At one point the tradies grab the hose from the man, resulting in a tug of war. Photo / @tinnnkerrr/TikTok
At one point the tradies grab the hose from the man, resulting in a tug of war. Photo / @tinnnkerrr/TikTok
A homeowner has filmed a wild dispute with her neighbours, including the moment one of them kicked down a wall that was being built on her property.
Valentina, from Edensor Park in Sydney’s western suburbs, shared a video on TikTok earlier this month showing her neighbour sweeping water on to a brick wall that she claims was being built entirely on her property.
The footage shows the man holding a hose down with his foot and using a broom to push water alongside the new wall.
A woman can be seen standing behind the man filming the situation.
“Move water, move water,” a man, who appears to be one of the tradies building the wall, tells the neighbour.
He attempts to grab the hose, once again telling the man to move the water “from the wall”, but the neighbour takes the hose back and continues pushing the water on to the structure.
“Your parents must be proud,” the woman filming the two neighbours says from behind the camera.
The tradie then tells the neighbour that they were damaging the wall, before grabbing the hose, resulting in a tug-of-war between the two men.
“Oh you are breaking our wall,” the female neighbour says.
“They are not breaking the wall,” the other woman replies.
Afterwards, the neighbour is seen kicking bricks off the wall. Photo / @tinnnkerrr/TikTok
After getting the hose back, the neighbour then starts kicking bricks off the wall before the woman pulls him away.
“You are sick, you are sick. Go to the hospital,” the woman filming the TikTok video says.
“Are you going to pay for that?”
The tradie then chimes in, telling the neighbours, “every day you make drama here”, before saying “you buy this one”.
The video has amassed more than 8.3 million views, with 12,300 commenting on the footage.
The TikTok user took to the comments to explain the situation further, claiming the new wall was being built completely within the boundary of her property.
“We have all the boundary surveys the wall is definitely on our property,” she said.
“The wall is fine it’s not on their property, it doesn’t affect them in any way.”
She said the police had been called out to the property but didn’t “do much”.
The woman claimed that, despite the wall being on her property, her neighbours were “just not happy it’s there”.
But speaking to Nine’s A Current Affair, neighbour Connie gave her side of the story, saying the dispute was over rainwater flows and “I have to protect my property”.
According to the program, in recent heavy downpours, the water flowed from Connie’s property to Valentina’s, which sits lower, and at times “it floods our home”.
The brick wall is intended to hold back the deluge.
“She is sending her water on to ours and flooding our property,” Valentina told A Current Affair.
“She thinks our house is supposed to collect all of her rainwater.”
But Connie argued it was “surface water from the sky, not stormwater and I can’t control it”.
“The council policy says the water flow must not be obstructed by kerbing, fencing, retaining walls,” Connie said.
“I won’t give up, the police can arrest me. But I have to protect my land.”
Replying to questions from commenters, Valentina claimed the couple came outside and started recording the tradies as soon as they arrived to begin the work.
“They were asked to not record them and they still continued,” she said.
The neighbours then began hosing and wetting the wall, which Valentina claims were to prevent it from setting properly.
“The moment they started interfering with their work, and starting hosing the wall was the moment I got my camera out and started recording,” she said.
According to Valentina, the wall ended up “setting a little wonky” in one spot that was being repeatedly splashed with water.
The TikTok user also posted a series of follow-up videos, explaining they have had ongoing issues with these neighbours and were going to court with them next year.
In one video, she claims she had previously filmed the woman on her property back in July.
The video shows a figure standing in her driveway at night, shining a phone light towards the garage.
In another video, which the poster said was filmed a few months ago, the couple can be seen walking along their back fence with a tape measure and taking photos.
“You are stressing my dog out. Move away from the fence,” she can be heard saying in the video, which the neighbours appear to ignore.
She said while measuring the other side of the fence was not illegal, it still made her feel “uneasy and uncomfortable”.
“We have tried communicating and even been to mediation, other neighbours have tried communicating too and they don’t want a bar of it,” the TikTok user wrote in the comments of one of the videos.
“They see us out at our local shops and they take photos of me and my family.
“They have cameras that face directly into our backyard, that they’ve been asked to turn around and they refuse. Neighbours have told us that they’ve seen them looking over the fence and into our property when we’re not home.
The woman said she has experienced issues with these neighbours for a while, even accusing the couple of recording and taking pictures of her family members, including her nephew who is a minor.
The majority of comments on the videos were supportive of the poster, with many people agreeing the neighbours’ actions were unacceptable.
However, some placed the blame on the TikTok user, with one person even suggesting she was being “racist”.
The woman hit back, saying it was “disgusting you’d assume this is has anything to do with race”.
“The suburb I live in is as multicultural as it gets, I get on with anybody if they’re good people regardless of where they come from. At the end of the day we all bleed the same. Move on,” she said.
