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BONDI - In a city obsessed with property prices and harbour views, Jhyimy Mhiyles enjoys a million-dollar outlook over world-renowned Bondi Beach without paying a cent.
But his days of gazing over the powdery white sands of Australia's most famous strand could be numbered.
Mhiyles, nicknamed the Bondi Caveman, has been told by the local council to abandon the clifftop rock ledge he has called home for the past seven years, on the grounds that he is illegally occupying public land.
Waverley Council also said it had received complaints about the hygiene of his makeshift camp and has concerns about his safety.
His clifftop home is a tangled nest of scrounged cooking pots, battered picture frames and odd bits of furniture. It is overlooked by sleek apartments and up-market villas which sell for A$1 million ($1.14 million) or more.
Locals, incensed by what they see as the authority's heavy-handed tactics, have organised a petition calling for Mhiyles to be left alone.
They have hailed him as a modern-day "Jolly Swagman", a reference to Waltzing Matilda, and have set up an online petition, calling Mhiyles an "icon" and an "original" who is doing no harm to anyone.
The website was only launched on Monday but by yesterday had attracted nearly 200 signatures.
"Let him be. He is so much more polite than most of humanity. As for hygiene, has the council looked at the back streets of Bondi lately?" wrote one petitioner.
Mhiyles, an orphan who declines to give his age but has been homeless for years, spends his time sunning himself in a battered armchair, writing poetry and hand-feeding seagulls.
His camp, partially protected from the elements by a rock ledge, is clearly visible from the well-trodden coastal path that links Bondi with a string of other popular beaches.
"It was rather abrupt after seven years to be told you've got two weeks to pack up and get out," he said last week. "Any time Australia, or the establishment, is so particularly threatened by one man living quietly, then we are not the same Australia we thought we were."
Mayor George Newhouse says the council is working to persuade Mhiyles to move into a shelter.
"He seems very happy and doesn't want to move, but we have concerns about his safety and the hygiene of the site," a spokeswoman for the mayor said yesterday. "We hand delivered a letter to him asking him to move but the deadline has passed."
In a city where soaring property values have many people despairing whether they will ever be able to afford their own home, Mhiyles' struggle to retain his little patch of real estate seems to have struck a nerve.
