By Antoinette Milienos For Daily Mail Australia

Published: 02:57 EDT, 8 September 2022 | Updated: 02:58 EDT, 8 September 2022

Residents have slammed a local council for using an excavator to smash a cubby house local kids built out of scrap materials after it was deemed 'unsafe'. 

The cubby house, which took six to eight months to build, was torn down on Wednesday after a local council in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia, found the structures were 'built illegally on council land'. 

Father-of-two Arnd Enneking criticised Mount Barker District Council's decision as the cubby house provided a 'real sense of community engagement' and taught children valuable lessons. 

Mount Barker District Council, in Adelaide South Australia, used an excavator to demolish a cubby house made from scrap material built by local children after it was deemed 'unsafe' and 'illegal' (pictured)

'There are businesses here that leave pallets on the side of the road and things like that so I thought, 'Oh, great we've got materials'', Mr Enneking told ABC Radio Adelaide. 

'The other kids around the streets saw what our two were doing and all of a sudden this whole group of children were building and hammering.' 

Mr Enneking's sons, aged nine and 11, had spent weeks working on the cubby in a quiet reserve on Mount Barker's eastern side, and were devastated as they watched the council pull it apart. 

The 45-year-old Mount Barker resident explained the children scrounged for materials and had initially built a platform, which then turned into a single room, a little enclosure with a roof and a little bridge made across the creek. 

Mr Enneking said his eldest son was in tears 'all day' after two trucks, one with an excavator on it, demolished their building. 

'The way (the council) went about it was a bit heavy-handed, they just rocked up with an excavator and started tearing at it,' Mr Enneking said. 

In a since deleted social media post in a community Facebook group, residents argued council time would be better used fixing potholes in roads instead of tearing down a community cubby house. 

Council workers decided to stop the demolition to allow the Enneking family time to salvage materials so that they could rebuild the cubby elsewhere on private land (pictured)

Mount Barker District Council's general manager of infrastructure Phil Burton told Daily Mail Australia the council was alerted to the structure after receiving a complaint from a local resident. 

'A complaint was made to Council from a nearby resident about an illegally built structure on council land,' Mr Burton said.

'The structure was a cubby made from wooden pallets – some of it on the ground and other parts attached to a river red gum [tree] at about 2-3 metres high.

'Council staff inspected the cubby and deemed it be unsafe and started removal.

'There was no obvious owner of the structure and no one had communicated with us to build that structure on council land.'

Mr Burton said council workers decided to stop the demolition to allow the Enneking family time to salvage materials so that they could rebuild the cubby elsewhere on private land.

Mount Barker District Council has offered to meet with residents who built the cubby house to discuss ways in which they can help and support children in the local area (pictured, Mount Barker suburb sign)

The council has offered to meet with residents who had built the cubby to discuss ways in which they could help and support children in the local area. 

'Council officers and I will meet with the residents involved with the construction of the cubby house over the coming weeks to better understand what the local young people are looking to do and how the council could support them through the services we provide,' Mr Burton said.

'This could be in the form of running some local activities, providing some nature play opportunities within agreed boundaries, or other ideas that the young people might come up with.' 

It comes after Charles Sturt Council earlier this month removed a homemade BMX track built by kids in Grange and Onkaparinga Council destroyed a community-made nature-play zone in Seaford in January. 

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