Question about parking on a nature strip in Melbourne
I moved to Melbourne about a month ago and recently bought a car. A friend of mine who has already been living in Melbourne also moved in with me, so we now have two cars.
The house is advertised as having a garage that can fit two cars, but honestly, I’m surprised by how small some Melbourne garages are. It feels more like a storage area than somewhere you can comfortably park two cars. From what I’ve noticed around the area, a lot of people seem to park in their driveways rather than actually use their garages.
Because we have two cars, my friend has been parking his car on the nature strip (the grass area between the footpath and the road). I know this is technically illegal, and I only recently looked up the rules, but I’ve also noticed quite a few people in the area doing it.
Yesterday, one of our neighbours knocked on the door and asked us to move the car because apparently his wife parks there. We are not blocking their driveway, and the car isn't parked on their private property.
This is where I'm a bit confused. Our house is positioned diagonally on the block, so the nature strip in question is somewhat shared between the frontage of our property and the neighbour's property. Roughly 20% of the nature strip is in front of our house, while around 80% is in front of theirs. we also have a nature strip but itsd mostly grass whiles the shared one is smooth pebble.
My understanding is that the nature strip is public land rather than land owned by the homeowner, so does it actually matter that most of the nature strip is in front of their house? Can they claim that area as "their" parking spot simply because it is directly in front of their property?
I understand that parking on the nature strip is illegal, so I'm not really asking whether it's technically legal to park there. I'm more curious about whether the neighbour has any right to tell us that we can't park there because they want to use that space themselves.
The reason we don't just park both cars in the driveway is that we would potentially block each other in, which would make it difficult for either of us to leave independently.