The trench was for a new side fence. Two spade depths down, the post auger brought up a scatter of flat grey fragments, one with a faint dimpled pattern still on its face, and the fencer put his tools down and asked who owned the block before you did.
That is how most people meet asbestos in soil. Not on a roof or a wall where you can see it coming, but in the ground, in fill nobody wrote down, left by a shed that came down decades before anyone kept paperwork.
It feels worse than it is. The list of sensible next steps is short, and the first one is cheap.
How asbestos ends up in the soil on an old Geelong block
Asbestos cement was standard in Australian residential building from the mid 1940s until the late 1980s, and Asbestos Victoria puts the total ban on all forms of asbestos at 31 December 2003. The Victorian Government’s published figure is that asbestos is estimated to still be present in one in three homes nationally.
Geelong’s northern suburbs were built in bulk inside exactly that window. The Housing Commission’s Norlane program peaked between 1951 and 1957 and had built 2,464 houses by 1976. Corio gained five estates of roughly 2,500 houses from the late 1950s. Ford, International Harvester, the Shell refinery from 1956 and Alcoa at Point Henry from 1963 filled them.
Every one of those houses had a fence, a shed or a garage, and a great many were fibro. When those came down in the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s, the broken sheets did not always leave the property. Some were raked into a trench, some went under a new path.
Plenty more arrived from somewhere else, because cheap fill to level a yard or raise a garden bed often came straight off a demolition site. Nobody recorded what was in it. That is why the first sign is usually a shovel.
What buried asbestos looks like when you turn it up
The fragments are usually flat, grey and cement hard. They snap rather than crumble, they are heavier than they look, and the broken edge can have a faintly fibrous grain. One face is often textured from the mould it was pressed in. Curved or corrugated pieces point to old roofing, the profile most people here still call Super Six.
None of that is identification. Plenty of ordinary modern fibre cement looks identical in the ground. Under Victoria’s OHS Regulations only a laboratory approved to identify asbestos in samples can give you an answer, which in practice means a NATA accredited lab.
If you are standing at the edge of a trench looking at something suspicious, the useful next move is a phone call rather than another dig. Call us or send a photo through the contact form, and we can get a sample tested before anyone touches it again, or put you in touch with a licensed asbestos removalist.
Condition matters more than quantity. A hard bonded fragment sitting in clay behaves very differently from a weathered piece that powders between your fingers. Crumbling material and asbestos contaminated dust are Class A work in Victoria with no exemption at any quantity. Our guide to friable versus non friable asbestos covers where that line sits.
What to do in the first hour
Stop the work. That includes the excavator, the rotary hoe, the whipper snipper and the kids on the trampoline three metres away.
Do not rake it, sweep it, or hose it with a pressure washer. Dry sweeping and high pressure water are the two reliable ways to turn a contained patch into a spread one. Driving over the spoil does the same thing more slowly.
If wind or rain is coming, lay plastic sheeting over the disturbed ground and the spoil and weight the edges down. That is a holding measure to stop material moving, not a fix.
Keep it out of the kerbside bin and out of hard waste. Asbestos waste is pre-classified as reportable priority waste under Schedule 5 of the Environment Protection Regulations 2021, and can only go to a landfill authorised to receive it.
Then take a photo from a safe distance and note how deep the fragments were and how far they spread. A lab or a removalist can do far more with that than with a description over the phone.
Picture a 1950s Norlane block where a side fence trench turns up flat grey fragments at roughly 300 millimetres, sitting in builders rubble rather than native clay. Stop, cover the spoil, and send three samples away at the published Victorian rates of $88 to $160 each. You have an answer inside the standard turnaround, and you have it before the fencer books his next day.
Testing soil for asbestos is not the same as testing a sheet
Testing a piece of material is straightforward and cheap. Victorian and national labs publish $88 to $160 per sample, standard turnaround runs 1 to 5 business days, and a 24 to 48 hour result usually carries a surcharge of 25% to 50%. Most houses need three to eight samples, because every different material has to be tested separately, and a survey with sampling sits in the $395 to $900 band on Melbourne metro rates.
Soil is a different scope. The lab is not testing one known object, it is looking through a volume of mixed material for fragments and fibres, and the sampling has to cover an area rather than a point.
We have not found a published Victorian rate card for soil analysis, so this site will not print one. Ask the lab what its soil method costs, how many samples it wants, and what the report will actually tell you.
A result gives you a decision. Negative means you finish the fence. Positive means a licensed removalist has something concrete to quote from instead of a guess.
Call us to book a test before you touch it, or read how the process runs end to end on our asbestos testing in Geelong page.
What the law actually says about digging it up yourself
This is the part most asbestos content gets wrong. Victoria’s OHS Regulations r250 allow non friable asbestos to be removed without a licence only where the area does not exceed 10 square metres in total and the person does not perform more than one hour of asbestos removal work in any seven day period. Both caps have to hold, and the hour is cumulative across jobs rather than one hour per job. WorkSafe’s compliance code on removing asbestos in workplaces carries the full wording.
Those regulations bind employers and self employed persons at workplaces. Paragraph 34 of the same code says that where removal is performed by a person at domestic premises that are their own home, the OHS Regulations do not apply, because a home is not regarded as a workplace, and it recommends the code be followed anyway.
So it is not accurate to say a homeowner is breaking the law by handling more than 10 square metres at their own place. What is accurate: that is the limit the law sets for anyone doing this as work, WorkSafe recommends homeowners follow the same code, and the caps become law the moment a tradesperson, a tenant, a rental property or a paid helper is involved. The fencer standing next to you is doing this as work.
Soil makes the caps awkward in a second way. They were written for sheeting measured in square metres, and a scatter of fragments through a volume of fill does not convert neatly into a number. If the material is weathered or powdery it is friable, and friable work is Class A with no quantity exemption at all. That is the honest reason this job goes to a licensed removalist rather than a weekend, and our piece on removing asbestos yourself in Victoria goes further into it.
Where a clearance certificate is required at a home, the duty to obtain it sits on the licence holder, not on you. Air monitoring is a Class A requirement, so it is not a routine line on an ordinary residential job.
What it costs, and why nobody can quote it from a photo
These are the published figures. Notice what is missing from them. Every one is a Melbourne metro benchmark rather than a Geelong price, because no Geelong or Barwon provider publishes a rate card.
| Item | Published Victorian figure | What it means for a soil job |
|---|---|---|
| Lab test, one sample of material | $88 to $160 per sample | Soil uses a different method, so ask the lab |
| House survey with sampling | $395 to $900 | A materials survey of a building, not of ground |
| Minimum job charge | $800 to $1,500 | Why even a small patch is not a cheap call out |
| General removal of material | $45 to $150 per square metre | Measured off sheeting, not a volume of fill |
| Slab removal, if one comes out | $60 to $180 per square metre | A separate line on the removalist’s quote |
| Disposal gate fee | $100 to $376 per tonne at other Victorian councils, not Geelong | Drysdale Landfill’s asbestos fee is not published |
| Removing asbestos contaminated soil | Not published by any source we could verify | Needs a site visit before anyone can price it |
Prices are indicative and GST treatment varies between providers, so ask each removalist whether their quote includes GST.
The minimum job charge of $800 to $1,500 surprises people most. A licensed crew sets up containment, suits up, decontaminates and carts the waste to an authorised landfill whether the job is half a trench or half a roof, so a wheelbarrow of contaminated spoil does not get billed like a wheelbarrow.
Think of a Corio ex Commission house where grey fragments show up through the topsoil of a raised vegetable bed, built on the footprint of a fibro shed that went years ago. The patch is small. The minimum charge still applies, and the real question stops being the bed and starts being how far the fill spread. Our asbestos removal cost page sets out the other published bands.
Anyone who quotes a firm price for soil off a photograph, without seeing depth, spread or condition, is guessing.
Where contaminated soil can legally go in the Barwon region
Exactly one facility in the Barwon region is authorised to receive asbestos: Drysdale Landfill, run by the City of Greater Geelong, on EPA licence OL000072476. Its number is (03) 5251 2935. It takes small domestic quantities only, described as a maximum six by four trailer, and fees apply, though no dollar figure is published. EPA Victoria’s guidance is to contact the landfill before you transport and deliver. You can check the register yourself on EPA Victoria’s asbestos disposal page.
Everywhere else says no. Every Surf Coast Shire transfer station, including Anglesea, Winchelsea, Torquay and Lorne, explicitly refuses asbestos roofing sheets and building products. Colac Otway Shire publishes no asbestos disposal option at all, and no commercial licensed receiver serves the Geelong area.
Say the new owner of a Colac property wants a shed slab poured over a wheel track that someone topped up with rubble fill years earlier. If that fill contains asbestos cement, the nearest facility on the EPA register is on the Bellarine, not in the shire. That changes the logistics of the job before it changes the price.
Volume matters legally too. A householder taking a small, properly wrapped domestic load to an authorised landfill is one thing. Truckloads of contaminated soil are commercial movements needing an EPA transport permission and tracking, which is a contractor’s job. Anything that travels must be wrapped in polythene sheeting about 200 micron thick, sealed, and marked with the asbestos warning label. Our asbestos disposal in Geelong page covers the packaging rules, and our guide to asbestos disposal across the Barwon region has the regional breakdown.
If you are not sure what you have found even qualifies, start with the test. Call us and we will talk through it, get a sample analysed, and put you in touch with a licensed removalist if the result calls for one. Their WorkSafe Victoria licence number appears on every quote, and you contract with them directly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I just cover it over with clean soil and leave it?
Sometimes that is where a professional assessment lands, and sometimes it is the worst thing you could do. It depends on how deep the material sits, what condition it is in, and whether anyone will dig there again. Make that call after a test and a look from someone qualified, not before.
Is asbestos in the soil dangerous to my children and pets?
The risk comes from fibres becoming airborne, which generally means disturbed, dry or weathered material rather than a bonded fragment buried in damp clay. Keeping people and animals off the area and keeping it covered both reduce that risk while you sort it out. This is a reason to stop digging, not a reason to panic.
Do I have to tell a buyer that asbestos was found in the soil?
Disclosure on a sale is a legal question and we are not the right people to answer it. Speak to your conveyancer or solicitor before you sign anything or fill in a vendor statement. What we can say is that a written lab result is a far better position to negotiate from than a rumour and a photograph.
Can I take contaminated soil to the tip myself?
Drysdale Landfill accepts small domestic quantities of household asbestos waste and is the only authorised site in the region. Whether it takes contaminated soil specifically, and in what form, is a question for the landfill, so call (03) 5251 2935 before you load anything. Authorised landfills can still decline material, and you may need to book a time.