One chain, and the two records that date it

Kingston is one of the municipalities with a green wedge. The council calls green wedges the land set aside around Melbourne by the state government for non urban use, and says its own covers 2,070 hectares in the city’s northern suburbs, across parts of Heatherton, Clarinda, Dingley Village and Braeside and two small areas at Aspendale Gardens and Patterson Lakes: about 23 per cent of Kingston, or 1,035 Melbourne Cricket Grounds.

The chain is the wedge’s headline project. The council describes a project that will transform more than 300 hectares of land into linked open spaces, and says that once complete it will stretch from Karkarook Park in Heatherton in the north through to Braeside Park in the south; the 2023 management plan draws the green wedge the same way, with Karkarook Park to the north and Braeside Park to the south.

The aim is an ending as much as a beginning: the council says the project brings the district’s waste industry to an end, with former green wedge landfills becoming contemporary parks and open spaces, as its Chain of Parks Masterplan sets out.

The idea is decades old and the effort long. The council says the chain was first proposed in the early 1970s, and that successive councils and state governments have supported it, which together have bought hundreds of hectares to make it real.

The land is still being assembled, and the 2023 plan records how much of it is spoken for: a Public Acquisition Overlay for Parks Victoria covers 128.2 hectares of the core land, and the state environment department, the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, has identified further sites for the chain to acquire in future.

Kingston’s own ward profile runs the two names together, calling it the Sandbelt Parklands, with the Chain of Parks in brackets beside it.

The council’s own record carries its dates, in its green wedge flyer, its management plan and its quarterly reports:

1. 1994The chain is formalised in the Sandbelt Open Space Project Development Plan, by Melbourne Parks and Waterways, the council’s green wedge flyer records.
2. 2012Kingston writes its first Green Wedge Management Plan, the flyer records.
3. 2015Amendment C143 put the land north of Kingston Road into the Green Wedge A Zone, which stops new waste and resource recovery uses there, the 2023 plan records.
4. 2018The state government commits $25 million towards delivering the chain, the 2023 plan records.
5. March 2020The council endorses a masterplan for the chain, the flyer records.
6. 2022The state government announces the purchase of 83 hectares of land in Heatherton, Clarinda and Clayton South, the 2023 plan records.
7. April to June 2024The council's Q4 2023-24 performance report describes a chain of parks of 355 hectares, taking in Kingston's green wedge, planned to run from Moorabbin to Dingley Village.
8. April to June 2025The council's Q4 2024-25 performance report puts the chain at 305 hectares, running from Karkarook Park in Heatherton to Braeside Park.

In the same record, the 2023 plan lists what the council counts as progress since its first Green Wedge Management Plan:

Trail upgrades along Barkers and Henry Streets, and a new cycling path on Old Dandenong Road.

Then the parks: Spring Road Reserve, 37 hectares in Dingley Village, opened in 2016 on former landfill ground and now providing a path network, new landscaping and dog off lead areas; work on the 4.3 hectare Elder Street South Reserve for Clarinda, begun late in 2020, as a heavily landscaped new park on a former landfill; a masterplan developed with Cleanaway for the 32.5 hectare Victory Road Reserve, which the plan expected to open in mid-2024; and masterplans begun for three sites: Spring Road, Heatherton Park and Deals Road.

The same reporting covers the council’s own work: its Q4 2024-25 performance report records studies it has completed, paid for by the state government, into the cost and risk of looking after the chain land that the state owns, and its report a year earlier describes the council’s long advocacy to turn the old Heatherton and Dingley landfill sites into a chain of parks in which people and nature can thrive.

The state’s own record is dated too, on its page for the Sandbelt Parklands:

1. November 2018The government commits to creating a ring of parkland around Melbourne, the state’s Sandbelt Parklands page records in its timeline.
2. 2019 to 2022The planning phase, which the state’s page marks as completed.
3. 2023Land acquisition, marked as completed.
4. From 2023Environmental management of the acquired sites, which the page dates from 2023.

The state’s page says the parklands aim to create and connect large areas of open space for communities in Melbourne’s south east, and that the ground is on Bunurong Country, between Moorabbin and Dingley Village.

It says the Victorian Government has acquired former landfill sites towards a 355 hectare chain of parks, and that qualified contractors manage those sites under Environment Protection Authority requirements.

Kingston leads the planning and consultation for the new parklands and will consult the community over the coming years, the page says, with the state working with the council on what comes next and the vision to be informed by the council, Traditional Owners and the community.

One parcel of the chain has gone another way, and the plan dates the change. It records that, late in 2020, the state identified a 34 hectare site inside the chain, at 91-185 Kingston Road in Heatherton, with the Henry Street Trail and Kingston Road on either side, which it names as the site proposed for the Suburban Rail Loop’s train stabling facility, and calls the site a critical part of the project since the Sandbelt plan began.

The plan also notes that the site has been nominated for public acquisition as parkland by the state government since 1994.

The facility’s own page says what is being built: stabling for up to 30 trains, 13 of them when SRL East begins running, a train maintenance facility, an operational control centre and offices, with tunnelling machines launching from Heatherton and Clarinda and trains due to be taking passengers in 2035.

The Minister for Planning approved it in 2022, the page says, and works are under way to move underground services out of the way of construction.

The council and the state each keep their own record, and the two do not always agree. Where they differ, both figures are given here, with the document each one comes from.

The figures differ because each body counted its own ground, at its own time, and each one is what its record says. The most recent of them, in the council’s Q4 2024-25 performance report, gives the chain as 305 hectares.

Parts of the chain can be visited today. The council’s Q4 2024-25 performance report records the Elder Street and Victory Road landfill sites as rehabilitated, and open to the public as passive open space.

Elder Street South Reserve, on Elder Street in Clarinda, is a 4 hectare former landfill turned into parkland that the council describes as adding to the chain of parks. It holds an activity zone with outdoor exercise gear, a sports court, a path network shared by pedestrians and cyclists, and a nature play area in an adventure woodland, with picnic areas, seating, a shelter, a toilet and water, and a car park off Elder Street South.

Spring Road Reserve in Dingley Village is the other park the masterplan record ties to Heatherton Park: a 38 hectare former landfill site on the reserve’s own council page, with green space, wetlands and walking trails, seating, and a fenced off lead dog park, and a masterplan the council adopted in April 2024 after community consultation.

At the chain’s northern end, Karkarook Park keeps its vehicle gates open from dawn to dusk all year, its visitor guide says, with pedestrian access at any time, and asks that dogs stay on a leash outside the designated off lead area.

At the other end, Braeside Park is open from sunrise to sunset, its page says, with one way spikes at the Lower Dandenong Road exit so a visit can end at leisure.

The rest of the chain is still being made ready. The state’s page says former landfill sites are managed by qualified contractors under Environment Protection Authority requirements, and that it will take several years to make the newly acquired sites safe for public use.

What each of these parks has, and how they compare, is set out in the guide to the parks next door.