Turning off the gas in Canberra?

Be very careful to note down all details regarding the cut-off (date, time, operator spoken to etc), they may attempt to “estimate” your bill later.

My partner and I have started renting a property in the last few months, no gas appliances, landlord advised us has disconnected gas.

A little while into our lease, a notice appears in our mailbox telling us:
A. they were unable to reach our meter due to a locked gate or similar, and
B. they had successfully read our meter.

We passed it off as outsourced meter reading company failing miserably, and assumed actew would realise the gas for this address had been terminated.

Imagine our surprise a few weeks later when we get a letter telling us that when we moved in, we had assumed a contract with actewagl, apparently gas had been used at our address and we now owed them 300 and something dollars.

after calling them, I found out that the outsourced company hadn’t been able to read our meter, and if they can’t access it, they assume it’s been used and pull a random figure, calling it an “estimation” of how much you’ve used.

we cleared it up, had the account canceled and was told that because our meter is not accessible from the street, every few months we’ll get these letters for money.

2 weeks on, we’ve now gotten a demand for bills we thought were cleared up, and they say they need to come out and read the meter again to check we haven’t used it.

in short, when dealing with ACTEWAGL. GET EVERYTHING IN WRITING! Get names, reference numbers, anything to prove later when they bullsh!t you, that you’ve talked to them!

We turned ours off in similar situation, pending installation of a gas cooktop. I just plugged the connection with a suitable threaded plug, gas tape and turned off at the tap. I also taped the tap up with duct tape to make it obvious it’s isolated [they don’t have a lockout mechanism]. You could turn it to the off position and remove the handle if it is still there, then no-one can inadvertently blow you up.

When we had ours disconnected, they took the external gas unit/meter away.
In your case, I would speculate that “disconnected” means more than just “turned off at the meter” (though nothing would shock given the performance we saw from ACTEW/Jemena). Trivial to go and throw the handle to turn it double-off though.