Move over, Darryl Kerrigan: cottage owner’s defeat of giant billboard to shake councils across Australia

This electronic billboard in the Brisbane suburb of Red Hill was approved by the city council without any notification given to the house seen in the background. Photograph: Joe Hinchliffe/The Guardian

At the bottom of a slope leading towards the inner-city Brisbane suburb of Red Hill is a tin and timber house described, even by its owner, as a modest little cottage. It is an unlikely ground zero for a legal stoush whose outcome will shake councils around the country.

It began one day in 2020 when an electronic advertising billboard – more than 11 metres high and 42.4 sq metres in area – suddenly and unexpectedly appeared right in front of that humble home on Musgrave Road, a key thoroughfare to the CBD.