The owner of a four-storey tree house on the south coast of Western Australia hopes popular support will allow it to remain in place.
The wooden structure is wrapped around a 100-year-old New Zealand Christmas tree on a previously vacant block on the side of Mount Clarence.
Owner and operator James McLean said it was a part of Albany worth preserving.
"It's a very old heritage part of Albany where there was a very old house a long time ago," he said.
"[The house is] gone but the tree remains, so we wanted to preserve it."
Mr McLean said the over the years community members had built unsafe makeshift forts and playgrounds on the site.
"There were previous platforms in the tree for many years, so it looks like kids over many generations built numerous platforms in there, but to be honest they were quite dodgy," he said.
"When my little boy started playing in there I was getting a bit horrified and believe me, I'm more on the adventurous side of things, but they were dodgy."
Safe as houses, owner says
Mr McLean runs a playground design and building company.
He said the tree house's platforms were replaced and that balustrades and walls were built to make the structure safe.
He said the structure had repeatedly been checked for safety issues.
"During our construction we had no less than three child safety inspections done, and then a report that has gone to the City of Albany," Mr McLean said.
But the City of Albany has some concern surrounding traffic management, parking, noise management and hours of operation.
Mr McLean has been running the tree house as an event place, mostly for children's birthday parties, and has deliberately put limitations on the events.
"You can't have more than 12 kids at a birthday party and you can only have it during daytime hours for two hours at a time," he said.
"We've had huge demand for night-time or twilight events because it overlooks the harbour, but we've declined those.
Screen time vs green time
This process is happening because of a complaint about the tree house.
"There's an immediate adjoining landowner who doesn't live there — it's a rental property, but they were concerned about noise and that type of thing, which I completely understand," Mr McLean said.
"That's why we've put a lot of these conditions in place.
"We did try to talk to them about it and hear their concerns, but they made a complaint instead, so we can't do much more about that."
Mr McLean said the complaint had the potential to shut down the tree house.
The city has called for public comment.
"I think we're living in an era where that's very possible — many things can get shut down with minimal complaint," Mr McLean said.
"It's really important that support is given, and probably support beyond just cheerleading for tree houses, because I think nearly everyone loves tree houses, more so that it's been done in a thoughtful and safe way.
"The tree house forms part of something that's really very important, that child psychologists have been saying for quite a while now, that children have been suffering from what they call nature deficit disorder as a result of way too much screen time and not enough green time.
