Intrigue surrounds Highton home allegedly selling raw milk

For two hours, this quiet Geelong cul-de-sac is overrun by more than two dozen cars chaotically parking on driveways and along nature strips, with people carrying buckets. Why?

There are claims a dodgy raw milk operation is being run out of a Geelong home.

A refrigerated hire truck is seen arriving at a unit complex on a suburban Geelong street.

Buckets containing what appears to be milk are delivered and unloaded to the side door of the inconspicuous Highton home.

The truck leaves.

For the next two hours, this normally quiet cul-de-sac is overrun by up to 30 cars chaotically parking in front of driveways and along nature strips, off Barrabool Rd.

A truck drops of what appears to be milk at a Highton address.

“We thought it must have been a drug den,” one nearby resident, Jane* claims, who has been witnessing the bizarre transactions for the past six months.

“Like clockwork, every second Tuesday they would come.”

Each customer is seen carrying an empty white bucket to the door.

They “swap it over” and return to their vehicles with a full one.

The clientele is a varied bunch.

“It’s a very broad range of people who are arriving,” another witness, Molly*, said.

“We hate the traffic, it is a quiet court with lots of families and we are having 20 to 30 cars rocking up within a few hours.

“It has been a hot topic among the entire street, whether we should be ­concerned.”

It has the street divided on whether it’s a case of cash-strapped locals saving a dollar on the backdoor milk trade or, as some locals suspect, there is a raw dairy black market operating out of the apartment.

Some locals claim the resident has been selling buckets of unpasteurised milk to customers coming straight from a dairy farm not far from Geelong. The sale, packaging and delivery of raw cow’s milk for human consumption is heavily regulated in Australia.

A customer arrives to exchange a bucket.

“We think they are buying it because it is pure, but it comes with plenty of risk of disease,” Molly said.

“For a while, we weren’t sure what was happening and wondered if there were a lot of drug deals, but then we noticed all the people were coming with empty buckets.

“We were like what the hell are they exchanging?”

The operation was occurring every second Tuesday for months.

The Geelong Advertiser is not suggesting anything illegal has taken place.

It’s understood Dairy Food Safety Victoria (DFSV) is looking into the claims.

DFSV said all reports of the alleged sale of raw milk are also probed by the Health Department, Agriculture Victoria and local councils.

The rights of people being able to buy raw milk is a controversial topic across the globe.

The debate among food regulators is whether they are prepared to risk public health by allowing its sale, with raw milk sometimes contaminated by disease-causing organisms including salmonella and listeria.

The refrigerated truck leaves the street.

“Generally, safety is given priority over freedom of choice,” a DFSV spokesperson said.

Raw milk is also sometimes labelled and sold as “cosmetic milk”, “bath milk” or “pet milk”, according to the state government’s Better Health Channel website.

All are not produced under the same strict standards or supervision applied to dairy food production.

“While the sale of these products is not illegal, they must be clearly labelled to alert customers that they are not for human consumption,” the website states.

Meanwhile, Molly just wants her quiet street back.

“It’s been really invasive,” she said.

“We don’t really understand how they have a network of people who can actually market this?”

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* Names changed for legal reasons.

Originally published as Intrigue surrounds Highton home allegedly selling raw milk