VIC What Can I Do About Abandoned Vehicles In My Backyard?

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27 November 2014
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Pretty long issue so I apologise in advance.

The situation is that my partners parents lived in our house prior to us living here. When they moved out they left 4 sedans, two medium sized trucks, and 3 tandem trailers in the backyard making the backyard a major fire hazard due to the extremely long grass under and around the vehicles and trailers. We have asked them numerous times to remove the cars from the property so that we can slash the long grass and make it safe now that we are in fire season and we live in a high fire danger area in rural Victoria. They have stated that they want to leave the vehicles on site and want to sell them from here with people coming here to inspect the vehicles and buy them from here. Now we are already aware that we can refuse to let them bring strangers onto the block to buy the vehicles but what we need to know is what our options are to have the vehicles removed from the property.

All the vehicles are unregistered and have been unregistered for over 12 months. None of them are in driveable condition nor are any of them roadworthy or even safe to drive on the road with an unregistered vehicle permit.

There is now an IVO in place protecting the missus from them due to them being violent against her and so we can't even contact them now to chase up removing the cars.

We have been told by council that having that many vehicles in the backyard is against the local laws but that they are unable to tow the vehicles as they are on private property and the CFA has stated that we will be getting fined by them as well if the cars are not moved and the grass slashed soon as it is a major fire hazard and they hold extreme concerns about the state of the grass due to the long grass. We have even asked council if we could drag the cars onto the road and then they treat them as if they were abandoned unregistered cars on a council road and we have been told by them that if they were to find the cars on a council road as they know the cars are from this block not only would we be fined for dumping rubbish on council land but they would tow the vehicles back to our backyard and put them back there where they came from.

We need to know what our options are. These cars are worth scrap metal value only, and it would be unlikely even a wrecker would buy them now given how long they have sat in the elements with all parts of the car being weather damaged including internals.

Options? Advice? Anything would be appreciated.

Thanks.
 

Rod

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