We recently landscaped our yard and had turf laid on our front verge/nature strip as part of the project.
The work was all planned with a letter box built into a wall on the front boundary and paving coming off the driveway for the sole purpose of giving Australia Post easy access.
Unfortunately, the Postie would rather launch his motor bike over various low obstacles/jumps and carve some furrows in our new lawn.
As I am at work when they come I have not caught them in the act and my polite request at the post office has had no effect.
Does anyone have an idea for stopping Postie lawn vandalism?
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Some sort of “poles & string” contraption – not significant enough to be considered a fence, but enough to give the hint. Make sure it has some sort of highly visible markers on the line.
or
A single strand of razor wire, stretched tight at neck height, electrified and attached to anti-personnel mines.
Just remember that the nature strip is not yours, so really the postie is well within their rights to ride on your nice new lawn rightly or wrongly.
Some garden stakes, a string line, and plastic bags hanging from the string
It’s not “your lawn”. It’s public land.
In fact, if you’ve placed obstacles on the government land outside your front property boundary, you had better make sure your public liability insurance is uptodate, and that it covers you making a nuisance of yourself on public land.
Lodge an application to landscape the verge. Do it per the rules and consistent with the street scape. Try low plants that are relatively trample-proof to subtly guide the foot/bike traffic. Best you can do without the issues raised.
You could have a word with the postie or the post office but wouldn’t count on getting your mail in a timely manner.
Rip up the turf and put down some nice 50mm diameter gravel instead.
embrace the postie, put in a jump and a berm leading to the mailbox and a few whoops coming out.
its not often you get a chance to do something really nice for someone
You obviously didn’t put good enough jumps in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rAKyiWhPGA
How Canberran! Only in the ACT would a resident begrudge the local postie using thier manicured verge as a motocross track.
You have much bigger worries my friend. During hours of darkness, stolen white Holden Commodores slowly cruise the streets looking for newly minted verges for ‘donut’ practice!
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
get your son into postie stunting
http://youtu.be/f_QfkUtzsak
OK, here’s what to do.
Next to you letter box, dig a hole about 1 metre square, and about 1.5 metres deep. Sharpen some bamboo stakes and embed them in the bottom of the hole with the sharpened end sticking straight up. Smear some fresh faeces on the sharp parts of the bamboo stakes. Weave a bamboo mat and use it to cover the hole. Scatter some grass and leaves over the mat so it looks like normal ground.
When the postie crashes through the mat he will be cut up by the bamboo stakes, and the faeces will be pushed into the wounds, infecting them almost immediately.
That will teach this bastard to ride his bike on your nature strip.
If the postie has just delivered next door, why wouldn’t she just stay on the nature strip?
Also, what about someone using a mobility scooter. Are you blocking their path to force them onto the road?
I had a postie smash a hole in my garage wall, because he couldn’t work out how to manouvre his motor bike. The tyre marks from the bike made it obvious. Unfortunately, Aust Post couldn’t care less when I rang them, as I didn’t have footage of it happening.
Rip out your letterbox and get a PO Box
Get a whole lot of dog poo and place it in his path.
As many have pointed out – the nature strip is not your land!
People are allowed to walk on it, posties are allowed to ride on it, as I have discovered local teenagers seem to think they can have sex on it, and you are definitely not allowed to put obstacles / unconventional landscaping on it without obtaining permission.
Under these circumstances, the Barrett light .50 is your friend. Accept no substitutes.
Oops, i misread the OP, the nature strip isn’t your property, so you’re going to have to toughen up.
Australia Post wins!
If our postie wants a motorcross wonderland he gets one. Stolen commodores also welcome.
I will have to harden up and learn to love a Canberra streetscape carved by all-terrain postie bikes and joyriding car thieves.
The postie trap description and crash videos will help sooth my embittered heart as I file away the Canturf invoice and grieve for all those long lost landscaping dollars.
Fancy wanting to have a nice front yard, you low life bastard, you should volunteer yourself to be horse whipped in the centre of the city for even thinking such things
Youy are getting of lightly.
I know someone who demolished the stone retaining wall at the front of their place, dug out a flat place to park their van and built a new wooden retaining wall around the new flat area.
Only told be told that as it was government land and they didn’t have approval, please return it to how it was. Or else!
Cost them a fortune.
JC said :
There is definitely potential for conflict when residents are expected to look after the nature strip in front of their house, despite it not being their land, but the public is allowed to wreck their efforts with impunity. Why would anyone bother to do more than the bare minimum?
Ever seen the movie ‘Tremors’? Then you know what to get.
jimmy1 said :
If paying to beautify the ACT government’s land the biggest mistake you ever make then you’re doing pretty good in the bigger picture
p1 said :
Ah, the subtle approach
You cant beat the classics
I had a postie who liked to kick over my full garbage bins in my driveway on “garbage days” because it “interfered” with him taking a short cut from my letterbox to the next letterbox inside the boundary of the house next door.
For starters the bins were legally placed where they are supposed to be placed for pick up and nowhere near my letter box. I caught him doing it one day and he had the nerve to swear at me and say it “served me right for getting in his way”.
I wrote a letter to Australia Post and six weeks later wrote another letter and three months later wrote another letter and finally was told that the postie had moved to another suburb but they hadn’t spoken to him about his behaviour.
I’m thinking he moved to YOUR suburb
Jimmy1
As you said “As I am at work when they come I have not caught them in the act and my polite request at the post office has had no effect.”
How do you know it’s the postie not some local kid on a motorbike?
Nightshade said :
You can do both. Out front of my place I have a nice lawn and the postie rides on it without any damage.
I guess the issue with the OP is it is all nice and new and maybe a bit soft, so the answer of course is to put up a sting line until such time as the canturf has taken root, after which a daily ride by the postie will have SFA effect. Quite simple really.
Two words:
Stop strips.