It was a Friday in January last year when Neil Walker, aged in his early 80s, met Abby May on a bus from Cooma to Jindabyne on the edge of the Snowy Mountains.
Walker was returning home from a medical appointment. May, a former pastry chef in her 40s, made an impression. The pair struck up a conversation on the one-hour trip.
The view from Winter Park, Crackenback, and a mocked-up excerpt from one of Abby May’s emails to Neil Walker.
May and her partner, carpenter Dean Gibson, had short-term accommodation in Cooma that was due to expire. Gibson met Walker and May at the bus that day at Jindabyne, and they travelled together to Winter Park, Walker’s 40-acre property at Crackenback, a 10-minute drive from Thredbo.
What happened next would culminate in a NSW Supreme Court fight.
‘Best friend’
At 8.57am on January 21, the day after their meeting, May, also known as Hoda Makki, sent an email to Walker headed “New friend”.
“We are so excited I started to pack up last nite … You are going to live your dream that you’ve always wanted ... actually all of us.”
May urged Walker not to “stress and overthink anything”, saying he should think of it as “a couple of mates coming to stay with you for a couple of weeks and see how we go”.
More than a year later, Walker would tell the court that he offered May a place to stay; May would claim he said she could live at Winter Park and turn it into a bed and breakfast.
The pensioner had bought Winter Park in the 1970s and built a six-bedroom ski lodge, granny flat, sheds and dams. He slept in the granny flat and rented out the lodge to long-term friends during the ski season.
“I will guarantee you that myself and Dean come with pure good intentions,” May wrote on February 3, in an email with the subject line “My dear friend”. Other emails bore the effusive titles “Best friend”, “Sir Neil”, and “Neil Sir”.
In a judgment last month, Supreme Court Justice Kelly Rees described the emails as part of a “highly manipulative” campaign by May to stimulate “an emotional attachment from Mr Walker”, who had “an eye for the ladies”.
The “heartfelt” and “lovely” emails “have been waited for, for a long lifetime”, Walker wrote to May on February 22. May was “so kind. Good looking also”, he wrote on February 1.
The rental offer
On February 2, almost a fortnight after their first meeting, Walker emailed May and offered the couple a lease until June 30.
He suggested Gibson might provide work, including the use of an excavator, “to a similar value” as the lease. A further arrangement involving May meeting and greeting guests might “fall into place … in the future”, he said.
May responded to that offer: “Ho Hi. Poo.” The judge rejected May’s claim that the email was sent by mistake, and found it indicated her “disappointment at Mr Walker’s offer”.
Notwithstanding this setback, May and Gibson moved into Winter Park the following day, the court found, and occupied a bedroom in the main house. Walker discussed with May a fledgling “catering concept” involving her cooking for guests.
“Dean has organised paint for inside and I’m starting to clean and fancy and freshen the bedrooms up,” May emailed Walker on February 5.
But Walker bristled at suggestions they would help maintain the outdoor areas. It led to a terse exchange. May asked if Walker wanted “too [sic] upset me??,” adding that she wanted “to be the daughter you never had”.
The management deal
The arrangement between the trio evolved. May and Gibson did not pay rent or live continuously at the property, but they made changes to the lodge’s interior and brought an excavator and operator on site to help build a car park.
They approached Airbnb on February 15 about listing the property, and fielded a separate offer from Perisher Blue to rent the lodge for staff accommodation during the 2023 winter ski season for $72,000 for 16 weeks.
That offer was rejected, with input from Walker – but the judge found the couple did not tell him how much Perisher was willing to pay.
Walker wrote in a handwritten note on March 3, a day after May took him to Canberra for medical treatment: “Abbey and Dean Partnership is assigned to Total Management of Winter Park.”
“This document … reflected what Mr Walker was prepared to give the couple: he was only prepared to give them the right to run the ski lodge,” the judge said.
The first Airbnb guests stayed at Winter Park on July 1, and Walker told the court the only money he ever received from the couple was $1000 in cash from the guests’ payment. Gibson told the court he had made other cash payments totalling more than $8000.
The lawsuit
The relationship had soured by the middle of last year. A long-time friend of Walker and an employee from Perisher raised concerns with the police about his treatment.
May and Gibson took Supreme Court action against Walker after he moved to evict them in July. Walker left his home in November “as he was too afraid of the couple to stay at the property”, the judge said.
The couple initially sought to enforce a 30-year lease of the property, which they claimed Walker had executed on June 7 last year. Later, they sought damages for breach of the lease. Under the terms of the alleged lease, the couple would have paid 20 per cent of all sales as rent.
The judge dismissed May and Gibson’s lawsuit. “In truth, they are rogues,” Rees said.
She concluded May had written Walker’s name on a tenancy agreement, but he had never signed it.
While the couple had done work at Winter Park, the judge accepted that it appeared to have been “done ‘on the cheap’.”
“It does also appear that the excavation work may have caused property damage, such that the cost of rectifying the damage exceeds any benefit received by Mr Walker from the plaintiffs’ labours,” the judge said.
The judge ordered the couple to pay Walker’s legal costs.
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