Perth Voice Interactive

POLICE were called after a 75-year-old tenant from the complex climbed a tree to stop workers hacking branches.

Workers had marked trees for a severe lopping to get the portable loos to the courtyards.

Ray Boyle says trees help cut down noise pollution from the busy highway.

Workers called police when Mr Boyle refused to get down to let them pass. He says he continued to negotiate with them and a compromise was reached, with them snipping off less than originally intended.

The Californian-born Mr Boyle says he’s been an activist all his life. He left the US “as a political refugee”.

“They were going to throw me in gaol as a conscientious objector,” he says, for refusing to sign up to the Vietnam war draft.