{"id":12525,"date":"2011-01-17T20:47:38","date_gmt":"2011-01-18T01:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/static\/?p=12525"},"modified":"2012-01-25T10:17:05","modified_gmt":"2012-01-25T15:17:05","slug":"wind-farm-hell-testimony-in-court-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/2011\/wind-farm-hell-testimony-in-court-australia\/","title":{"rendered":"“Wind farm hell” testimony in court (Australia)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere was pain most of the time!\u201d<\/h4>\n

\u2014The Courier<\/a> (1\/18\/11)<\/p>\n

Former Waubra resident Trish Godfrey<\/a> [and\u00a0here<\/a> and here<\/a>] yesterday told an Adelaide court how her dream home became \u201chell on earth\u201d after wind farm turbines were turned on.<\/p>\n

Ms Godfrey said she suffered sleep deprivation, headaches and nausea before moving out in April 2010 when Acciona purchased her property.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like you had a hat on that\u2019s too tight and you have a pain that just gets worse and worse, and you can\u2019t take it off,\u201d Ms Godfrey said. \u201cThere was pain most of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Godfrey broke down in tears as she gave evidence at the Environment Resources and Development Court.<\/p>\n

Dairy farmer Richard Paltridge is appealing a decision to grant Acciona approval to build a 46-turbine wind farm near his property, south of Mt Gambier.<\/p>\n

Ms Godfrey said her symptoms began about a month after turbines were turned on, then got progressively worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said to my husband, I\u2019m not sick but I don\u2019t feel well,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like I had a cold coming on all the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy sleep patterns were changing. I was waking up two, three, four times a night. I couldn\u2019t explain it. I couldn\u2019t get my head around what was going on.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou put it down to everything but what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Godfrey said she and her husband Victor, a dental surgeon, went on holiday to Darwin and the symptoms stopped, then resumed when she returned home.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get back and it starts all over again,\u201d she said. \u201cIt all came back with gusto.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under questioning by George Manos for Mr Paltridge, Ms Godfrey said the 10-acre property was her \u201cdream\u201d home, where she and her husband intended to retire.<\/p>\n

She said she planted 750 to 1000 boundary trees, about 30 fruit trees and 17 vegetable beds in the 10 years they lived there.<\/p>\n

Ms Godfrey said she had been led into a false sense of security in a meeting with David Shapiro of Wind Power, the company that set up the Waubra project and sold it to Acciona.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe told us there would be a couple of turbines on Quoin Hill, a couple on Big Hill and a few behind us,\u201d Ms Godfrey said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said there would be no lights, no wires and no noise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Godfrey said 63 turbines could be seen from her property and it became \u201chell\u201d to live there.<\/p>\n

She said the noise \u201cpressed in\u201d on their home. \u201cIt was anywhere from a low whooshing sound, a sweeping swoosh some days, and when the wind was coming from the north it was like a jumbo jet in the back paddock,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Former Waubra resident Carl Stepnell told the court yesterday he and his wife\u2019s symptoms of chest pains, heart palpitations and sleep deprivation ceased after the couple moved away from the family farm to Ballarat in November.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel as though we\u2019ve got our health back,\u201d Mr Stepnell said.<\/p>\n

Mt Stepnell said his wife also suffered depression while living close to the turbines.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer whole appearance … it was scary to see how bad she was,\u201d he said. \u201cShe was really down, depressed … shocking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Stepnell said his five-year-old son attended Waubra Primary School until the family moved.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see a big difference in his behaviour,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is nowhere near as emotional … he was pale. (Now) he\u2019s like a normal five-year-old.”<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere was pain most of the time!\u201d \u2014The Courier (1\/18\/11) Former Waubra resident Trish Godfrey [and\u00a0here and here] yesterday told an Adelaide court how her dream home became \u201chell on earth\u201d after wind farm turbines were turned on. Ms Godfrey said she suffered sleep deprivation, headaches and nausea before moving out in April 2010 when Acciona purchased her property. \u201cIt was like you had a hat on that\u2019s too tight and you have a pain that just gets worse and worse, and you can\u2019t take it off,\u201d Ms Godfrey said. \u201cThere was pain most of the time.\u201d Ms Godfrey broke down in tears as she gave evidence at the Environment Resources and Development Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[166,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12525"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}