I have decided to make my dispute with the Bassendean Town Council public, as they have now started to adopt fraudulent behaviour to get what they want. This is a letter I sent to the Minister of Heritage which outlines what has been going on. Hocking Heritage Studios and the Bassendean Town Council have combined to defraud me. The minister sent me a copout letter in reply. I deliberately tried to make the house look older and more ornate than it ever was. It is my artwork (entitled “Bassendean House”), not heritage. The matter may well finish up in the courts now. I need to fix up some of the links.

Dr George Christos

1 Kathleen Street

Bassendean WA 6054

9 March 2026 (start date)

Hon Simone McGurk, 

Minister for Minister for Creative Industries; Heritage; Industrial Relations; Aged Care and Seniors; Women

WA Government

Perth, WA, Australia.

Re: The heritage listing of my home at 1 Kathleen Street, Bassendean:

The Bassendean Town Council has been deceitful, dishonest, and downright fraudulent

Dear Honourable Ms. McGurk,

I write to you in your capacity as Minister of Heritage.

I have had an ongoing issue with The Town of Bassendean regarding the heritage listing of my house at the above address.

I outlined the issues in an email sent to Hocking Heritage Studios (Shenton Park), dated 10 November 2025, which I copied you into back then. I have attached a pdf copy of that email here. Any files or photos referred to in that letter are in my google drive here. I have also uploaded that letter here.

I would like to fill you in with what has happened since. I received 2 replies from Prue Griffen, the proprietor of Heritage Hocking Studios, with an email from me in-between. They are saved as pdf files here and here. My response is here.

You will notice that a Cam Hartley from the Bassendean Council is copied into her replies. It also mentions that the Town of Bassendean may be conducting a review of my property.

I contacted Cam Hartley. We had an email exchange. See here. Note he is recommending that my house should be taken off the so called Heritage List (category 2 exceptional and above) and put into category 3 or 4. I only needed to have to reduced to category 2 (without exceptional) to have to removed off the heritage list.

I then received an email from Cam Hartley saying the Town of Bassendean needed to get another consultant to review my property to have it removed. He said it was a legal requirement or heritage WA and was really just a formality.

I then have a second exchange of emails with Cam Hartley regarding setting up an appointment for himself a new consultant to come view my house on 8 January 2026, 1 pm. See here.

Cam Hartley and the consultant (who did not tell me her name) came to my house on 8th January 2026 and I showed them around, explaining what state the house was in when I bought it, what parts were missing (e.g. some windows, doors etc., etc. ) and clearly showing them which parts I had actually built myself, such at the verandah, the toilet, and almost the entire back part of my house. I was a bit taken aback a bit at the time when this consultant kept saying nice things about my house, e.g. nice elevation (most old house were built on hills), nice street appeal (that was my artwork I explained), and built on limestone footing (all brick house were). I had no idea who this consultant was. I was not formally introduced. It turns out it was Prue Griffen, from Hocking Heritage Studios, which I think is MOST INAPPROPRIATE, especially since she never introduced herself. She asked if she could take photos to which I agreed, but I would NOT have given permission if I knew she was Prue Griffen.

I did not find out that it was Prue Griffen until I rang the Council on or around 26 February 2026 when I rang up to see what was going on. Cam Hartley had apparently left and I spoke to Mr Alex Snadden, who did not seem to know much about what was going on. He told me the house had been reviewed by Prue Griffen and it should stay on the heritage list was now going to be their recommendation to the council review committee. Nobody bother to tell me the situation had changed. Unbelievable. This all smacks of fraud. Who is Cam Hartley? Where has he gone? Why? What is really going on here? Who else is involved? The mayor, Kathryn Hamilton, and the CEO Cameron Woods have been particularly obstructive in stonewalling me. See my email to Hocking Heritage Studios mentioned above. I would be surprised if they are not involved in the fraudulent behaviour.

Mr Snadden was not even aware of my detailed letter to Hocking Heritage Studios which was cc’d to “mail@bassendean.wa.gov.au “. wtf?

I attach my email correspondence with Mr Snadden here (at the bottom of this pdf link). You can see that I have requested a face to face with the council regarding this matter. That face to face to basically what I plan to write now. I don’t think I will get any justice with them.

I bought this house over 40 years ago. It was literally the worse house in the street by I saw potential to make it look really nice, but one of the hardest tasks for me to complete was the rebuilding of the verandah as this was going to be the most outstanding feature of the house. I think I did a great job, so good that the Council and their consultant want to put it on the heritage list, which penalises me greatly. This is morally wrong and factually wrong too.

Real estate agents have told me that the value of my house is greatly depreciated if it is on the heritage list. For a start in is roughly a 1450 square metre block with a wrap around ROW (right of way) and it is zoned R40, which makes it a 6 unit site. The council do not seem to understand that I cannot build in my front yard (some 400 m2), and there is no way I can build 5 units at the back or side of my property if I maintain the house.

Recently, the TOB (Town of Bassendean) rezoned the houses along Guildford Road from R20 to R100. At the time I asked them to rezone mine as R100 as well, and in that way I can leave the house on the heritage last and not feel penalised. I would be able to have more freedom in what I do with the side/back of my property to compensate me keeping the old house. They did not even bother replying. This idea was devised by myself and Ms Lauren Blackman from the Ombudsman Office.

Anyhow, the truth is that the house is not really heritage.

Firstly, it was NOT built by Mr Edward Clay (I am not sure why he is such a special a mayor. Originally they did not included the house built by Mr Dick McDonald who was mayor 6 times over 5 or 6 decades. His house at 20 Kenny street. It was NOT listed when I first raised it with them about what is special about this the mayor that lived in my house for a few years?

I attached an email from Mr Clays great grand-daughter stating clearly that the house was not built by Mr Clay. This is in the email to Hocking Heritage Studios. Also link to it here.

Secondly, the street appeal is my own work. It is morally wrong to punish me for making the house look nice from the street for my neighbours and the people of Bassendean. Remember I have been working on this house (still going) for over 40 years now. It is not just morally unjust, it is a lie, to pretend the what you see from the front is heritage. I rebuilt and DESIGNED the verandah, the turned posts, the frieze work, the spindles, the capital and corporal moulding etc, etc.. I rebuilt the whole lot. Theoretically I should be able to remove everything I had done. It is my work. My goal was to make the house look as old as possible, even older that it actually was, and more appealing.

The other day I used Gemini AI to change the appearance of my house from the front, to illustrate how much the appearance of the house has changed.

My AI experimental photos are as follows. They are included in this folder. They are labelled accordingly and were made in the following order:

• my House now
• my House with ornate timber work removed
• my House with ornate timber work and tin spikes on roof removed
• I asked AI to make on house look older
• I told AI it had gone too far and to fix it up a bit
• I asked AI to cut the posts in half and to build a brick wall around the verandah
• I asked AI to render the front steps and to paint them

My comments on each photo are below.

• The first is a photograph of what my house looks like now, from in front of my garage/shed, which I built and signed incidentally, like many other architectural features in my house. Many are on youtube. Yes, I am painting the posts and timber work, right now. I wasn’t going to do it, but after I was informed my house was going to be taken off the heritage list, so I got inspired again. This has to be done every 10 years minimum. I will never paint it again if it stays on the heritage list now. The verandah floorboards needs to be cleaned and oiled twice a year too. The oil cost over $150 each time and it takes days to prepare. Who am I maintaining it for now? I am a senior now, with some health issues. I have good reason to let it all rot and fall apart.
• I then asked Gemini AI to alter my house so all the verandah timber work was removed, followed by an additional request to remove the spiky tin bits on the roof.
• I then asked AI to make the house look older.
• I told AI that it is too aged but let me make a good point here. The verandah boards looked a lot like that when I moved in in 1985, and would have done so in 1950s when the Clay family removed almost every last character feature of the house, on the outside and inside of the house.
• I then told AI to fix the house up a bit because it had gone a bit too far.
• I then asked AI to cut all the posts in half and add a brick wall around the verandah.
• Now it is starting to look a bit like when I bought the house, except the steps were rendered with concrete and were a greenie colour with numerous big cracks that had been filled with some sort of industrial filler. Ugly. They are still is like that. So I asked AI to undo what it had done to the steps at the front. If I asked to paint them a grey colour is built a new grey staircase, so we have to settle with this.

Now that looks a lot like what my house looked like when I bought it, except that the steps were a horrid greyish green colour and the bricks around the verandah had more varied colours.

Here are some old photos of my house shortly after I moved in.

Note the front door was not ornate, and there was no flywire door. In another photo you can see 2 original window on the north side were removed and replaced with french doors. Another window on the south side was also removed and turned into a doorway with no door leading into an ugly asbestos sleepout louvre windows. It was ugly as you can imagine. I have rebuilt that sleepout, so it all new now. There are also some photos from inside the house, which show it had most of its character destroyed. The back half of the house was an asbestos add on. Asbestos walls and ceilings. Note the beautiful (not so) bubbled glass on the front door.

This whole matter is beyond ridiculous. I have been working on this house, designing features to make it deliberately look old, and now I have been told enough George, no more. You have reached the heritage standard, but it is all new, all deception. Now, also, any new ideas need to be approved. What a joke? After 40 years I have to stop. What the hell? To be honest I have been adding new features anyhow, but that is not the point. I could take the chainsaw to anything I have added and remove the turned posts and ornate features if I wanted to. They are my work, my design. They are NOT heritage. I am not looking after this house from now on. Period. I will let it fall apart if this goes through. Like I said, I might even put the chainsaw to some of the timber work. Hopefully I won’t.

I designed and calculated (spacings, etc.) for all the shapes and features on my verandah, and I cut them all too, many by hand. You can clearly see the interplay of shape edges and circles throughout my design. Look carefully at this photo. This was a non-trivial task, that sort of evolved. I also married my work with the building next door which I built all, all my my own too.

I even designed the features under the front windows which was initially one of main outstanding feature of the house. Here is a video I posted on youtube about this. HERE. I thought it was hilarious though tragic. You might want to look at this video too. HERE. I have not stopped doing things.

I openly admit my intentions were to make the house to look older and more beautiful than it actually ever was. I added lost of special features, like wrought iron above the front door, the sharp bit of tin which actually go around the whole property, and combine with my building next door. The 4 turned posts at the front really set the stage with the moon and half moon post friezes made from 2 bits of wood, the frilly work under the spindles, my own unique design. This is my artwork. It is not heritage. Some photos can be found here.

This whole saga has made me ill (my medical records will support this). It is just bloody ridiculous to put me through this. I have done a good thing for this house and the shire, and now I am being punished.

I NEED your assistance Minister. Ms. Blackman from the Ombudsman Office did not get very far and abandoned me after this attempt to reconcile failed. We both thought the Council would accept my offer to rezone my property from R40 to R100 as compensation, which they did not. They didn’t even reply as far as I can remember. The problem with going with the heritage listing scenario is that is is a scam. The house is my artwork. It is not really heritage. Shouldn’t the public know what is pretend heritage? Please help me. I have nowhere else to turn now, and I am going crazy. This is unjust, untrue, and now looking very shady. Plus, I am completely shattered now. I have been emotionally drained, anxious and stressed out, these last 2 weeks. Why is this happening to me? I tried to make an old house look too nice?

Yours sincerely,

Dr George Christos

200. The Bassendean Town Council. mail@bassendean.wa.gov.au
201. Ms Lauren Blackman, WA Ombudsman Office. mail@ombudsman.wa.gov.au
202. The Honourable Premier of WA, Mr Roger Cook, wa-government@dpc.wa.gov.au
203. Hon. Hannah Beazley, Minister for Local Government, etc. Minister.Beazley@dpc.wa.gov.au
204. The West Australian Newspaper, Chief of Staff, cos@wanews.com.au