TV actor Olympia Valance faces court over driving charges
TV STAR Olympia Valance has been ordered to do a road safety program after she was caught behind the wheel in South Melbourne while banned from driving for three months.
Inner South
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TV STAR Olympia Valance has been ordered to do a road safety program after she was caught behind the wheel in South Melbourne while banned from driving for three months.
The 25-year-old Playing for Keeps and Neighbours star played a starring role at Moorabbin Magistrates’ Court this morning.
The court heard Valance, whose full name is Olympia Montana Gogos-Valance, was nabbed by police at 12.50pm on May 20 driving her Jeep in Moray St, South Melbourne.
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But she shouldn’t have been behind the wheel as she had accrued too many demerit points and had her licence suspended for three months on February 23.
The ban was due to be lifted a couple of days after she was busted.
Valance told officers she had received the suspension notice from VicRoads before she went overseas for three months.
She told them she “assumed” the suspension had started on the date she got the letter and the end date had passed.
When asked by the police if she had “messed up the dates”, she replied “well, yeah, obviously, I thought it ended weeks ago.”
In court her defence lawyer said Valance had made an honest mistake.
He said she was “someone who does a lot for the community” and she was embarrassed to have “found herself in this predicament”.
She now has her licence back.
Magistrate Anne Goldsbrough accepted the offending wasn’t a wilful act as Valance had been overseas and anticipated the suspension had passed.
But said she had lost her licence for accruing too many demerit points, so needed to pay more attention to the road rules.
Valance was placed on a 12-month good behaviour bond, told to pay $450 to the court fund and ordered to do a road trauma awareness seminar. No conviction was recorded.
She also gets to keep her licence, with no further ban imposed.
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