Tree removal on California Gully's older blocks

California Gully runs along Eaglehawk Road about five kilometres north-west of the Bendigo city centre, and nearly all of it was dug over for gold before a house was built. That history still decides how a tree comes out. Blocks are small, the miners' cottages sit hard against one side fence, the ground is a patchwork of mullock and filled shafts, and the trees that survived are old, big and rarely in a convenient spot. Here is how TB'S Trees plans a California Gully job.

Getting a tree out of a small California Gully block

The first thing we size up on a California Gully job is not the tree, it is the way out. The original cottages off Eaglehawk Road mostly sit on blocks of five or six hundred square metres, with the house pushed to one boundary and a strip of side yard on the other. That strip is usually the only route to the back, and often narrower than a ute. Add a shed, a carport and a clothesline and the drop zone under a big tree shrinks to a few square metres.

Overhead lines are the other constant. Powercor's mains run along one side of most streets, and the service line from the pole to the house often cuts across the exact corner where the biggest tree stands. Every removal is planned around those wires: which limbs come off first, which way each piece is lowered, and whether the job is safer done from an elevated work platform on the nature strip than from a climber in the crown. If the tree sits inside the clearance zone of the street mains we say so at the quote, because that changes who may do the work and how the day is scheduled.

The larger blocks, the thousand-square-metre ones now being cut into three or four unit sites, have better access but higher stakes, because the tree is coming out to make room for a slab and the neighbours' fences are brand new. Where there is a clear lane of fall we fell the tree in one piece on a pull line; where there is not, it is dismantled top-down and lowered on rigging. Our mini loader carries the rounds out through a gap of little more than a metre, which saves the lawn.

The trees we are asked to take out around California Gully

The native cover is box-ironbark: yellow box, grey box and red ironbark that regrew across the mullock after the North Johnson group of mines and their neighbours wound down in the early 1900s. They grow slowly in stony, shallow soil and carry a lot of dead wood by the time they reach a good size. The ones we are called to take out are usually hollow at the base, leaning over a roof, or dropping limbs into the yard every hot summer.

Alongside them are the planted trees from the Cornish and Methodist decades of the late 1800s onward: peppercorns split at the fork, radiata and cypress pines planted as windbreaks and now taller than the powerlines, sugar gums along old fence lines, and the odd walnut, fig or quince that has swallowed a cottage back yard. Peppercorn wood is brittle and heavy with sap, so those come down in short, controlled pieces.

Before we quote we check three things. Whether the tree sits inside a heritage overlay: the streets around the old Bell Topper Hill school on Staley Street and the former Methodist church carry heritage listings, and planning overlays across the City of Greater Bendigo can require a permit before a tree is removed. Whether there is a capped or unrecorded shaft close to the trunk, since shafts near the primary school have been found subsiding and capped in recent years. And whether the tree really is the problem, or whether a pruning job in California Gully or a crown reduction, which we describe under tree lopping in California Gully, would solve it for a fraction of the cost. The Bendigo tree removal permit rules are set out in full in our guide.

What happens to the tree afterwards

Timber from a California Gully removal leaves the block in one of three ways. Box and ironbark is prime firewood, so we cut and split it for you to keep, or take it back to Axedale for our firewood sales. Peppercorn, pine and gum branches go through the chipper, and the chip can stay for your garden beds. The stump is a separate decision: cut flush and left, or ground below the surface so you can lawn, pave or build over it, which on old mine ground has its own quirks, covered on our stump grinding in California Gully page.

Tree removal in California Gully, step by step

1. First call. Ring 0498 609 887 or send a photo. Tell us the street, how tall the tree is against the house, and whether there are wires or a shed under it.
2. Inspection and quote. Tom or one of the crew walks the block, measures the side access, checks the lines, looks for shaft caps or old brickwork near the base, and gives you a written fixed price including clean-up. If a permit looks likely we say so.
3. Booking. We pick a day, and let you know whether the truck will sit on the street and whether a service line needs dropping for the morning.
4. Set-up. The crew briefs the job, cordons off the drop zone, lays mats over any soft or suspect ground and rigs the tree.
5. Dismantle or fell. Limbs come off in a planned order, wire side first, and are lowered into the cleared zone. The trunk is sectioned and carried out by hand or with the mini loader.
6. Clean-up. Branches chipped, rounds stacked or loaded, yard raked and blown, and a walk-round with you before we leave.

Questions California Gully owners ask about tree removal