Our community is taking the next step. Following Council’s approval of Planning Application YR‑2025/114, we have resolved to seek an independent review at VCAT. This decision has not been made lightly. Over recent weeks, a small group of committed community members have carefully assessed our options and developed a clear pathway forward. Appealing to VCAT is a formal and structured process that requires detailed preparation, technical understanding, and careful presentation of evidence. To give our community the strongest possible chance, we are assembling a dedicated team with the experience and capability to guide this appeal properly from the outset.

This first stage of fundraising will cover VCAT application fees, preparation of our formal submission, and engagement of specialist support required to present our case thoroughly. This is about ensuring our community has a fair and properly prepared voice in a process that will shape the future of Kallista and Menzies Creek. Planning decisions made today affect our landscape, safety, and community character for generations. If we are going to pursue this appeal, we must do it responsibly and professionally. Your contribution, whether it be large or small, will directly support this next step. Together, we can ensure this decision receives the careful scrutiny it deserves.

A bit about why...

The proposal is described as a high‑security cultivation facility, yet the plans include a board and conference room, offices, security checkpoints and associated infrastructure more typical of a rural industry or commercial operation. Rural industry–type uses are not permitted at this location under the current zoning and overlay controls. We ask that the true nature and intensity of the use be properly characterised and assessed against the planning scheme, rather than treated as simple agriculture.

The site is affected by SLO1 and SLO3, which seek to protect the significant landscape, environmental values and rural‑bush character of the Dandenong Ranges and foothills. The facility will be visible from the Puffing Billy Station at Menzies Creek and across the valley, with high‑security night lighting likely visible from Fountain Gate. This level of built form, security fencing and lighting is inconsistent with the intent of these overlays, meant to minimise visual intrusion and prevent the spread of inappropriate commercial development into scenic non‑urban landscapes.

The site also sits on a regular walking route and directly on the Dandenong Ranges Open Studios route, both of which rely on the existing quiet bush and rural character as key values for residents and visitors. For as far as the eye can see in this rural landscape, all you see are grazing cattle, sheep, agistments and rolling hills of flowers and grasses and the Sherbrook Forest. Introducing a visually prominent, high‑security compound into this context would materially diminish the landscape character and amenity that these overlays are designed to protect.

The facility is proposed at the end of a single‑lane, unmade residential road, just 60 and 90 metres from two neighbouring homes and in direct view of a number of others. The access point is on a section of dirt road that regularly floods to around 20 cm of standing water, with collapsing edges that have already led to vehicles ending up in drainage ditches and requiring assistance from local residents. Adding nine new parking spaces, regular staff movements, security escort and heavy vehicles for waste and transport to this constrained, flood‑prone road is an unacceptable increase in risk.

With no footpaths, these roads are already operating beyond a safe capacity when shared by residents, service and delivery vehicles, pedestrians and bushwalkers. School buses have diverted away from this area due to safety concerns and too many near misses, which is a clear and practical acknowledgment that current conditions are not suitable for additional traffic, particularly larger vehicles. Planning policy emphasises protecting vulnerable road users such as children and pedestrians in transport decisions; this proposal moves in the opposite direction.

We support lawful, well‑sited cannabis cultivation. We do not support a quasi‑industrial, high‑security operation in this sensitive, overlay‑constrained and infrastructure‑poor location.

Your support for this fundraiser will ensure that these issues are put to VCAT clearly, professionally and on an equal footing with the resources available to the applicant.