20 years and 13 clean-ups later, hoarder house still causes a stink

THE biggest problem is the rats … and the smell. Frustrated by nightmare Bondi hoarders the Bobolas family, some neighbours have finally had enough.

THE biggest problem is the rats … and the smell.

Frustrated by nightmare Bondi hoarders the Bobolas family, some neighbours have finally had enough.

“It is just revolting,” Michele Silver said. “I have to live with the rats coming onto my property.”

Mrs Silver’s Boonara Ave home overlooks the Bobolas’ flyblown front garden, piled high with plastic bags of ­rotting food, disposable coffee cups and broken household items collected from the side of the road.

This week Mary Bobolas’ daughters Elena and Liana went to the Supreme Court to stop Waverley Council from entering the property and clearing away the decaying piles of refuse.

While the judge considers a decision, Mrs Bobolas and her daughters have hired a Thrifty truck and begun to carefully catalogue and move their ­treasured rubbish.

2014: Mary Bobolas and her daughters Elena and Liana outside their house on Boonara Avenue.

Efforts to clear the property clearly angered Elena Bobolas, who told The Saturday Telegraph: “Do you have a house? Do you have garden furniture, pot plants, a barbecue? Say I send a bulldozer round to your house and pull out everything — not only your furniture but all your top soil, leaving a boggy mess to walk through. That’s exactly what they do to us.

“Our neighbours know what is going on. We have very supportive neighbours,” she added.

But Mrs Silver said many people in the street had lost compassion for the family. “This has been going on for more than two decades. They cannot get in the house, no one has been in there for years. It’s full of newspapers I think.”

Waverley council has spent $340,000 on cleaning and legal costs at the property since 2005. General manager Arthur Kyron said the council had forcibly cleaned the property 13 times since 1984.

2011: Some rubbish was collected - but not much. Picture: Stephen Cooper

2009: The rubbish stacks up Picture: Noel Kessel

“It is unhealthy. I think we need to put together a whole of government response to try to help these people but if they will not accept we will then be trapped in the same cycle again,” he said.

“I do feel for the neighbours and for that reason we need to do something about it.”

The Bobolas sisters have fought the council through court and are believed to have legal training.

Standing on the street
because there was no room in the garden, Liana Bobolas said: “I am not telling you if I am a lawyer. All I say is look at section 200 of the NSW Local Government Act, 1993, and tell me if it’s right that the council can enter by force. They can’t.”

2006: A new collection of rubbish started again at Bondi's famous garbage house. Picture: Soulas Angelo

2005: Another year of hoarding piles up. Picture: John Grainger

Her mother Mary, who bought the Bondi house in 1973 for $15,000, likened her collecting of rubbish to a personal compulsion.

“Some people drink and they like it, so are they crazy?” she asked.

A Thrifty van at the scene this week, as the family slowly remove rubbish from their overflowing Bondi property.

A council worker speaks to the family about the mess in 2005. Picture: John Grainger

Gesturing to the trash-laden Thrifty truck parked outside, she said: “I have work to do, you should go.”

University of Sydney’s own professor of pong, clinical professor John Snowdon, said: “I have been driving past this house for years to see how they are getting along. It’s astonishing.

“I suspect all three of them have got this thing called hoarding disorder, which leads them to accumulate stuff and then not be able to let it go. It affects people in their teens and gets progressively worse.”

He said about one in every 5000 Australians had a hoarding disorder.

“Some of us hoard a bit but there is a point when it gets out of hand,” he said. “ That’s when there is too much stuff and they can no longer clean the house. Rats, cockroaches and fleas get in. Food is left to rot and it stinks.”

Neighbour Leo Costa said: “I have lived here for years and at first it was OK. Her husband was a taxi driver but he had an accident and after that she started collecting.

“I am very sad for her. She works very hard bringing it all back here for nothing. Nobody likes it, it stinks.

“Something needs to be done to help her. This cannot go on year after year.

“It’s not healthy.”