Digging deep for ideas to transform quarries

Four innovative projects have secured Quarry Transformation Grants to help stimulate smart thinking about repurposing former quarry sites.

Four innovative projects have secured Quarry Transformation Grants to help stimulate smart thinking about repurposing former quarry sites.

One of the grants is going to a small quarry in the Otway Ranges, which has been unused since 2014, to help become a summer camp and creative space for the community.

Another of the grants is going to Burdett Sands near Frankston and it will help with the development of a concept design for a new biodiversity corridor to potentially be created from a water drainage easement.

Two Boral sites will also receive grants, at Montrose to help develop a landscape masterplan, and at Wollert to look at the feasibility of creating more parkland.

Work is already underway and these exciting projects are due to be finalised by June 2023.

Many of Victoria’s best-known parks, gardens, shopping centres and residential developments were once quarries, having provided the raw materials to build the suburbs around them.

Quarry Transformation Grants are funded through the Extractive Resources Strategy, which aims to boost innovation across the sector to help ensure the community benefits of quarries live on.

More information about the Beech Forest quarry is available on The Victorian Connection site: Being creative and recycling quarry land.

More details about this innovative work through the Extractive Resources Strategy is available on the Quarry Transformation Grants page.