The residents of Wittenoom Crescent in Stirling shrug their shoulders and smile at the irony of sharing the street name with the Western Australian mining town so contaminated by asbestos it is a no-go zone, closed off and fenced.
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"It's Wittenoom Crescent, mate," one says with a laugh, his work as a tradesman leaving him well aware of the dangers of asbestos.
While Wittenoom Crescent is by no means unique in Canberra, it has also felt the chill of asbestos contamination, with four houses in the loop street to be demolished in the Mr Fluffy buyback.
"There was no way we were going to put asbestos in the house, no way," wife Mrs Bennett says.
They were surprised to discover more than a decade later when houses were surveyed that they and their two young children had been living with Mr Fluffy in the ceiling. "We were cheated, we were dudded from day 1," Mr Bennett says, recalling talk at the time of the Fluffy company using a Bunsen burner in the Belconnen mall to demonstrate the fire resistance of the asbestos insulation.
And now, 40 years after the insulation was installed and more than 20 years after it was removed, the couple must move from their closely held community. The government offer was not sufficient for them to rebuild on their current land, nor buy an existing house on their budget of $550,000, so they have signed up for a land-rent block in Coombs and are having a house built.
They are looking forward to their move, but say the stress of the Fluffy crisis last year took an enormous toll.
"When we put down our deposit, we had a neighbour saying it's nice to hear laughter coming out of the home again, that's how bad it became," Mr Bennett said.
A couple of doors down, Gavin Dimond lives with his family next to a Fluffy house on a large corner block, whose neighbour is another Fluffy house. Both will come down, leaving a substantial space for development, and Mr Dimond said he was concerned about the impact of two big homes being built next door.
Wittenoom Crescent in Stirling is one of 45 Canberra streets to contain four or more Fluffy houses. It is named after John Burdett Wittenoom, a chaplain who emigrated to Western Australia in 1980. The mining town for blue asbestos was named much later after one of his grandsons. With about 10 per cent of the 20,000 mine workers and residents having died of asbestos diseases to date, according to the Asbestos Diseases Society, the town was officially closed in 2007 and is now all but abandoned, marked by signs warning of contamination.
