After buying an investment property in Fairy Meadow, Soster wanted the Wilsons* who lived next door to pay him $4000 without a written quote or any say in the type of fence erected.

After enduring months of constant high noise levels without complaint as Soster worked on the property at all times of the day and night, the fed-up couple organised for the matter to be handled by a third party.

It's at this point the situation became much more than your average fence tiff, with Soster unleashing a tirade of verbal abuse and misogynistic remarks, violating the couple's privacy, even peeping through the bedroom window to watch Mrs Wilson exit the bathroom after a shower to get dressed.

The Wilsons reacted to Soster's pervy behaviour by barricading themselves inside their home with the curtains closed as he taunted them over the backyard fence. "You can't stay inside all day, you have to come outside sometime," he'd say, and, "peekaboo, I see you".

When the backyard plants started dying, the Wilsons installed CCTV and watched with alarm as their neighbour hovered, tip-toed and used crates and buckets to peer into their yard.

Then on October 28 last year, Soster was caught on camera poisoning a tree in their yard with weed killer. The police were called and - after making it easy on everyone by spraying the Wilsons' plants while a sergeant was at the house - Soster was charged with stalking, peeping and destroying property.

He was found guilty in court, where all these details were included in tendered documents, and will be sentenced on February 13 to examine the circumstances surrounding his offending.

On the side of Soster's dilapidated house facing his other neighbours, vile language has been graffitied in Italian. Some of the cladding has been ripped off, exposing the structural beams, and the backyard is barren.

It's a story that brought up some unpleasant memories for other local residents.

Anita, a mother-of-three who last week moved away from the Illawarra, knows all too well what it's like living next door to someone determined to make life miserable - and too often succeeding.

She recalls doing a walk-by of a deceased estate she and her husband were hoping to buy, and a male neighbour, Grant, immediately emerging from his house to tell her all the things wrong with it.

"He was like, 'there's two roofs on the house, they didn't do a good job, you're sure you still want to buy it? And we're just like, who is this guy? And I remember thinking, 'you're probably going to be annoying'."

She bought the house and quickly discovered her instincts had been right. What she hadn't bargained on, however, was being sandwiched between two bad neighbours, forcing her to plant a tall-growing hedge and install CCTV, locks on the gates and a garage door.

But for the first few years, at least, it was Grant who proved the biggest pest.

He would swing from being intrusive and ever-present to suddenly giving her the cold shoulder. After daring to pull out the ugly salmon-coloured, disease-ridden azaleas from her own garden, she was given the silent treatment for a good 12 months.

"Who knows the ways in which we offended them by just, you know, gardening, living our lives," Anita said.

Over the next couple of years, there was a death threat from a relative, strict rules about where they could park on the road, a cigarette flicked at Anita's head and a rumour being spread about Anita's husband poisoning a pet cat in the street.

Perhaps the creepiest incident was the time she was talking to her mum in the kitchen and happened to mention she'd run out of hot chocolate when Grant suddenly appeared at her doorstep asking if she needed any.

Meantime, they'd had no issues with the elderly couple on the other side until Anita was forced to approach the man about the shiny white panel he had attached to his carport.

She asked him to paint a small section of the panel with matt paint in order to stop it from reflecting the blinding afternoon sun directly onto her back deck. He flatly refused.

"And we're like, well if you won't do anything to change it, we'll have to report it to council because we can't use our back deck," Anita said.

"And he was like, 'yeah, go on then call council', so we told him we would and we did ... and when we notified council about the panel, council also became aware of the fact their unapproved carport existed, and then they had to make it fireproof."

Not long after, Anita started finding dead rats in her backyard.

"At one point I said to my husband, I think they're throwing them and as an eternal optimist he's like, 'No one would do that. We've got little kids'."

But when their two little ones were outside playing in the cubby, and her toddler pointed to the ground next to his seat and said, 'there's a mouse', it was clear the children were no deterrent.

"I looked over, it was this dirty, great big, disgusting dead rat. And I freaked out, grabbed both the kids and went inside," Anita recalls.

"I called my husband in tears, saying they literally threw it right in the kids' play area, where the kids sit. And I was just like, this is too far."

Police advised them to install CCTV and three days after the cameras went up, they had all the evidence they needed.

"Sure enough, he comes from his house, out to the chicken shed, comes back, he's holding a shovel, he peers over the fence to check the coast is clear and then hooks the rat into our yard," Anita said.

"Obviously we knew he was doing it, but to actually see the footage was so shocking," she said.

When the police knocked on the old couple's door to confront them about their dirty rat escapades, Anita said the woman told them, "We are Christian people, we would never do that. May the Lord strike me down if I am lying".

"And the police officer was like, 'well, I've just watched a video of your husband throwing a rat over the fence.' That took the wind out of their sails and suddenly they couldn't speak English anymore."

No longer able to torment the young family with dead rats, Anita said they began turning their old-fashioned music up so loud the sound was distorted.

With the deafening noise wearing her down, Anita seriously considered moving, even attending a couple of open homes, but ultimately refused to be bullied into selling up.

"We loved the house, we loved the area, we loved the school, and we're like, well, why should we move just because there's cranky people trying to force us out," she said.

Four weeks after the rat-thrower's wife asked God to strike her down if she was lying, she died.

After that, the old man kept to himself and "all the problems on that side of the fence just went away".

Anita and her family picked up the keys to their new house last week and haven't met the neighbours yet.

"Nobody came out and accosted us within 20 seconds. Nobody's been overly informative about our property, so I feel like that's a good sign."

Wollongong mum-of-two Lucy said her relationship with her neighbours was never rosy, but turned openly hostile after she reported their two puppies to council for barking uncontrollably late into the night.

Since then, Lucy has had the police called on her over bogus noise complaints and been dobbed into council multiple times over "petty" issues, the latest of which ruined Christmas for the family.

She said the neighbours even told her young daughter to "f--- off inside" for playing in her own backyard.

Lucy says officers once apologised to her when they responded to a noise complaint just after 9pm only to find her and some friends sitting around the fire, nursing cups of tea and playing a singing game that had them all in stitches.

"It's extremely petty what they're doing," she said.

"I don't do anything at all to warrant this, I don't cause any mischief or drink and smoke, I work hard. I wouldn't say I'm quiet, I live a normal life with children.

"But I'm over it, there's got to be some sort of cut-off or boundary or something that I can do that's gonna stop them from harassing me.

"I want my children to be able to enjoy their backyard and not know that we're being watched.

"It's the most gut-wrenching feeling knowing someone is watching you and waiting for you to make a mistake.

"It's just cruel. They don't have anything to do with us, yet they go above and beyond to make my life miserable.

"It's a war of morals and dignity and respect."

*All names have been changed.