Lawn mowing in Sunshine North

About Sunshine North

Most lawns here went down with the houses in the second half of the 1950s and the early 1960s and have been cut by somebody every spring since. Grass that old is usually a mix by now of whatever was sown and whatever crept in from the strip. The newer lawns are on the River Valley Estate, the suburb's recent housing, and on any block that has been rebuilt; say if yours is one of those, because a young lawn wants a higher cut than an old one.

The Maribyrnong River Trail runs the length of the eastern border, with Brimbank Park about 4 km away. The Albion-Jacana freight line crosses the water on the 1927 Albion viaduct, a steel girder bridge on the Victorian Heritage Register. The quarries that worked until the late 1990s have become parkland, and the drive-in cinema that ran from about 1970 to 1982 is Melbourne Knights' ground on Somers Street; North Sunshine plays at Dempster Park. A block that backs onto the old quarry parkland or the river reserve may sit on different ground from one in the middle of the grid; nobody has written down what either is, so how yours drains is the line to add.

Brimbank runs the parks and the roadside reserves and leaves the residential nature strip to whoever lives behind it. The council's words are goodwill and established expectation: residents mow, weed and keep the strip free of hazards, the council does the tree planting and the pruning, and an overgrown strip that gets reported is assessed, hazards first. A green bin is a separate purchase, $103.30 for a 140 L and $115.49 for a 240 L each year, fortnightly, until the 1 July 2027 change makes food and garden collection weekly and standard.