How to get squatters out quickly without the courts..

My squatters story…

I live in a rural area about 100km out of a large regional country city area. My town has about 200 people, there is no shops, the nearest shop is 20 km away. I live with my partner, no kids yet.

4 couples who are our besties decided that we should all go on a 4WD camping holiday together to the top of Australia on Cape York Peninsula. We organised our annual holidays to coincide together and we would be away for just under 4 weeks.

My neighbour also joined us but his wife does not like camping or 4WD’ing so she stayed at home.

About 2 weeks into our trip we are camping rough just alongside rivers, creeks or near the beach as we very slowly meandered our way up to tip of Australia, doing lots of fishing and swimming in waterfalls etc. We rarely pass through towns and therefore have no phone reception most of the time. As we near the top there is a town about an hour from the tip and we call in there to fuel up, get some more supplies etc – and our phones start beeping madly with multiple numerous missed calls, text messages, messenger etc as phone reception is made again.

My neighbours wife left many messages stating someone had moved into my house, 1 man, 1 woman and a small child. She did ask them what they were doing and they stated they were friends of the owner but couldn’t / wouldn’t state the owners (me) name.

I contacted the police who was also a friend of mine and he said he would investigate. The following day I returned to the fuel station which had phone reception (about 1 hour from our camp site) and the Sgt told me he went to my house and there was indeed 2 adults & 1 child now living in my house. They were unloading a trailer with furniture when he arrived. The male told the Sgt he had a rental agreement with me but upon being asked for the rental contract became defensive and stated any issue between them & me was a civil matter and the police has no power to investigate. He also stated if pushed he would claim squatters rights. The police left.

The Sgt told me he couldn’t remove them as it was a civil matter even though I said they must have broken into the house to gain entry, he apologised and said his hands were tied so to speak. He warned me to be careful as if we forced them out they could sue us for a variety of things including assaults etc, so be mindful of how we handle this. He said he was aware this sort of thing had been occurring where squatters either prop somewhere until a court orders them out, thus getting 6-12 months free accommodation or alternatively being forced out and suing for damages to get $$$.

I returned to the campsite and told all my friends – we spent the next 6 hours talking about how to deal with it from dragging them out and throwing them into the road to taking them to court. Going to court could take months, probably 6-12 months so that was not an option. We did however finally decide on a course of action.

The following day I contacted my police friend and asked him what the thought of our plan and he agreed it was a good decision, in fact he often wondered why others don’t do the same thing – but he reiterated that he could never advise anyone to actually take this course of action. AND he was very specific when he said we MUST adhere to this plan as I described it on the phone, don’t get impatient and deviate to make it happen quicker – STICK TO THE PLAN.

My neighbours wife said they weren’t damaging or stealing anything (yet) so we decided not to return immediately. We continued on our holiday – sort of, but we did decide to return 4 days early to enact our plan – so that meant we only had 2 more days left at the top before making our way back down south. We didn’t want to ruin our much awaited holiday with all of our lovely friends as it possibly would be the last time all 4 couples and us could go away together like this. So my partner and me decided to make our way back home as we had planned, slowly with all the same stops and overnight stays. If we really wanted to, we could have driven back home quickly within 2 days. However both of us felt that with this in the back of our minds it did ruin the last half of our holiday as we were constantly thinking about it and couldn’t really enjoy our time away as much as we could have.

So, finally we arrive back home, but instead of going to my house – we all go straight to my neighbours house and pull up there. Now this slightly spooked the squatters as usually you don’t see too many vehicles in our road and not 5 vehicles all together. We knew they had come outside of my house and were watching us but we paid them no attention and after an hour they seemed to have fallen into a false sense of security and went back inside.

We all set up our tents on my neighbours property which was about 100m away from mine. His property was slightly elevated so we picked a good spot where we could watch them constantly without being too obvious.

The next day the squatters did nothing and stayed at the house, the following day they did the same. Now this was concerning as our plan could only happen if they left in their car. The 3rd morning we saw the male leave on his own and about 30 minutes he came back. We think he might have been testing the water so to speak, to see if we went over to the property – but we didn’t as we realised the female and kid were still inside. Then about 11am they all got into the car and drove off.
One of our friends discretely followed behind them and he was calling us every 15 minutes to update us where they were going. After they drove past the shop 20 minutes away we presumed they were driving into the major town to shop, some 3-4 hours return drive.

We then went over to my place and removed all their property, taking it out onto the road adjacent to the fence and dumped it there. I then got a massive big industrial chain I have in the shed and secured it between the posts of my driveway. The rest of the property is fenced from the road.
We then packed up all the tents in my neighbours place and everyone moved into my house.
Our other friend had advised us they just hired a trailer and we wondered if they had decided to move out and perhaps we had acted too quickly, but inevitably we decided we acted correctly. An hour later he advised us they were at some other house and loading furniture from that house into the trailer – he thinks they may have been relatives or friends they were previously living there with as they seemed very familiar with each other, hugging etc as they bid their farewells. So they were coming back to my house with MORE furniture.

We took this opportunity to relocate all their possessions further down the road away from my driveway and possible conflict when they return. I borrowed my neighbours tractor, scooped all of their stuff into the bucket of the tractor and dumped it 100 metres further down the road. Then I parked just in front of the chain across the driveway with the bucket facing the road, really blocking access to my property now. My neighbour said if they tried to enter with their vehicle then his tractor was there to let them know he would pick up their car and flip it back onto the road.

They arrived an hour later, they stopped at the pile of possessions out on the road and the male stormed up to the driveway where all 11 of us were waiting for him. This idiot tried to claim he had an agreement with the owner until I told him I was the owner. Then he said they had squatters rights and we had a really big verbal argument to which he ended up stating that we acted unlawfully and he was getting the police to ensure he could get back onto my property.
Surely enough the police did arrive and it was my Sgt friend who didn’t pay to much attention to this guys rantings. The Sgt just flipped the whole scenario back onto the squatters by saying, “Maybe whilst you where away these people have squatted where you claimed to live and as such, it is a civil matter, take it up with the court. But you cannot go onto this property as it is in possession of this person (me) now, so pack up all your stuff on the side of the road and leave”.

He tried to have me charged with throwing all his stuff out of the house onto the road, but the police asked if he had proof that I did it, ie video, pictures etc. His woman then falsely claimed she had seen me do it and wanted to make a statement to such. This is when my friend stepped up and advised the Sgt he had followed them all day and had them on his dashcam. The Sgt asked the woman what time she witnessed this and said just after lunchtime – to which my friend queued up the video to that time and advised her he had just seen a video of her in a shopping centre car park 100 km away at that time. AND now he wouldn’t believe anything she said. Alternatively he said, you can make a statement and I will charge you with lying under oath.

They left – a week later I spoke to the Sgt who told me he followed them around town for 30 minutes while they seemed to be scoping out other places to ‘move into’. With the police following them everywhere they drove back towards the bigger regional town. However, to hurry them along out of town – the Sgt pulled them over and gave them a traffic ticket for overloading their trailer as it now had twice as much shit in it.

So my advice if you have squatters is to wait until they all leave for shopping or whatever and retake possession of your property. It was a lot quicker and cheaper than court. From now on when we go away on holidays we are getting friends in to house sit. PS I have the best friends.