Note: we are republishing this story, which originally made the news in September 2019, amid record high levels of division in America. According to Pew surveys, the US ranks among the highest in the world according to how many people feel more divided than before the pandemic.

Girrawheen resident Cilla Carden took her neighbors all the way to the Supreme Court, demanding that they stop cooking barbecues, smoking, and playing ball in their own backyard.

She maintained that she was fed up with the smell of meat cooking next door.

“They’ve put it there so I smell fish, all I can smell is fish. I can’t enjoy my backyard, I can’t go out there,” she said.

The massage therapist was also angered by the cigarette smoke wafting into her yard and the noise the children made as they played basketball.

“It’s been devastating, it’s been turmoil, it’s been unrest, I haven’t been able to sleep,” she said.

One neighbor let 9News into the backyard to show that he’d stopped the children from playing basketball and had removed the barbecue.

Carden took the issue to the State Administrative Tribunal and the Supreme Court.

She said: “It’s deliberate, that’s what I told the courts, its deliberate.”

However, the Supreme Court Judge and State Administrative Tribunal dismissed her case, and her request for appeal was denied.

She maintained that she would keep fighting and return to court soon.