MEDIA RELEASE
4 MAY 2026
State Owned Water Authority Yarra Valley Water (YVW) creates sewage disaster, sending Victorian family’s business and lives down the drain.
A Victorian family’s heated yoga studio in Arthur Street Eltham was flooded by raw sewage in mid
July 2021, during Melbourne’s Covid lockdown, when a Yarra Valley Water main sewer failed due to a mass of tree roots, hundreds of metres away from their studio.
Now after almost 5 years, the family is still battling Yarra Valley Water and its major contractor, Ventia
(a $5B per annum national, essential services group) and State bureaucracy in a fight for compensation, with more than 3 years of the fight being played out in VCAT, which has gone around in circles.
The drawn out battle for compensation, last week finally sent the business under and is set to destroy everything the family has. What began as a simple $200,000 claim to cover damage, decontamination and business
interruption has turned into a multi million dollar debacle for Sarah Crock, the Studio Director and her family in Kangaroo Ground, North East of Melbourne.
“We are just about entirely destroyed, everything that our family's built up over 30 years is going or gone. Creating the studio was my dream and it's all been torn apart by heartless people who simply don’t care.
I was initially a lawyer and wanting to do better things with my life so I opened the yoga studio, to help myself and the community. Now my studio is gone - we just had to shut it down in mid April this year. My husband's businesses got dragged into this mess too and are now also under threat and our family home is about to go as well”, said Crock.
In 2024, the Crocks turned to their Local MP, Cindy McLeish MLA for help. Ms McLeish wrote to Board Chairs of Yarra Valley Water and Ventia to alert them both to “huge financial loss” and to the
“severe mental strain” suffered by Sarah and of the catastrophe inflicted on her family and the potential loss of a valuable community asset, which greatly concerned the MLA.
“A volley of letters followed, with both companies blaming each other and also laying blame on small contractors, both misleading Ms McLeish with grossly inaccurate information, in an attempt to have her drop the issue.
No Government or soulless authority like Yarra Valley Water or their contractors like Ventia should be able to get away with ruining people’s lives to cover up their bureaucratic and operational mistakes.
Yarra Valley Water and Ventia have devastated our tight knit studio community and our family.
This state-owned water authority and its contractor have failed my family, failed small business and failed all Victorians. If this can happen to us, this could happen to anyone. Every Victorian should know about this and every Australian should be really concerned. It’s a clear example of how cruel and cold bureaucracies continue to destroy lives in our country” said Crock. IMPORTANT UPCOMING EVENTS IMPACTING TIMEFRAME 9 May 2026 – Public auction of Crock’s family home
12 May 2026 – Wind Up Application of Crock’s aviation business
- ENDS
About us:
The Crock Family were the developers and owners of the yoga studio destroyed by YVW failed infrastructure
Contact details:
Damian Crock 0412 066666
