Royce Wells faces eviction from his crumbling Eastwood house, which holds a surprising amount of history from mining to music

ENTERING the ancient, crumbling home of Royce Wells is quite a challenge for a visitor. But the 75-year-old is happy here and it’s easy to conclude if he was forced to leave, it would destroy him. He explains why he cannot leave.

Royce Wells at his Eastwood home, surrounded a collection he’s built over his whole life. Picture: Matt Turner

• The story so far:

• Wells given eviction orders, but won’t leave collection
• Authorities deem house the worst they’ve seen

THE house Royce Wells lives in was a wedding present to his grandmother. This was 1915.

In the hallway is a piano, a present from the same happy occasion. All around the home of Royce Wells are memories of his life. His parents, his grandparents, his own.

Despite the clearly dilapidated state of the old house on Fullarton Rd opposite the Glenside Hospital, Wells is not for leaving, despite an order to do so by March 7 because the place is not deemed to be fit for human habitation. “I’m not leaving the property,’’ the 75-year-old says in a firm voice. “My family has been here for 103 years continuously.

“There has never been 24 hours where a member of the family has not been resident here and I’m not moving.’’

There is no doubt entering the home of Wells is a challenge. The front garden, partially hidden by his well-known psychedelic fence, is filled with ancient mining equipment and dominated by a giant fig tree.

The tree, which leans out on to Fullarton Rd, started life as a tiny planting, a gift from when he left his last job in the state’s Mines Department back in the late 1980s.

Royce Wells as a historian with the SA Mines Department in the 1980s.

It’s the fig tree, he says, searching for water in the creeks that used to run through the area, that busted the water and gas pipes to his property and cut off his supply.

The front door needs a little force to open and the visitor enters a dark corridor. There are old album covers pinned to the wall, all the way down to the one room where Wells spends most of his time.

To the left of the corridor are rooms he says have been destroyed over the years by possums. The back of the house seems entirely non-negotiable, with part of the area collapsed in on itself.

But Wells is happy here. He feels safe. Despite signs warning of DANGER: Demolition in Progress. It’s easy to conclude if he was forced to leave, that it would destroy him. The room in which he lives has been moulded by his lifestyle. The soft strains of ABC Classic FM fills the room. His beloved ginger cat Puddlegum leaps from a desk weighed down by a piles of his books of cuttings and photographs.

Royce Wells is facing eviction from his home. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

On the walls are all sorts of posters and album covers – from Kurt Cobain on the cover of Rolling Stone to Jason Donovan – and an enormous collection of books.

Four thousand is Wells’ estimate. He says there are books in here from the 1700s and it’s easy enough to believe. There are books on religion and music. But he names The Politics of Ecstasy by 1960s counter-culture guru, and LSD proponent Timothy Leary as his favourite. It certainly explains his fence. And possibly the long hair which he has always worn.

But he also loves the Ancient Greeks. Plato and Aristotle are namechecked.

“The epics of Aristotle are the foundations of western democracy,’’ he says.

There are hundreds of books filled with newspaper and magazine cuttings. Wells, who has no children and has never been married, says they date back to when he was a baby, when his mother would cut out pictures of cats and dogs that made him happy.

Old mining signs and thousands of books are among Wells’ exhaustive collection. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

Today, he still goes through the paper every day and cuts out stories that interest him and place them in relevant books, whether it’s earthquakes, volcanoes, energy, Adelaide or mining.

It’s easy to call Wells an eccentric. And maybe he is, but he’s not stupid. Or even mad.

“There are no mental health issues,’’ he says with a note of defiance. “I have a very strong mind. Every time I have seen a psychologist, I have passed 100 per cent.’’

His general health is not so good. He is worried the recent stress will cause a reoccurence of his duodenal ulcers. He has arthritis in his knees and suffers from macular degeneration. The eccentricity is not even a new thing. There is the sense he has always been a little different.

He was expelled from Unley High after a teacher discovered a poem he had written “in the style of Shakespeare’’ and he was kicked out as it was supposedly obscene. He was reinstated a few weeks later.

He played organs in churches, was a Sunday school teacher, worked briefly in a whiskey distillery before he joined a company called Williams Beverages.

Based in Mitcham, Wells still talks fondly of that job. He was a syrup maker, as well as overseeing the production of cider and vinegar. But he had a sense that Williams was not long for this world and joined the Department of Mines in 1985 as a historian.

Wells joined the Department of Mines in 1985 as a historian.

He was right about Williams, by the way – it didn’t last.

Wells’ love of mining stretched back to his boyhood. Some of his favourite childhood memories are visiting the mines at Moonta. When Wells starts talking about mining and geology, it can be difficult to get him to stop.

When he says he is the “greatest living authority on gold mining in South Australia’’, it’s difficult to argue. Wells is a walking, talking encyclopaedia on all things mining and has written books on the topic. He used to give tours to school students and historical societies around Adelaide.

He still worries that some houses in Glen Osmond may be unsafe because they are built over mine shafts and speaks darkly of conspiracies within the Mines Department to cover up what would happen if a major earthquake struck Adelaide again.

Wells’ well-known psychedelic fence and the old fig tree.

He was even a minor media celebrity for a while, appearing regularly on the Seven Network and ABC radio.

But he says he made enemies in the department and the stress gave him duodenal ulcers, forcing him out of work and on to a disability pension.

Music kept him going, he ran a youth club out of his house called Almanda Hideaway between 1966 and 1990, where he would play music and operate as a radio station.

Now the March 7 deadline is looming. His friend Colin Beaton has already secured one 30-day extension to the order of eviction and is hoping Wells can use a bank loan to fix up the house. Wells’ plan now is to live in a portacabin on the back of the property during renovations. And he can’t leave – who would look after the animals? Possums may have ruined his house and destroyed all his fruit trees, but now he looks after them.

Wells says he spends $100 a week buying old fruit and stale bread and each day, leaves out 12 plates of food. “I feed the birds all day and the possums at night. They can’t be abandoned. They have to be looked after.’’