OK - have more info. on the continuing crazy that is the cult at Yarramalong:
Open Day today attracted 3 punters to look at the property.
The agent selling it was running around earlier today taping off the hazardous areas where the punters couldn't go because it's unsafe.
The place hasn't been mown for an age and the grass is a metre or more high in places because
a) the mower needs repair and there's "no money" to fix it.
b) there's "no money" to pay the caretaker - is owed a month's wages yet again.
Cult were going to spend $50k to tidy the place up for sale but there was "no money" so the place is an absolute wreck - far, far worse than the previous photos posted here.
Yet somehow (magical thinking again) the cult expects that they'll get their "postulated price" for the place.
Oh, and the listing agent has learnt the $cientology art of bypass to get stuff done - he calls someone in the US and Nigel in Oz gets his arse kicked.
Some more interesting facts:
Cult bought the place WITHOUT an independent valuation of its worth - local agents valued it at $2.6 AT THE MOST when it had been all tarted up for sale. Cult bought it with a $200,000 discount for an early settlement and so got it for the "bargain" of $3.6 rather than $3.8 million. I'll bet at least one person went to the RPF over that.
Place was tarted up prior to cult sale with inferior materials - one example is the decking around the pool that was "fixed" with Radiata pine when it should have been hardwood. Result - decking now badly rotted and unsafe and needs total replacement.
Cult has apparently bought something around Bowral, not Nowra - dunno where that came from specifically but some similar group bought a place in the Nowra region recently and someone thought it was maybe the Hubbardians moving in.
I think there's another Open Day next Saturday - I may go check the place out myself as it's a short but lovely drive from home. I'll send some "postcards" if I do.
$cientology - it's ALWAYS worse than you think
But what can you expect from a bunch of people who make their life decisions based on the brainfarts of a dead drug-addled sci-fi writer who was heavily into the occult. A true recipe for disaster, as I know from bitter personal experience.