2 hours ago
4
On an undulating road, where suburban houses give way to bush blocks on Melbourne’s edge, an eccentric shed-cum-house with cowboy energy is on the market.
Real estate listings tout it as “the best value buy of the year”: a 5.4-acre rural home with “amazing views of the Great Dividing Range” and a $1.25 million to $1.375 million price range, minutes from central Diamond Creek.
But buyer beware, this supposed dream home has been a recurring nightmare for neighbours, Nillumbik Shire Council and the Environment Protection Authority. The authority is trying to compel its owners to clean up what it labels one of the state’s worst cases amid a growing problem with illegal dumping that has also sparked the creation of a state government taskforce.
For several months last year, unemployed former panel beater Joseph Chetcuti used his Diamond Creek home as a vast dumping ground for industrial waste. Almost 50,000 cubic metres of earth and construction material was poured from countless tipper trucks as drivers, likely paying cash, cheaply disposed of their loads.
He eventually built an 11.6-metre-tall, asbestos-laced mountain of soil, clay and construction rubble in their backyard, illegally clearing or killing dozens of mature eucalyptus trees, both on their property and on council land, while ignoring council and environmental regulator orders to stop.
Chetcuti and his son Jayden Chetcuti extended the enterprise to a separate unoccupied property directly across the road from their home, which they also used as a repository for hundreds of truckloads of fill, construction rubble and liquid waste, some of which was incinerated, steadily transforming the grassy landscape into a barren wasteland speckled with crushed plastic particles.
Their prolific activity was documented in a council investigation, using private detectives who tailed multiple tipper trucks travelling through Melbourne’s north-eastern suburbs as they moved industrial waste from various construction sites – including a house build in Balwyn North and a skip bin hire business in Thomastown – and dumped it on the Diamond Creek properties.
Details of the scale and likely cost of the black market dumping operation were revealed in a Heidelberg Magistrates’ Court hearing last month, during which Joseph Chetcuti pled guilty to multiple breaches of environmental laws. But he also claimed that he is almost destitute and lacks the capacity to pay for the clean-up.
The clean-up cost for the property on the eastern side of Black Gully Road, the father and son’s home where the dumping began, was estimated in the hearing at likely between $1 million and $2 million, but potentially as high as $8 million.
The cost for the property on the opposite side of the road has not been quantified.
A tearful Chetcuti sat in court on May 15 as his lawyer, Mike Cooper, submitted a guilty plea to breaches of the Environment Protection Act, but also claimed his client had no financial capacity to comply with a clean-up order.
“He has no real income. He’s not working. He’s been selling his assets … his property at Diamond Creek is now the subject of a mortgage enforcement proceeding,” Cooper said.
A Supreme Court writ, filed in May, reveals mortgage finance company ASCF loaned Joseph Chetcuti $2.22 million in July last year using his Diamond Creek home as equity and that he has since defaulted on the loan.
Cooper also claimed Chetcuti was receiving the waste material for “landscaping” and did not comply with environmental action notices because he suffered “a form of dyslexia” and didn’t understand them.
The industrial waste pile – described as “an astronomical amount” by an arborist who inspected it for the Nillumbik council, according to evidence before VCAT in a separate proceeding – intruded onto a neighbour’s property, killed native trees, and forced firefighters and police to attend a fire that Chetcuti had deliberately lit.
When investigators with the Environment Protection Authority visited to inspect the burning refuse on the same day, police officers had to physically restrain an enraged Chetcuti, who argued that the fire was a controlled burn.
“Whilst EPA officers were onsite … they were confronted by the accused, whose voice was raised, and he was being held back by police,” prosecutor Tim McCullough told the court.
Firefighters later reported that they used one million litres of water to extinguish the fire, and were concerned about runoff from the giant piles of industrial waste. Sampling later confirmed it contained asbestos.
Chetcuti faces a fine of up to $394,000 for depositing and receiving industrial waste during a three-week spree in May and June last year, and a further $98,795 for failing to comply with an environmental action notice.
EPA prosecutor McCullough urged Magistrate Natalie Burnett to dismiss any suggestion that he did not understand that the dumping was illegal.
“The accused man was very much on notice that the conduct that he was engaging in is and was at that time unlawful,” he said. “There’s no evidence before your honour suggests that his client is either illiterate or incapable of reading a fairly straightforward document.”
McCullough said the matter was one of the most serious examples of illegal dumping of industrial waste to come before a court in Victoria and “calls for a substantial fine and the recording of a conviction”.
Nillumbik Shire Council – one of Melbourne’s smallest councils – hired private investigators to record dumping activity over several days in August and September 2025.
The investigators, from Rivica Investigations and Covert Solutions, tailed tipper trucks as they collected fill from sites including a home construction site in Balwyn North and a business named Aussie Bin Hire in Thomastown and dumped their loads of fill, building rubble and liquid waste on the Diamond Creek land.
Covert footage captured dozens of heavy haulage trucks travelling through residential streets in Diamond Creek, past a large flashing electronic sign warning against illegal dumping, and onto the Chetcutis’ land.
Investigators filmed one truck driver stopping in the road and handing an item to Jayden Chetcuti before entering the site.
Following the investigation, an enforcement order was imposed upon Joseph and Jayden Chetcuti by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, prohibiting them from receiving waste at the property across the road from their home.
One tipper truck driver, who declined to be named, told The Age he visited the father and son’s Diamond Creek home once and paid Joseph Chetcuti $100 in cash.
“He’s not checking, he doesn’t care what you tip there,” the driver said.
The Chetcutis’ next-door neighbour, Ivan Carter, submitted a victim impact statement to court, stating the dumping had ruined his and his wife’s feeling of peace and safety in their semi-rural home and severely devalued their property.
“I was devastated to learn that it was officially assessed and devalued by 40 per cent. This is heartbreaking, considering the 20 years of working effort I invested into improving my home and the surrounding property that’s now been erased by the selfish and greedy acts of the offender,” Carter said.
Refuse, including lumps of concrete, building debris, boulders and fallen trees have spilt over onto the Carters’ property, while earthmoving machinery repeatedly intruded onto his property without his knowledge or consent, he wrote.
“A significant wall of clay and building debris was deposited along one entire boundary of my property; the physical intrusion of both the wall of waste material and a contaminated runoff represents an ongoing threat to the environmental condition and long-term usability of my land,” his statement read.
Chetcuti’s 2.19-hectare property was put on the market in March with an indicative price range of $1.25 million to $1.375 million.
Court orders stipulate that any would-be buyer would be legally obliged to remove the imported fill material from the property and remediate the land to the satisfaction of the EPA.
But Chetcuti’s lawyer told the court in May that he had fielded an offer of just $25,000 from one prospective buyer. An expression of interest closed in May, and the home remains on the market.
“The property, which was a year ago worth probably $2 million, there are now offers being put of $25,000. It’s worthless,” Cooper said.
The Environment Protection Authority says illegal dumping is a worsening problem in Victoria. In October, the state government committed $21.5 million to an illegal dumping taskforce.
Luke McCrone, secretary of industry lobby group Victorian Tippers United, said many of the drivers engaging in illegal dumping were doing so to avoid paying rising tip fees for disposing industrial waste.
“It’s a real problem out in these outer suburbs that are being developed. Anywhere there is a vacant block, people are dumping because it’s just so expensive,” McCrone said.
“If I’ve got a load of cleanfill, that might cost me $6 a metre, so $60 bucks a load,” he said. “But as soon as that material’s got a little bit of concrete or brick in it, any sort of man-made product, the EPA won’t let you take it to a cleanfill site, so then you have got to take it to somewhere they are charging something like $200 a tonne.”
Victoria’s industrial and municipal waste levy was increased from $129.27 per tonne to $167.90 per tonne last July, and will rise to $177.90 next month. Levies for waste containing contaminated soils are significantly higher.
In a statement, Nillumbik Shire Council said it recognised ongoing community concern regarding activities at Black Gully Road and that it had taken action through VCAT, including interim and full enforcement orders.
Activities on the land ceased once enforcement orders were issued in January, the council said.
The EPA said Joseph Chetcuti had entered pleas of guilty to two charges brought by EPA Victoria and that the matter was still before the court.
Joseph Chetcuti will return to court for sentencing on July 21.
Jayden Chetcuti was arrested earlier this year after lighting a large bonfire of waste on leased land at Wollert on a day of total fire ban in January. Victoria Police said on Sunday that they had not charged him.
“Detectives launched a thorough and extensive investigation into the incident and determined there was insufficient evidence for charges to be laid,” a Victoria Police spokesperson said.
For more on this story watch A Current Affair later this week.
