🟠 Why did the bin chicken cross the road?

Also: Five years on from the Dandenong Ranges devastating 2021 storm.

Author

Matthew Sims
June 05, 2026

⏱️ The 142nd edition of our newsletter is a seven-minute read.

Hi there 👋 

Matthew Sims here, your reporter at the Eastern Melburnian.

🗑️ A flock of bin chickens, an odour that would take decades to scrub out and an abandoned DJ deck. Strangely enough, going along to a tip makes me feel weirdly nostalgic as I visited them across Melbourne’s east often on trips with my dad when he worked as a “skip bin man”.

🎤 Earlier this week, I popped into the Whitehorse Recycling and Waste Centre to have a chat with the co-ordinator about how things have changed over his 20 years working there.

Elsewhere, we’re covering:

  • How resilience takes on many different faces in communities across the Dandenong Ranges, five years on from the June 2021 storms;

  • A tour of Whitehorse Council’s main rubbish tip and a chat with the co-ordinator who has been working there for two decades; and

  • How “astroturfing” is becoming more common in driving misinformation online.

“That sound of a freight train never leaves you. You could hear trees falling around you but it was pitch black, so you couldn’t see where they had landed.”

Monbulk resident Belinda Grooby said the June 2021 storms were “terrifying” for her family as they sheltered in darkness while trees crashed around them.

WHAT’S COMING UP 🎟️

📰 THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES

Monbulk resident Belinda Grooby still changes her daily plans when strong winds are forecast, about five years after a storm tore through the Dandenong Ranges.

As trees crashed around her family home in darkness, she feared for her family's safety. Her family is still dealing with the mental impacts of the event.

Grooby is just one of many locals coming to terms with the reality of more frequent and severe weather events in the area.

On June 9, 2021, a storm ripped large gum trees from the ground across more than 220 hectares across the Dandenongs, damaging 112 homes and leaving 81 uninhabitable.

Grooby said storm warnings still shape daily life in the Hills, with many residents choosing not to leave home when strong winds are forecast.

“For me, it changes my whole perspective on the day,” she said.

Having experienced multiple severe weather events and power outages, including losing power and phone reception for three weeks after the June 2021 storms, Olinda resident Mark Fergus said focusing only on building resilience was a “Band-Aid approach” and “avoids the hard truths” of the drastic action needed to prevent climate-influenced weather.

And recent national reports have pointed to growing climate risks.

The CSIRO's 2024 State of the Climate report highlighted rising temperatures, altered rainfall patterns and reduced humidity as contributors to harsher weather conditions, while the 2025 National Climate Risk Assessment found climate change will intensify extreme rainfall and winds.

According to the World Health Organisation, the psychological distress caused by exposure to a natural disaster usually improves over time, but some people go on to develop a mental health condition, with an estimated 22 percent at risk of developing a disorder such as depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Professor Lisa Gibbs from the University of Melbourne said communities hit by disasters experience significantly higher rates of mental health problems, with risks increasing after multiple events.

“If you were really challenged the first time and haven’t had a chance to fully recover, it can undermine your capacity to cope,” Gibbs told the Eastern Melburnian.

Gibbs said one of the strongest drivers of resilience was community connection.

“There’s an absolutely clear association between group membership and mental health outcomes,” she said.

Grooby, who founded youth group Tribe Monbulk Youth in 2018, said local children continue to deal with the trauma in the wake of the storms.

“We need opportunities for young people to express how they’re feeling and support for parents to have those conversations,” said Grooby. “It’s really about learning to live with the environment now. These events aren’t going away.”

Disaster fatigue and “hard truths”: How are Mount Dandenong’s communities coping five years on from 2021’s storms?

“That sound of a freight train never leaves you.”

About 500 cars drive up to the Whitehorse Recycling and Waste Centre every day to drop off rubbish or recycling.

Centre co-ordinator Shannon Beath said during his 20 years of working at the Vermont South facility, he has seen shifts in the way people think about how they get rid of their waste and its potential value.

Opened as the Nunawading Transfer and Recycling Centre by the former Nunawading Council in July 1981, a total of 13 staff members working across two shifts keep the facility running from 6.30am until 4pm, only closing on Good Friday, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

The centre welcomes about 172,000 vehicles each year and accepts about 35,000 tonnes of general waste, 14,000 tonnes of green waste, 2,000 tonnes of metal and 1,000 tonnes of cardboard.

Beath said community awareness about recycling had improved over the years.

“A lot of people want to do the right thing whereas years ago, it wasn't really a focus,” Beath told the Eastern Melburnian.

However, contamination of cardboard with materials such as polystyrene and plastic, along with lithium batteries catching alight in rubbish trucks, still presents challenges.

Beath said the busiest times were school holidays, the summer break and Christmas.

“The queue will definitely stretch right down to Burwood Highway,” he said. “I think the worst was during Covid, when we were one of the only few places you could go.”

Beath said while he once saw items such as fibreglass boats and vinyl record collections end up in the tip, most people sell unwanted but valuable goods online.

Whitehorse mayor Kirsten Langford told the Eastern Melburnian during a visit to the facility on Tuesday the council was one of nine signed up to divert 95 percent of landfill waste to a proposed waste-to-energy facility in Gippsland that is due to be operational by 2029.

“The less waste we have going into landfill, the better, because right now landfill is becoming really expensive,” Langford said.

How Whitehorse’s waste and recycling centre processes rubbish from 172,000 carloads a year

“The queue will definitely stretch right down to Burwood Highway.”

👀 DID YOU SEE?

🔎 Big business is creating fake community groups in Australia, and it's completely legal

In the lead up to the 2025 federal election, seemingly out of nowhere, groups with names that suggested they were formed by community members with a shared cause began popping up.

They were not what they appeared to be.

Archie Milligan from the National Account spoke with QUT Professor Daniel Angus, who said there isn't anything stopping big corporations or industry bodies from creating their own groups that might appear as grassroots movements but are, in reality, completely artificial. This is called astroturfing.

📍 The agenda for Whitehorse Council’s meeting on Monday night proposed starting the process to apply a heritage overlay over 42 individual properties and three precincts.

🪧 However, a number of residents flooded the gallery to oppose the idea, leading councillors to remove a number of properties from the final overlay plan.

📬 Are you a local who almost had your property placed under the overlay? Or are you set to be within the overlay? If you want to share your concerns, please reach out to us via [email protected] 

Cheers,

Matthew