Sheep farmer vows to take RAAF feud to ‘the High Court’

A sheep farmer who lost her fight to stop the Royal Australian Air Force from flying over her property and scaring her flock in court, has vowed to fight the decision.

Sheep farmer Julie Steepe on her property ‘Lucy Land’ near Bulahdelah. Picture: Peter Lorimer

As her Bulahdelah farm house lay in ruins just days after devastating floods ripped through her NSW mid-north coast home, sheep farmer Julie Steepe knew her greatest battle lay ahead.

With just a single folder of notes that survived the floods clutched in her hands and wearing her best suit, the only clothing spared by the rising water, Ms Steepe travelled from her 40ha animal-lovers haven 70km from the RAAF’s Williamtown base to the NSW Supreme Court.

The hearing was the culmination of almost a year of escalating tensions between the organic farmer and Australia’s Defence Force, which Ms Steepe argued should not be allowed to fly over her property, scaring “the bejeezus” out of her beloved sheep.

“You see them before you can hear them,” she said.

“They come out of nowhere, they dip down and locate my sheep, and try hard to fly directly over the top of them ... You can‘t get away from them.”

In a David and Goliath battle reminiscent of the Australian classic film The Castle, the self-represented farmer used a paper copy of the Constitution, since washed away, and her own online research to compile a novel legal argument built on obscure case law to contest that everything from the ground “to the heavens” was her land, and the RAAF was not allowed to fly over it.

Last week, Ms Steepe received news she had lost her fight after judge David Davies ruled against her.

She has vowed to appeal and is willing to take the case “to the High Court if I have to”.

She has also been ordered to pay Defence’s costs, which have not been released but could be well into the tens of thousands of dollars and risk bankrupting her.

“My friends tell me to put in The Castle line ‘It‘s just the vibe of the thing, your Honour,” she said with a dry laugh, referencing the bumbling lawyer for protagonist Darryl Kerrigan in The Castle. “But it’s not a laughing matter.”

“I might end up bankrupt trying but you have to try. I don’t have a lot but what I have I ­protect. And it upsets me to see my sheep upset.”

Her feud with the RAAF began in June last year shortly after it carried out a sonic boom over her property, a massive bang that sent her flock wild with panic. “I said, ‘Mate, you’ve got so much sky and you had to do it over my sheep’,” she said. “And I looked into it and Justice Isaacs in 1923 in a High Court ruling said we own the sky and we the people said the government couldn’t legislate on airspace.”

After her cease and desist notices went ignored, she began counting the number of planes flying over her house and invoiced the RAAF for $15.3m for what she claimed was for the use of her land. As the tension ratcheted up, so did the number of planes flying overhead, with Ms Steepe once counting more than 90 planes in just a few hours, which she believes was retaliation.

“I think it‘s completely and utterly just the pilots have gone, ‘Screw you lady, we’ll do whatever we like and you’re just a little sheep farmer from Bulahdelah and you can’t tell us what to do’,” she said.

She started court proceedings against the RAAF, and found herself — a bookkeeper by trade with no legal training — arguing against high-profile barristers.

“It was daunting,” she said. “I had never been anywhere like that before, and I was up against government barristers.

“The flood came through on Friday, so on Saturday morning I was moving my sheep as my property was under water. And on Monday morning I’m in the Supreme Court. “I never thought it would get that far, I thought someone would say, ‘Sorry we scared your sheep, we see your reason, let’s go somewhere else’.”

Barrister and Sydney Law School senior lecturer Patricia Lane said it was an “optimistic argument”, and as was pointed out in Justice Davies’s judgment, planes are allowed to fly above people’s properties under statute.

“She does have the right to appeal if she wants to,” she said. “She has to be able to show the court the subject matter in dispute is above $100,000.”