A small township among the trees, with bush blocks and bigger lots on the fringe. Ross clears bark, branches and dry growth in Riddells Creek and hauls the green waste 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 Riddells Creek 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.
Bark, branch and litter loads 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.
Bush garden prunings and overgrowth hauled away.
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.
Fine fuel cleared from around homes and sheds.
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 after wind picked up and removed.
Riddells Creek is a small township in the Macedon Ranges, with a station on the Bendigo line and the creek it is named after winding through. It has a quiet, semi-rural character: established streets near the centre, newer homes on the edges, and larger bush and rural-residential blocks further out.
Many of those properties are heavily treed, with gums and native bush. That is part of the appeal, but it also means a constant fall of bark, leaves and branches, and in this part of Victoria that material matters when the fire season comes around.
On a Riddells Creek bush block, the trees never stop shedding. Bark peels off in strips, leaves pile up in the garden beds and around the house, and branches come down whenever the wind gets up.
Ross can gather up the piles and branches that are down and take it all away, leaving the area around the house clear.
The Macedon Ranges carries a high bushfire risk, and Riddells Creek is no exception. The CFA declares a Fire Danger Period each year, and it makes sense to have fine fuel cleared from around the house and sheds well before then.
Burning off is usually restricted once the Fire Danger Period starts, and on smaller blocks it is not practical anyway. Loading the material up and taking it away is safer and cleaner. Cut grass can go on the trailer too.
Some Riddells Creek properties have long gravel driveways, sloping blocks or houses set well back from the road. That can make access a little more involved.
Ross will get the trailer as close as he safely can and carry the rest. Photos of the driveway and the pile help him plan it and give an accurate price.
In Riddells Creek and across the Macedon Ranges, everyone tries to do their fire season clean-up at the same time. Book for October or early November, before the Fire Danger Period is declared and the hot days arrive, and you are ahead of the queue.
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.
