Lawn mowing in Mount Evelyn

About Mount Evelyn

The Lilydale to Warburton railway opened in 1901 with the station, then called Olinda Vale, as the highest point on the line; the post office became Mount Evelyn in 1913, the Mount added to sell the place as a resort. The town boomed briefly in the early 1930s while Silvan Dam and the Mount Evelyn Aqueduct were built, both finished in 1932. The line closed in 1965, just before the rapid growth of the 1970s and 80s that built most of the town: 3,500 people in 1960, 7,000 in 1980, 10,200 in 1992. The Lilydale to Warburton Rail Trail now runs through, and the Aqueduct Walk links Swansea Road to Hunter Road and the forest.

A creek bend and a forest edge are the two things to place your block against. Olinda Creek is permanent, so say if yours is on the low ground beside it and whether that end stays wet; the forest to the south is the thing to mention if your fence backs onto it. Neither is written down for any particular street, so say which applies. The suburb has answered to Olinda Vale, Billygoat Hill, Valinda and Evelyn, and where the last one came from is disputed. The football club, founded in 1931, plays at Gary Martin Oval, and the schools are Mount Evelyn Primary, St Mary's, Birmingham and the Mount Evelyn campus of Yarra Hills.

Yarra Ranges is the council, and strip mowing is not a program it runs; its only action is one slash where an inspector finds a sightline blocked, or the grass extremely long and very dry. Strips can be planted with indigenous ground covers under a metre or given gravel toppings in place of grass; artificial turf, hard paving, rocks over 7 mm and irrigation are banned. All three bins are compulsory. FOGO goes out weekly under a lime-green lid, in 80, 120 and 240 L sizes, priced $143, $157 and $201 for 2026-27 with the $136 base charge added, and rubbish and recycling are fortnightly.