker and a landscape gardener who feeds the magpies from his porch.

Many are pensioners who once owned more traditional homes in the suburbs.

Mums and dads who've raised families and even dedicated careers to helping others.

An Australia Post worker who called his home "his castle".

A tyre fitter. A carpenter. A concreter.

They're the quintessential Aussie battlers — people one divorce, one major health problem or one failed business removed from those zooming by in their cars.

They came to live here as an affordable place to start again, to retire.

But because they didn't own the land their homes were built on, they can legally be told to leave.

They're not alone — others have faced the same fate as caravan parks around the state have closed.

Now they have to find somewhere else to put their houses and pay for relocation. Or sell them in a hurry for a fraction of their value. Or, in some cases, lose the lot and throw themselves on the mercy of the already overstretched stock of public housing.

Uprooted

James Paul is rolling around in the rubble beneath his house, squinting up at the beams.

He's trying to find the compliance plate that will verify the building was constructed to standard. Without it, the new caravan park he's found in the country won't accept him.

Moving day has crept up on the 71-year-old.

Two days from now the crane comes to split his house down the middle and cart it away. That same evening he'll be eating dinner inside his reconstructed kitchen, 75 kilometres from here.





The lifelong electrician-turned-gardener is the reason the "Toorak end" of the park got its name.

He used to keep the lawn edges squarely trimmed. Not anymore, he admits, as he scuffs at the overgrown grass with the toe of one boot. What's the point?

James always believed he had the park's prime position.

From his windows he could watch the sun rise and the sun set. At night the lights of the cars on the freeway twinkled.

His pool table fit in the living room. His gleaming blue Harley is propped outside, beneath a tarpaulin.

He owned a four-bedroom house in Scoresby with his wife before she went bankrupt and they split after raising three children together.

With his half of the settlement he bought into Wantirna, paying $120,000 for his house.

He'd always liked caravan parks. Used to stay in them rather than hotels whenever he was sent to the country on a job.

"They're cheaper and more fun. It's instant community."

A community that is no more.

Adapt or die

Helen Smith is camping inside her own house.

Sleeping on a blow-up mattress, sitting on a camp chair, keeping food cold in an Engel fridge.

Her belongings are farmed out to friends.

Hooks that once held paintings are now bare.

All that remains are her birds and herself.

It's not a situation she ever imagined.

Seven years ago she was a self-funded retiree travelling Australia with her partner.

But the relationship broke up after 24 years, and the couple sold the house they'd owned together in Cockatoo, south-east of Melbourne.

On the cusp of 60 and single, having been a homeowner several times over in her life — as well as a landlord — she moved into the Wantirna Caravan Park because she couldn't afford anywhere else.

The park had been advertised as a place to downsize: invest money, buy a small place, be safe and secure and enjoy a good lifestyle.

Helen redid the house, sparing no expense, and created a garden filled with sliver birches, weeping maples, cherries and magnolias.

When the flowering gum was in season she could lie in bed with her curtains flung wide and watch the lorikeets. They made a racket but they were so pretty.

From her kitchen sink, Helen could see the hill where she went to school as a child.

She has just sold the relocatable home she bought for $120,000, and did $50,000 worth of work on, for $24,000.

"Big loss," she says. "The Minister for Housing says, 'Oh yes but we're helping you people'. Yes, they're helping some but anyone who works or has got a bit of money they're not helping. We get nothing. We have to walk away with nothing."

Her voice trembles.

After a lifetime spent working hard, it's hard to take.

"It's disheartening. It makes you think, 'Was it worthwhile? Was all the saving worthwhile?'"

Helen's always lived within her means, provided for herself. She hasn't had a credit card for 30 years.

"If I can't pay cash, I don't buy it. My last house we bought cash. My car out there I paid cash for. My ex-partner and I bought a caravan, paid cash for it brand new."

Resilience and self reliance are defining characteristics of those who made their homes here.

Now again, they're battling.

Helen's managed to buy into a lifestyle village in Kilmore, an hour north of Melbourne. She's building a house on land where she'll have a 99-year lease.

"You adapt or die unfortunately, and some of our people have."

There are tears in her eyes.

"Any stress like this, it affects people."

Helen has an ulcer now. She's been diagnosed with asthma.

Her new place won't be ready until March.

"If it wasn't for friends, I'd be on the street."



'They've destroyed a beautiful place'

Con Mylonas gets wound up when he talks about it. The eviction.

The 58-year-old raised his three sons here in a house that initially felt like a "dogbox" but which he gradually extended.

With the closure of the park he's had to enter the private rental market.

"It's sent me backwards. I'm paying a lot more on a rental and it's not the same.

"Here I felt like I belonged somewhere. I owned something. Now I don't. How can that be right without compensation or some sort of financial help?

"They've destroyed a beautiful place here. There should be more of these places.

"To come out on television and talk about housing affordability, like they're doing something about it. They're doing the opposite. They're destroying it. Because these parks are here for a reason."

The stress has been such that Con, a food machine technician, had a breakdown at work. His boss recognised the strain he was under and sent him home for two days.

"It's like we don't exist to the politicians. Like we're second class citizens. They've totally ignored us. Shame on 'em."



From Stayinput to FOR SALE

Stayinput declares the name plate out the front of Judy Battersby's place.

It says everything you need to know about her intentions when she moved to the park 12 years ago from a house she owned in Ringwood, on the heels of a family bust-up.

At the time Wantirna was a gated community and, as a newly single woman, Judy felt safe.

Friendly neighbours and leafy gardens offered an antidote to the depression she's wrestled most of her life.

"On a down day all you've got to do is walk outside and there's always somebody to talk to."

Now next to the Stayinput sign is a FOR SALE notice.

A money tree is flourishing nearby. Judy will be leaving it behind when she goes.

"Money tree? Bullshit. All it's done is make us broke."

She can't afford to relocate her home.

"$250,000 I was offered for this place 18 months ago and then you get these letters saying you're out. No compensation, no nothing.

"Basically I don't have the money to bury myself. A box is good."

Judy has used the funds she does have to buy a unit in another caravan park in Longwarry, an hour south-east of Melbourne.

"It's dowdy but it's somewhere. I'll just paint it. You make the most of it," she says, attempting a smile.

"I'll probably die out there and no-one'll know."

Her black sense of humour has been darkened by the loss of her home.

"Thought I was going to see my time out here but I'm not, am I?"

Residents have written letters describing the impact of the park's closure on their wellbeing. On Wednesday, they were delivered to Victorian Upper House MP Shaun Leane, a last ditch effort to have their plight understood.

In hers, Judy writes:

"After I received the letter of the park closure, I was in total disbelief and panic set in. Not only was I going to lose everything I owned, but where do I go, what do I do?

"I don't want public housing, I've always looked after myself and thought I was set for the rest of my life."

'Shafted'

Before all this happened, Judy Adams didn't think of herself as elderly.

At 79, she's sprightly and clear-eyed, silver hair pinned back as she waters the roses she's salvaged into pots.

Her garden is full of holes where plants used to be. The lemon tree, the gardenia. There are still remnants of violets and pansies.

In the early '90s, she and her husband owned three and a half acres on the Murray, halfway between Echuca and Swan Hill.

Throughout a career as a social worker the couple lived all around Australia, including two years in Broome and time in central Australia where Judy worked in Aboriginal communities. Her husband was an artist and tagged along, the outback landscapes filtering into his work.

When Ron developed Alzheimer's, they were forced to move to the city in search of better services. The caravan park provided a slice of the country in the city, made the move palatable.

Ron and Judy's house looked over the vacant VicRoads land that abuts the park. "We'd sit here on the deck and you wouldn't hear any noise, you wouldn't see any people. And it was just lovely."

"Shafted" is how she bluntly describes what's happened to her and Ron.

"People say, 'Oh well, if you were renting a house you'd have to get out'. This is not the same. People have put $180,000 into these houses and now they're going to lose all of that.

"There are a lot of people here who are very honest, good and hardworking. I mean, I didn't retire until I was nearly 71. So it's not like most of us have bludged on the Government or done anything like that.

"The federal and state governments and councils are making many statements about affordable housing. This is clearly lip service as they have allowed hundreds of people to be evicted from affordable housing without hope of restitution."

Judy was quoted $20,000 to move her house, in four pieces. The hope was to put it on her daughter's property. But they couldn't afford the cost and so instead the Adams' house will be sold, if possible — or bulldozed.

Now Judy and her husband, married 62 years, are living in an aged care facility.





"We've gone from an almost affluent lifestyle to complete and utter poverty, virtually, in about eight or nine years because of what's happened.

"This is a real tragedy. I don't think people really comprehend the amount of distress it has caused.

"Up until three years ago I didn't consider myself old. You'd see on the television 'elderly person at 60' and I'm thinking, 'I don't even feel elderly now'. Now I do. It's because of what we've been through here."

In the aged care home, Judy waits for her husband, now 85, to wake up one day and say, "Who are you?"

But so far he hasn't.

Perhaps it's a blessing that he can remember all the travels around Australia, but that his grip on the present moment is tenuous.

By their old deck at the caravan park, the couple's kiwi vine blooms, never healthier.

"You know what the annoying thing is?" Judy says, as she stands in the brilliant sunshine.

"Kiwis take four years to fruit. And this is the fourth year."

Uphold the right

Lyndon Spicak joined the police force to make a difference.

Uphold the right says the emblem that hangs from his wall still.

He ended up at the Wantirna Caravan Park after a marriage break-up left him on his own and a heart problem rendered him unable to work.

He bought a caravan for $8,500 and over the years added a simple annex. His place remains one of the humblest in the park.

"Everything I've ever earnt or the money that I've had, I've put into making this my home," Lyn says.

"It was comfortable for me. Now that this has happened I stand to lose everything.

"The only thing I'm going to end up with is the computer, the TV and the bed."

Eight children and eight grandchildren have virtually grown up here, visiting their dad, their grandpa.

"All piling into the one bed," Lyn remembers. "Many times you'd wake up in the morning and you're on the floor and the kids are in the bed taking over."

In a street full of single dads starting over, he found a kinship.

"When I moved here the manager of the park told me, 'It's yours for life'."

"I feel sick every time I come through the gate now. 23 years of your life."

Coinciding with the park closure has been a series of deaths in the family. In the space of the past 18 months, Lyn's lost his brother-in-law to a brain tumour and two sons in their 30s, one to a motorbike accident and another to the flu. His 28-year-old daughter needs a heart transplant.

"We've had a bit of a hard trot," he says, without a skerrick of self pity.

Without his youngest grandchild, who he looks after every weekday morning and who calls him Dad, Lyn's not sure he'd still be standing.

Jax is a miniature version of his grandfather.

As Lyn visits his caravan for one of the last times, the child clambers over things, pulls plastic wrap off the roller, presses buttons on the microwave and finally falls fast asleep in the middle of the floor.

"He's a bright spark in my life. When you're feeling down he'll come up and he'll rub your head. He's been my inspiration to keep going."

Best case scenario, this ex-cop of 15 years is now headed for a one-bedroom housing commission flat.

Grateful. That's how his caseworker said he should feel.

"They have gotten a lot of people in places. But our homes are here. We still can't get rid of the homes.

"I keep watching the news every night, seeing the politicians front up for various photo poses. Nothing is more important than ensuring this doesn't happen to anyone else."

Worst case?

"I'll end up having to stay in my car."

The long goodbye

On a recent afternoon, people gathered in the old camp kitchen at the park.

They told stories, lit candles. Ate sausages.

It was a memorial for the five residents who have passed away since receiving notice of the park's closure last December.

People here draw a direct line between the deaths and the stress over the impending closure.

In many ways the service felt more like a wake for an entire community.

It's been a tight-knit place.

There was a time when the threat posed by the developer drew people closer together.

But that time is past.

Now everyone is scattering to the winds.

A bus used to come every Tuesday to take residents to Knox shopping centre. Six ladies would catch it.

Now there is one.

Peter Gray — a circus performer who's lived at the park for 27 years and has become the unofficial agitator and organiser-in-chief — likens it to a sinking ship.

"In the beginning we could see the horizon, we could see the land ahead. It's got to a point now where people are bailing out. And once you're tipped into the water, you're just worried about yourself.

"People have gone into survival mode," he says.

His own house might end up plonked in the middle of a cow paddock at his brother's place near Geelong.

A night owl who routinely goes to bed at 3 or 4am, Peter's life has been consumed by what he calls the "saga" of the park.

His days have become a surreal blend of fielding calls from journalists while listening to musical scores (at full pelt to blow off steam), and trying to keep his performing career alive. In between he's doing a lot of counselling at front doors and letterboxes.

It's a lonely business, doing what he can to try to get justice. Many of his neighbours were octogenarian pensioners not well enough to advocate for themselves. A lot has fallen on his shoulders.

The gathering of the petitions. For residents unable to write their own letters to the MP, Peter has recorded and transcribed their stories.

He's taken to walking the streets of the park — named after apple varieties as a nod to its former life as an orchard — updating a colour-coded map of the park. Orange for houses empty. Red for houses gone. Green for the dwindling number that remain.

"People slip away," he says.

He still has 105 names in his phone, people he keeps informed by text message. A handful more don't want to be kept informed.

Peter understands. These are not folks inclined to lament their lot in life. They get on with it. It's been a battering 10 months. The stress and uncertainty has knocked people around at a vulnerable point in their lives.

Depression has set in.

One resident hanged himself in his carport.

Another has tried to kill herself.

If you or anyone you know needs help: beyondblue on 1300 22 4636 or by visiting www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support

Lifeline on 13 11 14

Headspace on 1800 650 890

Residents have until tomorrow, Friday November 10, to leave if they've signed an agreement whereby the developer will dispose of anything they leave behind, at his cost. Others will likely remain until a final deadline in January.

The developer has remained a shadowy figure for the residents. All they know of Longriver is that it's Chinese-backed.

They've never seen the face of Longriver's Andrew Yu, who is behind the Wantirna project.

The closest they've come is seeing a helicopter fly overhead. They assumed it was his aircraft, surveying the new turf.

In March, MP Shaun Leane spoke in Parliament to urge Mr Yu to put some of the "squillions of dollars he's going to make" towards helping the residents move on with their lives.

He pledged to stand up in Parliament every sitting week until the developer met with residents.

"I will be telling the director of the company that if he has no conscience, I will be his conscience."

But nothing has come of it.

Longriver had engaged PR firm Royce Communications to handle their media, but Royce says it's no longer involved.

When approached directly by the ABC, Longriver requested questions in writing, but did not respond.

In a written statement, a State Government spokeswoman said counselling was being offered to the park's residents, and the Government was working with agencies to find them new homes.

She said the Government was looking at ways to strengthen protections for private caravan park residents, but under current laws, no compensation was available.

The Government is reviewing Victoria's Residential Tenancies Act, and options for caravan parks are due for release later this year.

But hopes are dim that anyone at Wantirna will see any kind of financial help to offset the loss of their homes or the value of those homes. Peter Gray keeps plugging away regardless.

He points to other states' laws that do allow for displaced residents to claim compensation.

"The politicians say they can only work within the law and there's no requirement for compensation within that law," he says.

"But really, morally, as a Government, what's happened to our hearts?

"If they're our leaders why can't they just say, 'I'm a human being, you're a human being'?"

Topics: housing, government-and-politics, urban-development-and-planning, community-and-society, wantirna-3152, melbourne-3000, vic

First posted