Mount Evelyn's hilly bush blocks shed bark, leaves and sticks all year. Ross clears the fuel from around the house and takes it away.
Not a franchisee or a truck driver from a booking system. The bloke who quotes it is the bloke who loads it.
No bags to fill, no skip to load. Leave it in a pile and he loads it, sweeps up and takes it away.
Not a bin size. A heap beside the driveway and one at the bottom of a steep yard are different jobs and get different prices.
Standing tree, asbestos, or more rubbish than garden — he tells you before he starts, not after.
A pruning pile hauled away and a few bags of leaf litter collected is the usual combination on a Mount Evelyn block.
Piles of prunings, branches, hedge trimmings, leaves and weeds that won't fit in the green bin. Ross backs the trailer in, loads it himself and takes it away to be recycled — you don't lift a thing.
Litter and prunings from bush blocks.
Doing a big garden clean-up — overgrown beds, a back corner nobody has touched in years, a rental between tenants or a property being tidied for sale? Pile it all up and Ross collects the lot in one visit.
Green waste hauled up from sloping gardens.
Fallen limbs, shed bark, leaf litter and dry prunings gathered up from around the house — the fine fuel that matters most in a grassfire or ember attack. Collected and taken away before the Fire Danger Period starts.
Fuel clearing before the Fire Danger Period.
A gum has dropped a limb across the driveway, or a windy night has left the yard covered. Ross collects what's come down and hauls it away. Standing trees and hung-up limbs are an arborist's job — once they've dropped it, Ross can take it away.
Gum limbs down across yards and tracks.
Mount Evelyn is a bush town on the hills east of Lilydale. The streets wind over steep ridges and gullies, the houses sit among tall eucalypts, and many blocks are still mostly bush. The Warburton Trail runs through the town, and the whole place has a relaxed, semi-rural feel.
The bush setting is why people live here, and it's also why the green waste never stops. Gums drop bark and branches year-round, bracken and weeds grow back quickly, and gardens that were cleared a few years ago fill in again. For most households the biggest job is keeping fuel away from the house over the warmer months.
On a typical Mount Evelyn block, the trees are bigger than the house. They drop leaves, strips of bark and sticks into every corner of the yard, onto the roof and against the walls. Left alone for a season, that layer gets deep.
Ross gathers up the litter, any bracken and understorey you've cut back, and the fallen branches, and loads everything into the trailer. The fine material goes off for composting and the woody material for mulch.
Mount Evelyn is in one of the higher-risk bushfire areas on Melbourne's fringe. Yarra Ranges Council does fire prevention inspections and issues notices, and the CFA declares a Fire Danger Period for the district, after which burning off stops.
The key is fine fuel within a few metres of the house — leaves, bark, twigs and dry prunings. Clear it, and get it off the property rather than piling it at the back of the block. Ross takes it off the block in one visit.
Many Mount Evelyn properties are steep, and some have driveways a trailer can't go down. Ross parks at the top and carries the material up by hand. That takes longer and it's priced in, but it means the job still gets done.
A photo of the driveway and the route from the pile to the road is the most useful thing to send with an enquiry.
The CFA declares the Fire Danger Period for the Yarra Ranges once the country dries out, and then the whole district is trying to get the same work done. Book your Mount Evelyn clean-up in September, October or early November while there's still room in the calendar.
Suburb, roughly how much there is, and what the access is like. A photo saves a lot of back and forth.
Ross comes back with a number. On big or awkward jobs he has a look first rather than guessing.
Loaded by hand, driveway swept, and off for proper green waste disposal.
Ross runs this on his own. He quotes the job, he turns up, he loads the trailer and he takes it away — the same bloke every visit. There is no office in between, no skip company, and no franchise cut coming out of what you pay.
It also means he will tell you when something isn't his job — a standing tree that needs an arborist, or a pile that is more rubbish than garden — rather than taking the money and leaving you with half a problem.
The suburb, roughly how much there is, and how easy it is to get a trailer to it is enough to work with. A photo of the pile gets you a price fastest.
Prefer to talk? Call or text Ross on 0416 030 925. Monday to Saturday, daylight hours — weather permitting.
Get a price on your pile. Takes a minute — Ross reads them himself.
Thanks — that's gone through to Ross. Spring is his busiest time, so if it's close to fire season he may take a day or two.
