More than 2,000 people have planned a community barbecue at a vegan’s home after she took her neighbours to court for cooking meat and making a general disturbance.
Cilla Carden, from Girrawheen, north of Perth, has reportedly been in a battle with her neighbours since last year, claiming they are intentionally cooking meat on their barbecue, blowing cigarette smoke and bouncing basketballs just to annoy her.
The massage therapist claims she can no longer go outside and enjoy her garden because all she can smell is fish cooking on Toan Vu’s – who lives next door with his wife and children – barbecue.
Some of the other complaints include demanding her neighbours control the weeds in their garden, repaint the fences they share between properties and repay the cost of damaged plants.
Carden recently took the matter to the Supreme Court, saying she believed the disturbance was deliberate. However, her case was dismissed by a Supreme Court Judge, with the State Administrative Tribunal siding with her neighbours.
The tribunal ultimately ruled Carden’s neighbours were ‘living in their backyard and their home as a family’ and nothing more.
Since the dismissal, the Vu family have moved their barbecue and discouraged their children from playing basketball but Carden is still reportedly dissatisfied with her neighbours’ actions.
Since then, however, an event titled ‘Community BBQ for Cilla Carden’, demands people in the area ‘join us for a community BBQ, and help Cilla Carden GET SOME PORK ON HER FORK’. The creators of the event add: ‘Don’t let Cilla destroy a good old Aussie tradition’.
As reported by Daily Mail Australia, the massage therapist has now instructed her lawyers to act after the Facebook event was organised at her home.
More than 2,300 people have responded to the event, which is due to take place on Saturday, October 19 at 3pm, saying they are attending – while 6,200 have said they are ‘interested’ in coming.
Carden told Daily Mail Australia the issue has been ‘blown out of proportion’, stating she respects the rights of meat eaters and has ‘no problem’ with barbecues – her problem is with her neighbours.
Her lawyer, John Hammond of Hammond Legal, said the massage therapist has ‘no objection to meat-eaters and has no objection to anyone having barbecues,’ adding: ‘She believes barbecues are part of the Australian way of life’.
He went on to say anyone who attends the event will face criminal charges:
Any person who seeks to attend Ms Carden’s property on Saturday, October 19, 2019, or at any other time in relation to this event or matter will be referred to the WA police on the grounds of trespass.
Security cameras will be installed to obtain vision of any person attending the property and the vision will be provided to the police.’
9 NewsCarden first made headlines after she was interviewed by 9 News earlier this week and said the Vu family were disrupting her life.
She said:
They’ve put it there so I smell fish, all I can smell is fish. I can’t enjoy my backyard, I can’t go out there. It’s deliberate, that’s what I told the courts, it’s deliberate.
It’s been devastating, it’s been turmoil, it’s been unrest I haven’t been able to sleep.
With the case dismissed by the Supreme Court, and the neighbours seemingly coming to an out-of-court agreement, let’s hope Carden can now just ‘get on with her life’, as she wants, without people turning up to her home to make a joke that won’t end in any laughs.
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).