🟠 This weed eater is the goat

Also: The disinformation campaign you probably scrolled past.

Author

Matthew Sims
March 27, 2026

⏱️ The 123rd edition of our newsletter is a seven-minute read.

Hi there 👋 

Matthew Sims here, your reporter at the Eastern Melburnian.

🚴 I made the most of a nice day last Sunday and strapped my daughter into her bike trailer, put on my helmet and pedalled from Bayswater to Ringwood and most of the way back. There were a few stops along the way, including Maroondah Council’s Dogs Day Out at Heathmont’s H.E. Parker Reserve.

😓 While pedalling up a particularly challenging hill, I spied in my peripheral vision three goats chewing away on a healthy supply of weeds.

🐐 I’d heard about “goatscaping” — using goats to clear brush, invasive species and weeds from council and State Government reserves and backyards — but never seen these eating machines up close.

🌿 The owner of the goats — Chirnside Park horticulturalist Colin Arnold — told me about the 20-year history of his goatscaping business GrazeAway. He said the goats were happy to eat pretty much anything, but would leave freshly planted natives alone.

🏡 Whether you’re a homeowner who has let the backyard get out of hand or a council in need of some heavy pruning in your reserves, goats present a unique solution.

If you see any goats on the job, feel free to send a photo or two my way via [email protected].

Today we’re covering:

  • Why a new Senate inquiry report recommends stricter regulations to prevent the spread of climate and energy disinformation and misinformation;

  • How 170 goats are being used to cut back on the growing issue of invasive weeds throughout the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, and;

  • How hundreds of unemployed men built an iconic Melbourne road on a $40 weekly food allowance.

“Once people have got ideas implanted in their mind, it's quite hard to shift them or to get them to open their mind to other possibilities.”

Lighter Footprints convenor Jenny Smithers said the local climate action group was concerned with how misinformation or disinformation can fester in the minds of people sitting on the fence.

WHAT’S ON THIS WEEK 🎟️

📰 THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES

False claims about climate change and renewable energy were once most common on the fringes of the internet.

However, a new Senate report has found targeted efforts to spread misleading messages have already delayed climate action and fuelled fear in Australia, particularly local communities, with experts in Melbourne’s east warning public health is at risk.

A parliamentary inquiry - backed by Labor, the Liberals, the Greens and Independent senator David Pocock - has found there are coordinated misinformation campaigns actively working to mislead Australians. Their aim is to delay action to reduce climate pollution, erode trust and inflame community conflict.

Dr Cara Platts from Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA) was one of the authors of the DEA’s submission to the inquiry.

She said climate misinformation was an “urgent threat to public health because false information about climate change delays action”.

“We've had the 11 hottest years on record in the previous 11 years – those numbers have real world impacts: increased heat days, increased mortality and higher burdens on our hospital systems,” Platts told the Eastern Melburnian.

She pointed to the gas industry’s funding of campaigns to promote the use of natural gas as an example of disinformation leading people to make unhealthy decisions.

“Our most recent peer-reviewed evidence shows that gas appliances in homes increase indoor air pollution, particularly affecting children’s respiratory health and asthma rates,” Platts said.

DEA supported a multi-pronged approach, including legislation, litigation, collective action and education.

“Piecemeal or voluntary industry regulation is insufficient,” said Platts.

Lighter Footprints is a local volunteer-run climate action group based in Melbourne's inner-east, covering the areas of Boroondara, Stonnington, Whitehorse and Monash.

Group convenor Jenny Smithers gave evidence to the inquiry.

“We’ve just got to reach that tipping point where momentum pushes back against the misinformation,” Smithers told the Eastern Melburnian. “We're asleep at the wheel when we've got this huge opportunity to have such a productive and bright future.”

On a narrow, fenced-off strip of H.E. Parker Reserve in Heathmont, a trio of hairy four-legged robovacs - otherwise known as goats - are busy feasting on the invasive weeds and overgrowth.

They are part of Chirnside Park horticulturalist Colin Arnold’s crew of 170 goats, available for hire at a scrappy piece of land near you.

Arnold’s love of plants started about 40 years ago and he developed non-chemical methods to produce plants at a local nursery.

“While we grew plants to supply to the industry without using any herbicides or insecticides, where they were planted was treated with herbicide,” Arnold told the Eastern Melburnian.

About 20 years ago, he came up with the idea of using goats to eat the weeds and the company GrazeAway was born.

The goats are in the northern section of H.E. Parker Reserve on the verge between Heathmont Rail Trail and Heathmont Road.

Metro Trains contracted GrazeAway to control the Heathmont site about six years ago, with some 20 goats put to work to remove ivy and blackberry weeds.

A herd of three to five goats return regularly for a work period ranging from a month to four months to clear out weeds and overgrowth.

Volunteers from environmental group Heathmont Bushcare then replenished the site with native plants and grasses.

Arnold said while some of the goats were kept across local farming properties, the majority of them were out working on local reserves, freeway verges or backyards, or being ferried between sites on a specially designed trailer that can fit up to 12 goats.

“For a goat, it's a great life,” said Arnold.

LOOKING THROUGH THE ARCHIVES 👀

⛏️ How 1,000 unemployed men paved the way for Kew’s “Golden Highway”

Yarra Boulevard is today surrounded by streets filled with multi-million-dollar homes, but the men who bent their backs to build the key thoroughfare had nothing.

Off to work we go: The Great Depression began in 1929, and by 1932 more than 60,000 Australian men, women and children depended on government payments for food. They were known as “sustenance” or “susso” payments.

Many lived in makeshift tents in hodge-podge shantytowns.

In some cases, men were employed to work on State Government infrastructure projects, including the construction of Yarra Boulevard, with 1,000 men brought on to use pickaxes, shovels and barrows to lay the roadway.

Sustenance payments consisted of eight shillings and six pence per week for a man and wife, with an additional shilling and six pence per week for each additional child – up to a maximum of 20 shillings and six pence per week, or the equivalent to about $40 in today’s money.

Now a road and cycling route, the Yarra Boulevard spans a little over 6km, from Kew to Richmond. It weaves along the Yarra River, providing access to Studley Park Boathouse and a number of hiking and cycling trails in Melbourne’s east.

Civil engineer Carlo Catani was credited with devising plans for a highway from Melbourne to Heidelberg.

The project was mentioned in 1928, with a piece in the Herald dubbing it the Yarra Golden Highway and detailing “visions of a picturesque highway… through an avenue of wattle trees to a national reserve in Kinglake”.

Work began in 1931, with a further extension into Kew in 1933. It was officially opened in 1936.

In Australia in 1932 the unemployment rate was about 32 percent. In February 2026, it was 4.3 percent.

Thanks for catching up with us this week at the Eastern Melburnian. We hope you enjoyed this issue.

Cheers,

Matthew