A Melbourne couple say they are being “held hostage” in their own home by piles of toxic waste as their road is turned into an illegal third-world rubbish dump, officially declared “no man’s land” after the council and state government both denied responsibility.
Neil Monsant, 37, and his partner Olivia, 40, are in the unenviable position of being the only residents of Mt Atkinson Road in Truganina, 30km west of the CBD.
“It’s everyone,” he said of the growing free-for-all.
“We’ve caught rubbish removal trucks, people in their private utes, people hiring vans from Bunnings, even one of those vacuum liquid waste trucks — we caught two people in one of them.
“It’s building rubbish, household stuff, couches, mattresses, even one pile that looks like it’s full of asbestos.”
Mr Monsant, an auto-electrician, has lived at the picturesque semirural property surrounded by farms and paddocks for more than a decade — but the fast-growing region has been transformed by an explosion of housing developments in recent years.
The 500-metre potholed road leading to their home went viral earlier this year after another local filmed a furious video of the metres-high piles of waste and uploaded it to social media.
“These were just farms when I was a kid, but now it’s a dumping ground,” the man said in video.
“The fact that we let anybody treat our country like this is f**king shameful.”
The video was removed from Facebook, likely because it contained anti-immigration and racially-charged language.
“When I first moved here 15 years ago we maybe had two or three burnt-out cars,” Mr Monsant told news.com.au.
“We’ve always had people come out and dump rubbish, but it wasn’t regular.”
According to Mr Monsant, the real problems began at the start of this year when Melton City Council stopped clearing rubbish, telling them over the phone it was “a private road and not their responsibility”.
Council later “turned around and said it’s crown land”, Mr Monsant claimed, and either way still not its responsibility.
“It was always the case if someone dumped rubbish we call them up, but this year they’ve just turned around and gone full deniability,” he said.
Since then the rubbish has “snowballed”, Olivia said, turning Mt Atkinson Road into a makeshift tip.
On several occasions the rubbish has completely blocked off the road, forcing them to pay for Bobcats to clear the way just so they can buy groceries.
Last week the couple again pleaded with council to clear the road after a fresh blockage, but claim they were brushed off.
They say not only is it a fire and safety hazard, preventing access for emergency services, but the rubbish has also cut them off from essential services like couriers and Ubers who refuse to come to their house.
“We are running a business from home and parts are delayed by two to eight weeks because couriers refuse to navigate the debris resulting in weeks of us tracking down parcels and attempting redelivery,” Olivia said.
“We have to maintain a vehicle with a tray so we are able to take our household bins to the nearest intersection weekly as the rubbish collection truck cannot access our kerbside. We also have had many issues with Australia Post who only recently began delivering mail to our letterbox.”
The putrid conditions have also begun to attract scavengers.
“We’ve got all sorts of people coming up and down our road now, stripping for metals, taking small engines,” Olivia said.
The couple have taken numerous photos and videos of illegal dumpers.
Mr Monsant does not shy away from saying the culprits appear to be largely migrants.
“We’ve caught it on dashcam,” he said. “We have caught one family doing it, they were very apologetic and picked it up.”
In one recent incident captured on video, a man was caught dumping black bags of rubbish from a white van.
Mr Monsant colourfully narrates in the clip that he warned the man to pick it up “before the missus gets here because she’ll tear you a f**kin new a**hole”.
“Lo and behold she’s hear tearing him a f**king new a**hole behind his van,” he says.
Olivia told news.com.au she “gave him a good old-fashioned Australian lecture”.
“I told him about how council works, why are you doing this and do you think it’s OK?” she said.
“He informed me that he was informed it was OK [by] the people in his community. He’s new here and that’s what they tell him to do. I explained to him this isn’t what we do. I’m educating you, can you please go back to your community [and tell them].”
Mr Monsant said he was not always so charitable with dumpers.
“I’ve been very, very rude to them when I’ve caught them,” he said.
“There was one guy in a tip truck, I pulled him out by his shirt.”
But Olivia said as the only residents on the road, the couple had to be wary of their safety.
“We live out here alone,” she said.
“We have chased cars out several times. We give [license plates and photos] to the EPA and the council but it just continues to happen.”
In the case of the liquid waste truck, the couple shared clear photo evidence with the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) but the men were “let off with a warning”.
An EPA spokesman confirmed that “in 2023 we responded to a community report of liquid waste being dumped in the area, and issued an official warning for the unlawful deposit of between 50 and 1000 litres of waste”.
“EPA is aware of this issue following pollution reports in August 2026 about illegally dumped waste on Mt Atkinson Road, Truganina,” he said of the recent complaints.
“We have conducted an initial assessment of the extent of the dumping at the site and spoken with the reporter.
“As part of the Illegal Waste Dumping Taskforce, EPA will reach out to the local council to commence a joint regulatory intervention.
“EPA is committed to working with councils, as local litter authorities, to hold illegal dumpers accountable and provide advice on longer-term measures to prevent dumping.”
Littering on public land comes with a maximum penalty of $3,951,800 for businesses and $800,000 for individuals or five years imprisonment.
At the start of the road in Truganina, next to a toppled electricity pole, a sign warns dumpers: “Stop. Dumping of Rubbish and Unwanted Goods is PROHIBITED.”
It states that fines up to $9087 will be handed out and that the area “may be under surveillance”.
But no cameras were visible when news.com.au visited in August and the sign is clearly being ignored.
News.com.au previously revealed the back-and-forth blame game between Melton City Council and the Victorian Government over who owned the road.
Council said last month the section of road was “owned by the Victorian Government” and it was “actively engaged with the Victorian Government’s Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) on this matter”, exploring “options for clean-up and maintenance”.
DEECA, for its part, pointed out that Mt Atkinson Road was “listed as a municipally managed road in the City of Melton’s latest Road Register” and that the department “is not involved in the management of roads and road infrastructure included in municipal councils’ Road Registers”.
A few days later, council once again disputed this.
“Melton City Council can confirm that the section of Mt Atkinson Road in question is not on Council’s road register and remains in the ownership of Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA),” the response came.
News.com.au once again sought comment from Melton City Council.
In a fresh statement on Friday, a spokeswoman said, “Council has been actively engaging with the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA), as the landowner, to explore both clean-up options and longer-term solutions to help address the ongoing dumping and its impacts on the community.
“Council shares the concerns of the residents in this area and the impact ongoing dumping can have on safety, property access and the local environment.
“Illegal rubbish dumping is disgraceful. It continues to place a significant financial burden on our community. Last financial year alone, Council spent more than $3 million removing illegally dumped rubbish from Council-managed land. That’s funding that could otherwise be invested in local roads, community facilities and services for residents.
“Our message to anyone illegally dumping rubbish is simple: stop. This behaviour is illegal, selfish and unfair on the people who live nearby. You wouldn’t want someone dumping waste in your backyard, so don’t do it in someone else’s.”
— with Rohan Smith