By the beginning of August 2022, the parallel financial crisis had reached another critical point.
I was still trying to get somebody — anybody — within the systems supposedly responsible for protecting workers, to intervene in what had happened to me. I was still trying to preserve my employment, recover at work, address the workers compensation failures and stop the financial damage that had been accumulating for years.
At exactly the same time, I was trying to complete something extraordinarily consequential in my private life: secure the roof over my head.
These were not separate stories.
The property transactions unfolding in July and August 2022 were taking place after years without workers compensation weekly payments, without implementation of the Injury Management Plan that had been issued in June 2020, and without effective return-to-work coordination. By the end of July, my records show continuing settlement pressure, depleted financial reserves and increasing reliance on superannuation while I was still trying to obtain intervention from regulators.
This was the parallel crisis.
——
1 August 2022: still believing somebody would help
On 1 August 2022, the sale of my Melbourne investment property was connected to the purchase of the property in Sydney through a substitution of security. The transactions therefore had to be coordinated across Victoria and New South Wales.
My NSW solicitor was trying to establish how the funds from Melbourne would be applied to the Sydney purchase. Their email that morning said they’d contacted the bank repeatedly but had been unable to obtain confirmation of the funds available. They wrote:
“As a matter of urgency, please advise us as to how the matters can be linked so that settlement can proceed on 8 August 2022.”
That evening, I replied:
“I thought the process was more straightforward than this confusion.”
At the same time, I still thought the Fair Work Ombudsman might help me resolve what had happened in my employment before the financial consequences became even worse.
While lawyers, conveyancers, the lender and settlement agents were trying to coordinate the movement of my property and money across two states, I was still trying to get the employment system to function as it was supposed to.
——
3–5 August 2022: trying to hold the settlement together
On 3 August, I was still trying to clarify the settlement arrangements.
I explained that I had instructed the lender to maintain the existing loan balance.
Meanwhile, the professionals themselves were trying to untangle the PEXA arrangements.
On 4 August, my Victorian solicitor advised that the NSW and Victorian transactions had been linked incorrectly — as a linked lodgement rather than a linked financial settlement — and asked for that to be corrected so the proceeds of the Melbourne sale could flow into the Sydney purchase.
Then came another problem: settlement times were not aligned.
On 5 August, correspondence showed one workspace at 11:30 am and the others at 2:30 pm, producing an “Invalid Settlement Time”. My solicitor repeatedly sought correction because settlement was scheduled for the following Monday.
I was watching all of this happen.
And I was still functioning.
Still emailing.
Still checking.
Still paying.
Still coordinating.
Still trying to protect what remained of my financial security.
——
5 August 2022
On 5 August, I asked the real estate agent when I could collect the keys after settlement.
The response from the real estate agent was almost painfully simple:
“Finally it will be yours!”
Finally.
But there was nothing simple about what it had taken to get there.
The home I was securing wasn’t evidence that everything was financially fine.
It was evidence of how desperately I was trying to preserve something.
The Melbourne investment property had already been sold. Assets and money were being moved around. Legal and conveyancing costs were accumulating. My longer-term financial position was being reshaped while the workers compensation and employment failures that had contributed to this crisis remained unresolved.
This wasn’t normal financial planning anymore.
It was damage control.
——
This is what’s difficult to convey when looking at these events years later.
There was never just one thing to deal with.
There was the employment crisis.
The workers compensation crisis.
The regulatory crisis.
The psychological consequences.
The financial crisis.
The property crisis.
The banking and lending administration.
The lawyers.
The conveyancers.
The settlement deadlines.
The records I needed.
The emails I had to chase.
And throughout it all, I was the person who had to keep every thread moving.
——
8 August 2022: settlement
On Monday, 8 August 2022, the Sydney property finally settled.
I had secured my home.
That mattered enormously.
But the chronology surrounding the settlement matters too. The broader records show that it occurred after the sale of the Melbourne investment property and during continuing financial pressure, depletion of reserves and unresolved workers compensation and return-to-work failures.
That’s why I keep calling this the parallel crisis.
While I was writing to regulators asking them to address what had happened in my employment, there was another story happening in bank accounts, trust accounts, property contracts, settlement workspaces, legal invoices and depleted assets.
Every day that nobody intervened had a financial consequence.
And those consequences didn’t remain confined to a workers compensation file.
They moved into my savings.
My superannuation.
My investments.
My property decisions.
My legal expenses.
My future financial security.
And eventually, the question of whether I could keep a roof over my head.
——
What the records show
One of the most confronting things is how ordinary the emails sound.
“Please confirm.”
“Please find attached.”
“Can I get an update?”
“Have a nice weekend.”
“Kind regards.”
Those polite sentences conceal what was happening underneath them.
I was trying to conduct complicated interstate property settlements while already psychologically overwhelmed and financially under enormous pressure. I was selling an investment property and restructuring my finances while simultaneously trying to get regulators to address the employment and workers compensation failures that were driving the financial deterioration in the first place.
And still, I kept doing what responsible people are constantly told to do.
I followed up.
I kept records.
I sought clarification.
I paid what was required.
I engaged lawyers.
I communicated with the lender.
I dealt with agents and conveyancers.
I tried to resolve problems before they became disasters.
And I asked regulators for help.
The tragedy of this period isn’t that I failed to take responsibility for my affairs.
It’s how much responsibility I was forced to carry while the institutions with responsibilities of their own kept leaving me to carry the consequences.*
The settlement on 8 August gave me something critically important: my home.
But it didn’t end the parallel crisis.
It simply marked another point at which I had managed, somehow, to stop one more thing from collapsing.
And the cost of doing that was still accumulating.
* But according to a police officer of the St. George PAC, apparently I don’t take self-responsibility! And then I’m judged on my reaction to that pathetic insult from someone who had NO IDEA what I was forced to carry ALONE!
Revisit http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/08/when-even-home-wasnt-safe-june-2022.html!
How much more crap could a responsible woman take, especially from shockingly too many irresponsible public servants and law enforcement agencies in NSW?! HOW MUCH MORE?
Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 507-511
