Families at loggerheads

Neighbours not speaking as tribunal rules ‘sentimental’ trees will remain

NEIGHBOURS in one of the Gold Coast’s ritziest suburbs are not talking and refusing to mow a sliver of grass between their properties in a dispute over shade and dropped pine needles from two “sentimental” trees.

The row has been going on between Shaun and Clare Minahan, and Leslie and Andrea Kosky for four years.

On Friday a Queensland tribunal decided the trees would stay.

The two trees on the Koskys’ Lothian Avenue canal-front property at Bundall were a gift from Leslie’s father when they bought the home in 1983.

“I am a builder, my father was a builder and my parents bought two (Cook) pines as a housewarming present,” he said.

“My dad and I planted the trees together.

“It has been a tradition in our family.

“My dad has a Polish background and it was a tradition that whenever you build a home you stick a part of the pine tree branch up on to the roof.”

Mr Minahan first complained about the trees’ pine needles in 2014. A Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT) decision made on Friday stated Mr Kosky refused to cut down the trees and that was when the problems began.

Mr Kosky said the neighbours no longer spoke to each other and there was now a narrow strip of long grass on the footpath along the boundary between the properties.

At the QCAT hearing, the Minahans argued the trees shaded their home, reducing “the usability of certain rooms in winter due to cold and lack of light”, reduced the efficiency of their solar panels by 47 per cent and could result in injury or death if they fell on their property.

However, QCAT member Peter Bridgeman dismissed the Minahans’ application to have the trees chopped down, finding interference from the trees was not “severe”.

“A tree order can only be made in this instance if the tribunal has before it evidence that the interference is severe,” he wrote.

“That is not the case here. “Even if the shade was severe ...it does not constitute substantial, ongoing and unreasonable interference with the use and enjoyment of the (Minahans’) land.”

The Minahans have 28 days to file an appeal. They did not respond to a request from the Bulletin for comment.