By a Noosa Heads resident
We had a quiet Christmas. A five day cancellation in the STA next door meant a blessed peace crept over the neighbourhood. We remembered what it used to be like.
On Boxing Day it was like a bomb had hit - the industrial strength garden blowers, the cleaners, the pool guy (all standard changeover stuff) and then THE ARRIVAL.
How much noise can one family make? A lot! First the slamming doors and the calling out to each other (standard arrival) and then the kids SCREAMING! all over the place. All pretty standard stuff for a holiday STA, but once the kids were in the pool the dog started barking and didn’t stop. So we had screaming kids and barking dogs in an echoey courtyard around the pool.
Where were the parents, and why didn’t they care that the dog was barking and barking and barking and…… ?
They did stop the dog from barking after I asked them to, but apparently another neighbour called the Noosa Council hotline. Why not? One small family and a dog ruined the afternoon for a heap of people.
The point is tourists arriving in STA’s act as if they’re in a vacuum. They wouldn’t behave that way in a resort. They probably wouldn’t act that way at home. Somehow, they just don’t notice that there are people in houses all around them. Is it selfishness, or ignorance, or something worse?
We’ve had people in the STA next door stay up drinking and yelling in the courtyard (every night of their stay) metres from our windows, way past the time there is any other noise in the whole neighbourhood. They leave their dogs all day in an unfamiliar place, and guess what?
The dogs bark all day.
Where else could these people do this?
Not in a resort, not in a campground. It’s as if STA’s provide the perfect vehicle to thumb your nose at all the conventions of respect for others. They’re there, they’re paying, they’re on holiday and they have some sort of licence to cause as much disruption as they want without any consequences.
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STA’s are the perfect vehicle to thumb your nose at all respect for others - of course they are. We’ve had “me too”. STA users very clearly are “me only”. I paid my money. I can do what I like. Never see you again. Who cares? Who indeed.
Can so relate to this. We are currently enjoying the "quiet before the storm". Next week we will leave our beautiful Noosa home as our peaceful sanctuary is invaded by car loads of STA guests letting rip in our quiet residential street. For 10 years thanks to Airbnb it is too unbearable to have Christmas or Easter at home. We pay to take the family elsewhere. This year we go 2 streets down the road to a peaceful resort!
And then multiply that by 10. That’s what many Noosa residents live with courtesy of our Council’s “management” of STA. I do. I have 10 plus on my boundaries and increasing. Throw in the brawling, drunken, violent drug affected mobs that trawl through residential streets at 3.00am as they make their way back to their STA with their music blaring; screaming obscenities at each other; throwing bottles; ripping limbs off tress and invading properties as they go. Welcome to a fun family Christmas Noosa style. And Noosa Council? Not my fault. Call the Police. Police? Not our jurisdiction. Call the Council.
Simple question Noosa Council: don’t residents have existing inalienable rights to quiet enjoyment of residential amenity in our…