Maybe there are other ways to show that you attempted mediation?
Community Justice Centres in NSW provide a free mediation service for neighbourhood disputes but the Fair Trading and NCAT literature only refers to Fair Trading’s mediation service.
To be clear, evidence that you have attempted mediation is a compulsory prerequisite in most instances of going to the tribunal. The Tribunal’s factsheet only refers to the Fair Trading service but it doesn’t specify it to the exclusion of the CJC. I suppose if the Fair Trading service was so busy that you would have to wait weeks or months, and you needed immediate action, you could try CJC.