Lawn mowing in Chirnside Park

About Chirnside Park

The soil is the thing to know here, and few suburbs have a fact like it: black basaltic ground that was grazed and cultivated from 1845 until the subdivision was approved in 1956. Whether your block kept that soil, and what it does now, is the thing to write down: a lawn that stays soft after rain, or sets hard in summer. The residential area was structured around an 18-hole golf course, since closed, and the Cloverlea estate has been built on it; the Heritage Golf and Country Club, opened in 1999, sits on the Yarra River in the north-west corner.

The suburb runs north to the Yarra, 22.3 square kilometres at about 116 m. The southern part is the built-up part; the north is open, with farms, wineries, orchards and livestock. The area was West Lilydale until the 1970s, the post office opened on 25 September 1979 and the primary school in 1980, and the count went from 5,493 in 1981 to 9,125 in 2011, so the houses date from the 1960s onward. Chirnside Park Shopping Centre is on the western side with bulky-goods outlets along Maroondah Highway.

Yarra Ranges Shire is the council, and its statement on strips is that no mowing program exists for grass outside private property. A slasher comes once when an inspection confirms a complaint about sightlines or fire hazard, and that is all. Strips may carry indigenous ground covers and shrubs kept under a metre or gravel toppings instead of grass; rocks over 7 mm, sleepers, irrigation and artificial turf are banned. The three-bin set is compulsory. The weekly FOGO bin has a lime-green lid, is sized 80, 120 or 240 L, priced at $143, $157 or $201 for 2026-27 over the $136 base charge, with rubbish and recycling fortnightly.