Tree removal in Healesville

A town inside the bushfire overlay

All 42 of the house-zone points were also under the Bushfire Management Overlay, in one schedule or another. That matters for the third distance in the state's rule. Beyond the 10 m for trees and the 30 m for everything else, a house in that overlay can have vegetation other than trees cleared out to 50 m. The house has to be old enough: built before 10 September 2009, or built lawfully without a planning permit before 18 November 2011, or approved before 10 September 2009 and built before 18 November 2011.

In much of Lilydale and Mooroolbark the bushfire rules reach few houses. In Healesville they are usually the first question to ask. Every condition of the 10/30 rule.

DDO6, at the 14 Neighbourhood Residential points, sets how new buildings sit on a lot. It needs no permit to remove a tree.

Checked 23 October 2026 against Victoria Planning Provisions, Clause 52.12 (bushfire protection exemptions), Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule 6 to Clause 43.02 (DDO6) and Victoria Planning Provisions, Clause 62.02 (buildings and works not requiring a permit).

Trees with heritage controls in town

• Queens Park and The Nook, with its monument, on the Maroondah Highway.
• The street trees and streetscape of Nicholson Street.
• St Brigid's Catholic church, presbytery, convent and school in High Street.
• Coranderrk: the Aboriginal cemetery in Barak Lane, and the bushland reserve with the old station track, water race and sawmill site. Coranderrk was the Aboriginal reserve set up in 1863 just south of the township.

A number of private homes and guest houses carry tree controls as well. Your property report names the Heritage Overlay if one covers your block.

Checked 23 October 2026 against Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule to Clause 43.01 (Heritage Overlay), Victoria Planning Provisions, Clause 43.01 (Heritage Overlay) and Wikipedia: Healesville.

Farms, forest and the catchment

Healesville is a big locality, 142 km² by Wikipedia's count, and our grid reached 1,578 points. More than half fell on the Maroondah water supply land, under its own heritage listing as part of Melbourne's water system. That is public land, not anyone's back paddock.

The private land around the town is under three landscape overlays, each with the 1.1 m trunk test, a permit for native vegetation of any size, and a 4 m exemption near buildings:

• SLO6 on most of the farmland, with no exemption for regrowth.
• SLO2, the open valley landscape, on part of it, which exempts regrowth under 10 years on lawfully cleared land.
• SLO4, the "ranges valleys" overlay, at 23 points in the forested country toward Don Valley, with the same regrowth exemption.

The erosion overlays came up at 93 points, most of them on conservation-zoned land. The flood overlay came up at 141, nearly all on the farmland; the town sits on the Watts River, which runs to the Yarra. ESO1 came up at 137 of the 416 farm points, with its permit for standing dead trees over 1.3 m around.

Checked 23 October 2026 against Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule 6 to Clause 42.03 (SLO6), Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule 2 to Clause 42.03 (SLO2), Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule 4 to Clause 42.03 (SLO4), Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule to Clause 44.01 (EMO), Victoria Planning Provisions, Clause 44.04 (Land Subject to Inundation Overlay), Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule 1 to Clause 42.01 (ESO1) and Wikipedia: Healesville.

The rule next door

Badger Creek and Chum Creek

SLO6 farm and bush: 117 of Badger Creek's 129 points. Chum Creek's centre point fell under SLO6, ESO1 and the bushfire overlay.

Coldstream

SLO22 on its town streets, and a floodplain of SLO2 and SLO6 around them.

Woori Yallock

SLO22 at all 9 of its town points, the same 50 cm rule as Healesville.

Every overlay in the valley is in the permit guide.

Checked 23 October 2026 against Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule 6 to Clause 42.03 (SLO6), Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule 22 to Clause 42.03 (SLO22) and Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule 23 to Clause 42.03 (SLO23).