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Tuesday, 29 July, 2025

Homelessness support services crying out

Belgrave local honoured by Premier

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Real estate liftout inside

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A Star News Group Publication

Phone: 5957 3700 Trades and Classifieds: 1300 666 808

12779292-FR26-25

Rash of break-ins By Tanya Steele A spike in the number of alleged robberies across the Hills and the Dandenongs in the last week has seen local businesses suffer numerous and often repeated break-ins. Both Kallista and Emerald, along with many other suburbs, were subject to overnight break-ins in the past week, which have caused onsite damages and alleged theft from their premises. Three stores in Emerald were hit by a series of break-ins along Kilvington Drive and Hush Beauty and Skin, Bill’s Fish ‘n’ Chips and The Laughing Fox Cafe have all had their stores broken into, vandalised and been subject to alleged robberies. A passer-by on an early morning walk spotted and reported the damages to the storefronts around 5am on Thursday 24 July.

Owner of Hush Beauty and Skin Jessica Callahan said it looked like a sledgehammer had been taken to parts of their store in an alleged attempt to steal cash. “We also had a break-in around six months ago,” she said. After releasing still footage from recent alleged break-ins online, local Kallista Deli owner Richard is frustrated over the repeated crimes occurring in the area. The Kallista Deli suffered an alleged recent break-in on Monday 21 July and Saturday 19 July , after having a substantial amount of cash stolen from their premises just three weeks earlier. “They stole around $3500 in cash,” said Richard, who spoke with Star Mail about his frustrations over the break-ins. “Businesses are getting done over,” he said.

From Right: Conor, Madeleine and Sora holding the baby chickens. (Supplied)

Kinder kids cluck-in for duty By Tanya Steele Local pre-school kids will see a clutch of baby chickens into their outside accommodation as winter wanes this month. MIni ZooKeepers in the making at Tecoma Kinder have hatched a little group of chickens and are loving taking care of them everyday. Lauren from Tecoma Kinder has been a teacher at the kinder for 16 years and said the in-house chicken hatching program gives es-

sential life skills to the kids. “It creates responsibility and excitement,” she said. Lauren said the kids have had a great time waiting for the chickens to be born, watching the eggs and waiting for them to hatch. “If you put the egg up to your ear, you can hear them, you can hear them tweeting,” said Lauren. Read more on Page 8