Same road, under two kilometres west of the Chase. Costs written down before you commit, bulk-billed children's dentistry, and unhurried gum and denture care.
Forest Hill Chase is at 270 Canterbury Road and Whitehorse Dental is at 129A Canterbury Road, so the trip is a straight run west on the same road, under two kilometres, with no turns to remember. Forest Hill is one of the two closest suburbs to the practice. It also has the oldest age profile of any suburb we serve, and the lowest median household income of its family suburbs, and those two facts shape what this page is about: costs written down with the item numbers on them before you commit, bulk-billed children’s dentistry under the CDBS, and unhurried gum and denture care for the one resident in five who is over 65. On-site parking, wheelchair access, Saturday mornings.
| From Forest Hill | Details |
|---|---|
| By car | About 2.4 km, or 1.9 km from Forest Hill Chase — a straight run west along Canterbury Road; on-site parking |
| By bus | Routes 703, 735, 736, 765 and 902 call at the Forest Hill Chase stop on Canterbury Road; the 736 terminates at Blackburn station |
| By train | No station in Forest Hill; Blackburn and Nunawading are the nearest, both on the Belgrave and Lilydale lines |
| Cover we handle | CDBS bulk billed, DVA cards, HCF More For Teeth, HICAPS on site |
| Saturdays | 9:00am to 1:00pm |
Forest Hill has 21.9% of its residents aged 65 or over, the highest share of any suburb we serve, and 16.3% aged 0 to 14, with 47.7% of families being couples with children. Median weekly household income is $1,658, against $1,861 in Blackburn South, $2,021 in Blackburn North and $2,503 in Surrey Hills. Only Box Hill sits lower, at $1,267, and that reflects its student population rather than its families. One-parent families make up 15.8% of families. (ABS 2021 Census, Forest Hill SAL20937.)
That combination is why this page is about money as much as it is about teeth. A suburb with a lot of grandparents, a lot of school-age children and less household income to absorb an unexpected bill is a suburb where a vague quote does real damage. It is also why prevention arguments are not a lecture here: sealing a molar before it decays genuinely is cheaper than filling it afterwards, and treating gum inflammation early genuinely is cheaper than treating bone loss later.
The housing tells a similar story. Forest Hill is 72.0% separate houses and 24.9% townhouses, with only 3.1% apartments. That is nearly twice the Victorian average for townhouses with almost no high-rise: low-rise infill on subdivided blocks, which is exactly the stock that lets an older couple downsize without leaving the suburb their grandchildren live in.
Every treatment plan is written down with the ADA item numbers on it, after the assessment and before you agree to anything. HICAPS is on site, so a private health rebate is checked while you are in the chair rather than claimed later and hoped for. We are an HCF More For Teeth preferred provider and accept DVA cards. We are not a preferred provider for Doctors Health Fund.
For children, we bulk bill the Child Dental Benefits Schedule: no co-payment on the services claimed under it, for children aged 0 to 17 for at least one day in the calendar year whose family receives a qualifying payment. The cap is $1,158 across two consecutive calendar years, or $1,132 where the child’s window opened in 2025. It covers examinations, x-rays, cleans, fissure sealants, fillings, root canals, extractions, partial dentures and inhalation sedation under item 88943. It does not cover orthodontics or cosmetic work. (Services Australia, CDBS Guide.)
If your child is not CDBS-eligible but attends a Victorian government school, Smile Squad covers every government-school student with no card and no Medicare requirement. We will tell you if that is the better pathway. Where two treatments would both work, the practice position is to recommend the simpler one that still achieves what you are after.
Dr Linda Huang does most of our paediatric work. A number of the children she sees have already had a difficult appointment somewhere else, and are treated in the chair here rather than referred onward for a general anaesthetic. Children are seen from 18 months. Where decay has started on a baby tooth, silver diamine fluoride can often arrest it with a brush-on application and no drilling; where a filling is genuinely needed, happy gas takes the edge off and clears within minutes so a child can go back to school.
Plenty of Forest Hill children play at Mahoneys Reserve on Mahoneys Road, a 9.8-hectare ground carrying cricket, soccer and indoor sport, and at Forest Hill Reserve on Fraser Place alongside Aqualink. A custom mouthguard scanned to the current bite is worth having before a season starts. See also children’s dentistry, fissure sealants, and what happens at a child’s first visit.
At this end of the age range the work is gum maintenance, dentures and keeping natural teeth functional. Gum disease is treated and stabilised before any restorative work begins, because inflamed gums bleed at exactly the moment a crown margin is being cut and an impression taken, which compromises the fit before the crown is even made. Root-surface decay and dry mouth also become more common with age and with medications, which is why fluoride is not just a children’s treatment.
Denture work is broken into several shorter appointments rather than one long sitting, and a loose denture is usually a reline rather than a remake. We do elderly and domiciliary care, and an oral cancer screening is part of every comprehensive examination at no separate charge. Further reading: gum inflammation and whole-body health.
English only is spoken at home by 53.7% of Forest Hill residents. Mandarin follows at 14.1% and Cantonese at 7.2%, a combined 21.3%, then Greek at 3.0%, Vietnamese at 1.8% and Sinhalese at 1.6%. Greek at 3.0% is among the highest shares in our catchment, just behind Blackburn North at 3.2%. (ABS 2021 Census, SAL20937.)
Consultations are available in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Teochew and Shanghainese. We do not speak Greek, Vietnamese or Sinhalese. Where a family member interprets, we book a longer appointment and write the plan down so it can be read again at home.
Forest Hill sits about 18 kilometres east of the CBD in the City of Whitehorse, covering 4.1 square kilometres between Blackburn, Nunawading, Mitcham, Blackburn South, Vermont and Burwood East. Its centre of gravity is Forest Hill Chase at 270 Canterbury Road, which opened on 30 June 1964 on what had been a 3.8-hectare poultry farm and now runs to around 200 shops across three levels with parking for more than 3,400 cars. Aqualink Nunawading, despite its name, is physically here on Fraser Place. Parkmore Primary School is the primary school within the suburb boundary.
Springvale Road meets Canterbury Road at Forest Hill, and from there the practice is a straight run west. There is no railway station in Forest Hill, which is part of why the Canterbury Road bus corridor matters: routes 703, 735, 736, 765 and 902 all call at the Forest Hill Chase stop, and the 736 terminates at Blackburn station.
Whitehorse Dental is at 129A Canterbury Road, Blackburn VIC 3130, open Monday, Tuesday and Thursday 9:00am to 6:00pm, Wednesday and Friday 8:00am to 5:00pm, and Saturday 9:00am to 1:00pm. Your first visit runs a full hour and starts with a conversation. Call (03) 8838 8820, text 0435 025 318, or book online. Neighbouring pages: Blackburn South and Nunawading.
Under two kilometres, on the same road. Forest Hill Chase is at 270 Canterbury Road and we are at 129A Canterbury Road, Blackburn, so it is a straight run west with no turns to remember, about three or four minutes without traffic. Coming from further into the suburb it is around 2.4 kilometres. That makes Forest Hill one of the two closest suburbs to the practice, which surprises people who assume Blackburn is a trip.
The Forest Hill Chase stop on Canterbury Road is the busiest bus node in the suburb, served by routes 703, 735, 736, 765 and 902. Route 736 terminates at Blackburn station on South Parade, which is a short walk from us, and route 735 runs the Canterbury Road corridor between Box Hill and Nunawading. If you drive, there is on-site parking at the practice, and it is wheelchair accessible. The nearest railway stations to Forest Hill are Blackburn and Nunawading, both on the Belgrave and Lilydale lines.
If they are eligible for the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, yes. We bulk bill CDBS, which means no co-payment for the services claimed under it. Eligibility is for children aged 0 to 17 for at least one day in the calendar year, in a family receiving a qualifying payment such as Family Tax Benefit Part A. The cap is $1,158 over two consecutive calendar years, or $1,132 if your child’s window opened in 2025, so which figure applies depends on when the window started. It covers examinations, x-rays, cleans, fissure sealants, fillings, root canals, extractions, partial dentures and inhalation sedation under item 88943. It does not cover orthodontics or cosmetic work. We can check the remaining balance for you before any treatment starts.
For a lot of families, for the routine part, it is. Smile Squad covers every Victorian government-school student, with no concession card and no Medicare requirement, and it does examinations, cleans, fluoride and sealants at school. Where it stops is treatment that needs a chair and time: a filling on a nervous child, a tooth that needs happy gas, a knocked-out tooth on a Saturday, or a child who will not open for a stranger in a school hall. That is the point at which having a practice is useful, and it is worth having one before you urgently need one rather than after.
Yes, in writing, with the ADA item numbers on it, after the assessment and before you agree to anything. Forest Hill’s median weekly household income at the 2021 Census was $1,658, the lowest of the family suburbs we draw from, and that is precisely why we would rather be blunt about cost than vague about it. HICAPS is on site so a private health rebate can be checked on the spot rather than claimed afterwards. We are an HCF More For Teeth preferred provider, accept DVA cards, and bulk bill CDBS for eligible children. Where there is a simpler option that gets you to the same place, we will generally recommend that one.
Usually not. A denture that has loosened over a few years is reporting a change in the shape of the ridge underneath it, not a fault in the denture, and a reline re-adapts the fitting surface to the gum as it now is. That is a considerably smaller job than a remake. Repairs are similar: cracks and chips are frequently repairable. This comes up a lot in Forest Hill because 21.9% of residents are aged 65 or over, the highest share of any suburb we draw from. We do full and partial dentures, chrome partials, immediate dentures, repairs, relines and implant-retained dentures.