Residents from a housing estate in Mount Helen, which has had restrictions on pet ownership for more than a decade, are pushing to allow cats and dogs to live with them.
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The Sanctuary Estate, off Zoe Drive, was built amongst a forest frequented by koalas and the City of Ballarat has mandated strict controls on pet ownership to protect the native animals.
But residents say those rules aren't enforced, and after almost 15 years, they want to legally allow other animals to live with them.
Resident Debra, who didn't want to use her surname, said when her dog was alive she would take it out of the area for walks for fear of being seen.
And she's not the only person within the estate to have had secretly owned a pet.
"There was a man down the end [of the street] ... I could see from the kitchen one day, he had like four dogs and they're always in the backyard and he was holding their mouths so they didn't bark, because the council had come around to see if they had a dog," Debra said.
Dogs could be heard barking on nearby streets when The Courier visited the area.
Another resident, Gabby Fletcher, said she was one of the last of the original homeowners in her street and had seen others move out in order to get a pet.
"When [my next-door neighbours] moved, they were newlyweds. So then they had children and because they want their children to have a pet ... things change from back then when you bought it to now in your life circumstances," she said.
In a submission to council's planning department, residents from 49 separate properties say they want to lift a clause in the Sanctuary Estate Section 173 Agreement or, "in the alternative, amend clause vi ... to read 'cats or dogs kept on a lot must be secured within the lot'.".
Craig Lee's property is on the border of the restricted area, meaning the neighbours over his back fence can have pets. He can't.
"I find it somewhat contradictive that we knock down the bush to build houses here in the first place. Having said that, we've seen one koala in four-and-a-half, five years here now," he said.
"Not to say that there aren't koalas around, I feel they've been pushed away and moved on anyhow, just by humans being here to let alone having, you know, cats and dogs."
Debra agreed koala numbers had become fewer in the area over time and said she was on the fence about lifting the cause.
"I don't know if we need to have more cats here and more dogs here. We've destroyed the environment here anyway with roads and letting people cut every tree down," she said.
"When we first got here there were koalas everywhere, you just rarely see them now. It's sad."
But Friends of the Canadian Corridor secretary Jeff Rootes said koalas still lived in the sanctuary and reversing their protection in Mount Helen would be a step backwards.
"It is a self-regulating thing. If you're in a dog-free area, then that means dog-free," he said.
"Most of our life is spent unenforced. It's about citizens doing the right thing and I think for those people in the sanctuary, they actually should respect that they live in a koala sanctuary which is quite unique.
"The application ... is actually disrespectful of that."
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