Yarrambat blocks are measured in acres, not square metres. When a season's worth of branches and cuttings needs shifting, Ross brings the trailer and does the lifting.
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 Yarrambat 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.
Bulk loads from multi-acre properties.
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.
Clean-up waste from neglected areas, collected.
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 pulled back from houses and stables.
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.
Wind-thrown limbs across paddocks.
Yarrambat is lifestyle-block country on the northern side of Nillumbik. Homes sit on large parcels of land with paddocks, arenas, sheds and plenty of mature trees, and the whole area has a rural outlook despite being within reach of the suburbs.
Owners here tend to do a lot of the work themselves: slashing, pruning, clearing fence lines and cutting up fallen timber. The part that's hard to manage without a truck is getting rid of it. Ross fills that gap with bulk green waste removal, loading by hand and taking the material off site so it can be mulched or composted.
A common Yarrambat call goes something like this: the owners have spent a few weekends cutting back overgrowth, clearing a fence line or dealing with a tree that came down, and now there's a pile the size of a car in the middle of the paddock.
That's exactly the kind of job Ross does. He packs the trailer tightly and keeps going until the pile is gone, taking several loads where needed. You'll know how many before he starts.
Plenty of rural owners have been burning their piles for years, but Nillumbik controls when open burning is allowed and it stops entirely once the Fire Danger Period is declared. Neighbours, smoke and weather make it an awkward option even outside that window.
Having the material taken away avoids all of that. It also means the pile does not sit there drying out through summer as a fuel load of its own.
Every Yarrambat property should have a clear zone around the house, sheds and stables before summer. Leaf litter, fallen bark, dead shrubs and piles of cut material are the fuel that matters most when embers are about.
Ross loads up what has been gathered in that zone and takes everything off site, so nothing is left sitting near the buildings on a large block.
A heap of cut timber in the paddock is fuel once it dries out. Book the Yarrambat clean-up for spring, ideally in October, so the piles and litter are gone before the Fire Danger Period and before every property in the district is trying to book the same week.
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.
