Lawn mowing in Avondale Heights

About Avondale Heights

The plateau was dairy and cattle farms in the 1930s. Before that, in the 1920s, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin had planned the Milleara Estate in the north, curving streets around internal garden spaces. The post office opened in 1957 and the Military Road shops in 1959. The primary school came in 1961, the Catholic church and school in 1965 and the high school in 1972. The suburb began as Maribyrnong West and was renamed to stop confusion with Avondale in Queensland. The houses that made it a suburb came in the late 1960s, on a flat top with steep river banks on three sides.

The river banks are steeply sloped and the plateau looks back to the city. Solomon's Ford, the lowest crossing point on the river and for many years the only overland route from Melbourne to Geelong, was rebuilt by the MMBW in the 1980s with stepping stones and is one of the last fords in metropolitan Melbourne. The Riverview Tea Gardens ran on the bank from 1909 to 1939 and the site is Tea Gardens Reserve now. The Maribyrnong River Trail and a riverside linear park follow the bend. A block on the edge of the plateau may have a back lawn that falls away toward the river; say how steep, and whether a mower can stand on it.

Under Moonee Valley's local law the owner keeps the whole property, nature strip included, clear of long grass and anything combustible, with grass and weeds below 200 mm from the ground. Inspections run before summer; ignore a notice and the council's clearing bill lands on the owner. The street trees belong to council, which plants them and gives each two years of establishment care. Garden waste goes into the green-lid FOGO bin with the food scraps, collected in the weeks the recycling is not.