Altona blocks are generous by inner-west standards, and the gardens on them have had fifty or sixty years to fill out. Ross takes away the hedges, shrubs and prunings the bin can't handle.
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 Altona 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.
Hedges and shrubs from wide post-war 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.
Whole-yard tidy-ups before a sale or rebuild.
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.
Dry grass clippings and dead shrubs hauled away from 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.
Limbs down after a southerly off the bay.
Altona sits on the bay with a long beachfront, but most of the suburb is quiet residential streets of post-war and 1960s homes on decent-sized blocks. Brick veneer and weatherboard houses with a front lawn, a hedge along the boundary and a long back yard with room for a shed and a few trees.
Those gardens were planted by the first owners and a lot of them are now fully grown, which means more to trim, more leaves and more branches every year. As older homes change hands or get knocked down and rebuilt, whole yards get cleared at once. Ross takes both the regular prunings and the bigger clear-outs.
Walk down most Altona streets and you'll see the same thing: established hedges, conifers and bottlebrush along the fences, a big tree or two out the back, and shrubs that have been trimmed into shapes for decades. Once a year they need a serious cut, and the pile is usually bigger than people expect.
Ross can load and remove what you or your gardener have cut, whether it's one hedge or the whole yard. Either way it goes to a green waste facility rather than landfill.
A lot of older Altona homes are being replaced with units or new family homes. Before the builder arrives, or before the property is listed, the garden often needs clearing: overgrown shrubs, hedges nobody wants to keep, piles left by the previous owners.
Ross takes away the green part of that job. He doesn't do demolition waste, rubble or old sheds, but once the shrubs and hedges are down he'll get the vegetation off the site so the rest can happen.
Closer to the water, gardens are sandier and more exposed. Coastal shrubs and grasses do well, but the wind scatters leaves and dead fronds, and sand builds up in beds and along fences.
That makes for lighter but bulkier loads. Ross takes the lot, including the raked-up leaf and frond litter that tends to collect against fences and in corners.
Hedges and shrubs in Altona put on most of their growth in spring, and that's when the green bin overflows first. Book the pickup for after the spring trim and the yard is sorted before the warm weather arrives.
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.
