Steep, bushy hillside blocks looking over the bay, where the moonah and tea-tree drop litter all year and every job starts with the question of access.
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 Martha 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.
Dead wood and litter hauled up steep 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.
Hillside gardens and weekender properties.
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 cleared from the house zone on bush lots.
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.
Moonah and gum limbs after a wild night.
Mount Martha climbs up from the bay south of Mornington. A lot of the housing is built into the slope, with split-level homes, long driveways and blocks that keep a good share of their coastal bush. Moonah, tea-tree, banksia and the odd big gum make up most of the canopy.
Those trees are the reason people live here, and also the reason the yard is never quite clean. Dead wood falls out of the moonah, tea-tree leaves pile up under everything and the understorey thickens every year. Ross comes out with the trailer and does the loading, which on a Mount Martha block usually means plenty of walking uphill.
Access is the defining thing about a Mount Martha job. Plenty of blocks fall away sharply from the street, with steps, retaining walls or a winding drive between the house and where a trailer can stop.
It is all still doable — Ross carries it up by hand. He just needs to know what he is walking into. Two photos, one of the pile and one looking back toward the street, make the quote far more accurate.
Bush blocks on a hillside are the kind of property the CFA focuses on each summer, when a Fire Danger Period is declared for the Mornington Peninsula. Fine fuel — leaf litter, loose bark, dead twigs and dry cuttings — is what matters most within the first few metres of the house.
A spring clean-up is the time to deal with it. Ross loads the litter and dead shrubs that have been gathered and takes them off the property rather than piling them at the bottom of the yard.
A good number of Mount Martha homes are weekenders or holiday houses. Between visits the litter builds and branches come down unnoticed. A pre-summer clear-out, with access organised ahead of time, gets it back to a safe, tidy state.
One thing to keep in mind: a lot of native vegetation on the Peninsula is protected. Clearing dead material and fallen wood is one thing; cutting out living native shrubs or trees can need approval, so check with Mornington Peninsula Shire first.
Once the grass on Mount Martha's slopes turns gold, summer is close. Aim to have the litter and dead wood gone by November, before the Fire Danger Period and before holiday traffic takes over the Peninsula.
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.
