'My housemates turned on me over one comment. Then I discovered their secret.'

Back in the year 2000, Tom thought he was moving into a normal Melbourne share house. Two flatmates, affordable rent, close enough to his internship. It seemed perfect.

"Wow, was I fooled," he told Mamamia. 

By the end of the first week, the reality had unfolded: a couple in the sunroom, two singles in the other room, another couple in a bedroom. 

Still, Tom managed to co-exist with his six unexpected roommates for months. They shared food, bills, everything. Until a run-in changed everything.

Watch: Parents Anonymous: Advice for house guests. Post continues after video.

Every Sunday, one of Tom's housemates would come home in tears. 

"She had a particular habit of going out Fridays, picking up a straight girl, having a fling until Sunday, then the girl would decide they needed to go back to their lives and would leave."

For weeks on end, Tom would watch this routine. Like clockwork, every Sunday, his housemate would be distraught. At first, he bit his tongue. But one night, after a few beers, he shared his true thoughts.

"I innocently asked, 'Why don't you stop picking up straight girls?'" he recalled. "I said, 'This is free advice: the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again without changing it.'"

After that interaction, the house turned on Tom. Once-communal food became labelled, "nasty notes" were left everywhere, and his washing was dumped from the machine into the sink.

Things went on like this for a while, until Tom received a phone call from his landlord.

"It was the final straw when I got this phone call," he said.

"The landlord said, 'Tom mate, you haven't paid last month's rent."

Tom was confused. He'd been giving his portion of the rent in cash to one of his housemates for months. They'd been paying it to the landlord. Or, so he thought.

"I'm like, 'What are you talking about? My flatmates dropped it off'. Then the landlord said two words he'll never forget.

"What flatmates?"

The penny dropped. As it turned out, Tom was the only one on the lease — the others had removed themselves when he moved in. They were all living there rent-free, while Tom was left responsible for all the bills.

"It dawned on me that I was the only tenant there. They were basically squatting," he said.

Fortunately for Tom, he was able to get financial help from his parents to pay off the money he owed.

"If I hadn't been in that position, I would have been destitute," he said.

The landlord, however, was not happy.

"He was getting agitated, he was like 'What do you mean there are other people in the house? There's only one person on the lease.' So I told him the story, and he's like, 'I'm gonna have to evict you all'."

But Tom couldn't afford to be kicked out.

"I was like, 'Whoa, hang on, before you do that, I've got three months left of my internship, I can't be driving an hour-and-a-half back and forth every day."

Angry and desperate, Tom came up with a plan.

"I said to the landlord, 'Can I have some letterhead? He was like, 'Why? What are you gonna do?'. And I said, 'Well, I'm gonna do whatever I need to do to get these people out of the house. I promise that they'll be out of here within a couple of days."

The landlord acquiesced, and sent over the letterhead. Then Tom rang his uncle, a barrister, and told him of his plan to make a fake eviction notice. 

"I said, 'Would I get in trouble for doing this?' And he's like, 'Well, not really. What are they going to do? They're going to sue you for tricking them out of a place that they've tricked you into letting them rent and not even be part of the tenancy?'"

So, Tom got to work. He printed the fake eviction notice on the official letterhead, and gave it to a mate, asking him to play the role of the landlord's representative.

"I got a colleague of mine who was an absolute unit of a bloke to come around and say he was there on behalf of the landlord, and if we didn't move out by the eviction time, he was going to call the police."

Chaos erupted instantly as his housemates hastened to pack their belongings. Tom, who had been secretly packing already, rented a van and placed his things in, one by one.

"I handed my friend the keys, and he said, 'I expect the keys from everybody else, and I'll be making sure.'"

It was a two-story house, and Tom's roommates took all their belongings down a big set of stairs, piling it all onto the side of the road, wondering what to do next.

"I got out of there, I was like, 'Guys, I'm gonna go stay with my uncle in Cheltenham, see you later,'" Tom told Mamamia.

Meanwhile, his friend waited around with the housemates and collected all the keys.

"He locked the place up. And then they're like, 'What are we going to do?' And he's like, 'Not my problem, if you're here in an hour, I'll call the police.'"

Tom didn't wait. He called the police himself.

"I said, 'There's some people out the front of our house. They've got all their furniture, and they're claiming they used to live here, and they're not on the lease, and it's scaring me. Can you come and get rid of them?' The cops came and moved them on.

"I moved back in later that night."

To this day, Tom has no idea if his ex-roommates found out about his scheme.

"I don't know where they went and I never heard from them again," he said. 

Tom went on to find two new housemates, finish his internship, and move back to Canberra, where he met his now-wife of 25 years. Today, he runs a consulting agency that helps martial arts, dance, yoga, and similar studios grow their businesses.

As for whether he'd "have the nerve" to hatch a similar plan now, Tom's not sure.

"It's one of those times in life that you look back and laugh your ass off. At the time it was awful, but you look back and it's funny."

Feature Image: Getty (stock image for illustrative purposes only).