Ground that was dug, filled, capped and then planted

Kingston’s green wedge sits over Melbourne’s sandbelt, and the council says the district was mined hard for sand through the 1900s.

The sand was worth digging for. Kingston’s local history of sand mining records that dunes ran along the bay from Cheltenham to Frankston, and inland as far as Heatherton and Clayton and beyond, supplying sand mining for more than a hundred years, with the grades taken from them going into major Melbourne buildings and into the making of glass.

By the early 1930s the pits had spread. The same history records sand being mined at Clayton and Heatherton as well as at Cheltenham and places beyond Mordialloc, and the 2023 management plan describes the northern part of the green wedge as having been extensively mined for its sand resources.

The holes then took the rubbish. The council explains that the large pits mining left behind were used as landfills for the region, with everything tipped into them from inert material such as construction waste to household garbage, which decays and rots.

The 2023 plan describes what came out of that in the end: a series of open spaces proposed across the sand extraction and landfill ground of the Dingley Village and Heatherton area, which the plan calls the sandbelt open space sites, and which it says form the core parkland of the Chain of Parks.

The digging did not pass without complaint, and what worried people first was not the look of the land. The local history records that the council’s first concern was the damage heavy wagons and speeding trucks did to the roads, and that residents complained about the dust the work raised.

Some roads were shut to the trade for a time: Old Dandenong Road at Heatherton for three months, and parts of Bernard Street at Cheltenham for six, the same history records.

In July 1936, after months of discussion, the Moorabbin council passed a by-law on taking rock, stone, gravel, clay and sand out of residential areas.

Under the same by-law, the local history records, a licence was essential, at a fee of £5 5/- for an area of less than one acre, with drainage levels fixed by the council and the owner required to guarantee that the excavation would be filled within a set time.

Not every proposal got through: a bid by E Nelson and Co Pty to take sand from its Heatherton Road land and set up a small washing plant there lapsed for lack of support in the council.

One councillor said the holes would never be filled and the ground would be too flat and low to build on, the history records, and in 1941 another said he was surprised at how far the municipality had been dug about and scarred; that year four owners applied to work 178 acres of land.

A closed tip is sealed before it becomes a park. The 2023 management plan describes former quarry and landfill sites at various stages of rehabilitation, capped and watched for pollution, and then grassed.

The cap explains the shape these parks take. The council says waste settling inside a filled site makes the surface uneven, which rules out heavily paved surfaces on it, and that the capping constrains what can be built on the ground at all.

Trees show the constraint best: the plan records that deep-rooted trees were planted only around the boundary of these sites, and on a limited number of sites whose caps were designed for them.

Paths are part of the answer too. In its list of what the council has done for the chain since its first Green Wedge Management Plan, the 2023 plan records Spring Road Reserve, a former landfill in Dingley Village, opening in 2016 with a significant path network, new landscaping and dog off lead areas.

Heatherton Park is one of the sites this treatment covers: the council’s Q4 2023-24 performance report describes the park, with Spring Road Reserve, as a former landfill site that now gives the community open space, green ground and better habitat for wildlife.

On this ground, the wait is long. The council says that from the closure of a landfill it can take 10 to 40 years before the site is considered safe for parkland, and clearly longer for built facilities, because of the standards the sites are rehabilitated to and because of the capping.

The 2023 management plan gives the guidelines’ own figures. A closed landfill typically takes at least 30 years to stabilise, the point at which the risk of gas moving through the ground ends, and those gas risks last at least 30 years after closure, which has to be allowed for in any planning.

The same guidelines set distances from the ground: the plan gives 500 metres as the buffer where a landfill took putrescible waste, the household kind that rots, and 200 metres where it took solid inert waste.

The plan also dates the change in the district. The most significant change in the green wedge since 2012, it says, is that the remaining landfill sites have closed and their decommissioning has begun.

By 2012 the end was in view: the plan records that it was noted then that a number of landfills on the old mines were nearing the end of their life, and that most of them would stop accepting waste by 2017.

New ones can no longer open. The plan records that Amendment C143 in 2015 rezoned land north of Kingston Road from an earth and energy resources zone to the Green Wedge A Zone, which stops waste and resource recovery uses such as landfill from being established there in future.

Between a tip closing and a park opening, then, the records count in decades: 10 to 40 years on the council’s green wedge page, and at least 30 years to stabilise in the guidelines the 2023 plan follows.

Set out in order, the dates the records give for this ground and for the parks that came out of it:

1. Early 1930sSand is being mined at Clayton and Heatherton as well as at Cheltenham and places beyond Mordialloc, the local history records.
2. July 1936After months of discussion the Moorabbin council passes a by-law controlling digging for rock, stone, gravel, clay and sand in residential areas, the local history records.
3. 1941Four owners apply to work 178 acres of land, after the council had earlier approved A E Hocking working 40 acres in Old Dandenong Road, the local history records.
4. 1973The Stooke brothers grow vegetables in Old Dandenong Road until the land is sold for sand extraction, the local history records.
5. 1994The line of linked parks is formalised in the Sandbelt Open Space Project Development Plan, by Melbourne Parks and Waterways, the council’s green wedge flyer records.
6. 2012Kingston writes its first Green Wedge Management Plan, the flyer records.
7. 2018The state government commits $25 million towards delivering the chain, the 2023 management plan records.
8. March 2020The council endorses a masterplan for the chain, the flyer records.
9. 2022The state government announces the purchase of 83 hectares of land in Heatherton, Clarinda and Clayton South, all of it connected and inside the Public Acquisition Overlay, the 2023 plan records.