The Story to December 1
We left the property on Thursday, 12th November at midday for our flight out from Brisbane. On Saturday the 14th Jaye-Cee sent an email saying she had FXXXX out the previous day (the 13th) to restart the pump, and that the “water in the dam was disappearing rapidly”.
On Tuesday 17th November I received an email saying the dam was empty as were the rainwater tanks supplying the house and demanded that a money order for $1,000 be sent to the CXXXXX post office. I ignored the demand for the money and contacted XXX Water Cartage in CXXXX to deliver 6000 litres that afternoon or the following morning. I paid for this by credit card. XXX have since confirmed that the delivery was made at 7:30 pm on Tuesday, 17th December. The driver has stated that the front gate was ulocked, the lights were on in the house, but no one appeared to be at home. XXX remember this clearly because of the abusive and threatening phone calls they had had from the sitter earlier in the day.
I spoke to Jaye-Cee by phone to advise her of this and received a stream of abuse in response, followed by her hanging up on me.
On 24th November our vet sent me an email to say that he had been contacted by our caretaker (his words) saying that she was concerned that there was no food for the animals and suggested that perhaps I should send her some money for feed. I responded to him the following day explaining the provisions that we had made for the animals. I also phoned one of our neighbours and asked if he could go over and check things out. He could use our ute to pick up more feed if necessary and we would reimburse them on our return.
Our neighbour confirmed that all the hay was gone (twenty bales for four small animals in less than two weeks!!) and that there was very little water left of the 6000 litres we had delivered the previous week. Our neighbour advised us by email that they had ordered another 6,000 litres of water and picked up nine bales of hay.
Jaye-Cee confirmed by email that the water and feed had been delivered but then said that the gas had run out.
There was sufficient in the gas bottle supplying the cooktop (everything else in the house is electric or solar) to last us about a year when we left. There were also two full 9 kg bottles of LPG, so I couldn’t believe that everything had run out. When we returned we found two gas bottles, and a note from the supplier saying that, since there was plenty left in the original bottle, he had reconnected it. But as we had already paid for the new bottle he would just leave it. (click here to see the photo)
After that we received numerous abusive and threatening emails and phone messages from Jaye-Cee that I ignored and tried to focus only on the substantive issues, but it was turning into a nightmare and was ruining our holiday. We were not due back in Australia until the 8th January and our tickets did not allow for changes in flight arrangements, even if we wanted to come back. Fortunately, our neighbours had been great, but I couldn’t expect them to continue to take the burden of her behaviour so I contacted the BXXXXX Police Station for advice.
We were particularly concerned about what would happen when we returned to the property in January.