Intrapac Property is backfilling the nine-million-cubic-metre Cave Hill quarry at Lilydale for housing, needing 400,000 truckloads carrying 20 million tonnes of fill over five years, with water pumped out at 1.8 million litres a day. Chief operating officer Maxwell Shifman calls it Australia's biggest single urban-infill site.
As I told The Monthly: “We've devised an engineering methodology that requires us to place the material in certain layers and test it in certain ways …”
I also said: “Simplistically, we are picking things up, putting them in a big yellow truck, driving them down and squashing them all.”
And I added: “So when they extracted the material, not everything went offsite. Only about 25 per cent was the actual limestone.”
I went on to say: “Every load of material that goes down has to be geotechnically suitable, and is supervised by a geotechnical engineer full time. 'Cos we need to make sure it's safe and stable at the end.”
I also made the point: “We are literally putting back what came out.”
And finally: “the biggest single urban-infill site in Australia”
I also noted: “it's like a cathedral – really quite spectacular”
The Monthly, 2018-09 — Read the full article