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An unusual art exhibition in Melbourne's west has been celebrating the "appalling and fascinating" world of the local rubbish dump, at a time when locals are rallying against the tip's expansion.
The Wyndham Council paid two artists to complete a residency at the Werribee tip, including one overnight stay.
Karen Casey used drone photos and plastic bags to showcase what she found. She said artists were often fascinated by things other people would find mundane or even disgusting.
"When I stood on the edge of the landfill, looking down on the landfill area, and observed all the trucks dumping waste and the bulldozers and whatever, and I was kind of appalled and fascinated by it," she said.
Steven Rhall camped overnight at the tip, and said it was "not as smelly as you might imagine".
"It was actually eerily peaceful, come about 6:30pm when the site had shut down and there was virtually no-one around," he said.
"I discovered a huge party of Indian Myna birds and a few others just having a huge conversation amongst themselves, they had taken over that space themselves and it was quite beautiful."
Wyndham Mayor Peter Maynard said the exhibition was about drawing people's attention to what goes on at the tip, and aimed to reduce the amount of waste that went there.
"Well yes, it's a tip, it's something that none of us want, but we generate waste and it has to go somewhere," he said.
"A lot of people they get rid of something, they don't really care, they put it in the rubbish bin, 'Where does it go? I don't really sort of think about that'."
But local residents say they are already well aware of the tip.
Connie and Julian Menegazzo have lived next door for more than 30 years, but started to really notice the smell and the noise when the tip was allowed to dump rubbish above ground level about five years ago.
"It's usually three or four at night, early morning, when the compacter's going — and that's a 700 horsepower machine that's compacting rubbish," Mr Menegazzo said.
He can no longer smell the rubbish, but his wife Connie said the bad smell was a problem about once a fortnight.
"It's quite a strong, very unpleasant, repugnant type of smell, and when my daughters come out sometimes they'll get out of the car and they'll say 'Oh mum, it's the tip again'," she said.
They are part of a group of local residents opposing the council's bid to allow more rubbish to be dumped at the site.
The Environment Protection Agency (EPA) has approved four new landfill areas within the existing site that can reach more than 20 metres above ground.
Harry van Moorst from the Western Region Environment Centre said the group was taking the fight to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).
"We're not saying we can't have a landfill, but we're saying keep it below ground, don't turn it into a waste mountain that smells a lot more that loses a lot more dust and so on," he said.
He said the group was also concerned the application left no room for residents to publicly oppose any new rubbish cells for the next 40 years.
The council said the 40-year timeframe was important to give businesses certainty, so they could invest in cleaner technologies at the site.
Cr Maynard said the tip was part of Werribee, and both the exhibition and the application to expand the tip were about making it sustainable.
"It's a fact of life, but it's what we do with it, and how we deal with what we put in there," he said.
The matter is expected to go before VCAT in 2018.
Topics: recycling-and-waste-management, environment, local-government, government-and-politics, arts-and-entertainment, werribee-3030, vic, melbourne-3000