Tree Removal in Eaglehawk: Old Trees on Small Blocks

Eaglehawk grew up around the reef mines from the 1850s, and the trees planted by those first generations are now some of the largest in Bendigo's northern suburbs, standing on some of the smallest blocks. Getting a full-grown elm or pine off a cottage yard with a metre of side access is a very different job from dropping a gum in a paddock, and it is the job this page is about.

Signs a tree in Eaglehawk should come out

Not every big tree in the old borough needs to go; plenty of the elms and pines planted long before the Borough was wound up in 1994 have decades left, and we will say so. These are the things that tip the balance:

• Crown dieback that is not recovering. Gums on the shallow mullock ground around the old workings thin out from the top after a run of hot summers. Two seasons of bare tips is a tree in real trouble.
• Decay at the base. Fungal brackets, a hollow sound when the trunk is tapped, or cavities at the root flare. Old elms and pines can be hollow long before the canopy shows it.
• A lean that has changed. Lifted soil or cracked concrete behind the lean is the root plate letting go, and on Eaglehawk's clay that usually shows up after a wet winter.
• Roots against the house. Miners' cottages sit low on shallow footings. A trunk a metre off the wall with roots under the stumps is a tree in the wrong spot.
• Storm damage. A split union, a hanger caught in the crown, or a limb on the roof. Those are emergency-line calls, any hour.
• Building works. A tree kept near an extension gets a protection zone to AS 4970; one that cannot be kept comes out before the builders arrive.

If size is the only worry, a reduction may be the better call; see tree lopping in Eaglehawk.

What a typical Eaglehawk removal looks like

Picture a radiata pine, sixty-odd years old, in the back corner of a cottage block on one of the streets running off High Street. Side setbacks of about a metre, a low open front fence, powerlines along the footpath and the neighbour's carport hard against the boundary. That is a dismantle, not a fell.

The climber goes up on rope and harness and rigs the limbs down on lowering lines to the ground crew, who guide each piece into a drop zone the size of a car space. The trunk follows in short blocks. Where the front yard is open we lift a fence panel and bring the mini loader through to shift the rounds. Brush goes through the chipper at the kerb, so the street is coned off. A pine this size is a full day; a wide-spreading elm can run into a second morning.

By the end the yard is raked, the chips and logs have gone with us unless you want them, and the stump is either ground the same day or booked separately.

Permits and heritage overlays in the old borough

Eaglehawk ran its own affairs as a borough from 1862 until the 1994 amalgamation into the City of Greater Bendigo, and the streets around Brassey Square and the Town Hall still carry that history. Much of the township sits under heritage overlays, and the City is preparing a fresh Eaglehawk Heritage Study covering the whole former borough, from Eaglehawk North and Sailors Gully to California Gully, Jackass Flat and parts of Long Gully.

A heritage overlay is mostly about buildings, but a tree that contributes to a precinct's character can be caught by it, and on the bush-fringe blocks toward the Whipstick, vegetation protection and environmental significance overlays can apply to remnant ironbark and grey box. We check the overlays on your title before we quote, tell you plainly whether a permit is needed, and prepare the arborist report if it is; the City of Greater Bendigo handles the application. Street trees on the nature strip belong to the council and are not ours, or yours, to remove. There is more on tree removal permits and heritage overlays in our Bendigo permits guide.

Rigging, felling, machines and where the wood goes

On the larger blocks toward Eaglehawk North and Sailors Gully there is sometimes room for a straight fell with a clean hinge and a pull line. Inside the township it is nearly always a sectional dismantle. Where a tree is unsafe to climb we bring in an elevated work platform. Cranes are the exception here; narrow streets and overhead lines limit where one can set up.

Old mine ground is the other consideration. Eaglehawk sits at the western end of the Bendigo reef line, and hundreds of shafts were filled or capped between the 1930s and 1950s. We walk the yard before any machine goes on it and keep the heavy gear on the street. Ironbark, grey box and red gum make first-rate firewood, and we split and sell what comes off our jobs; elm and pine go through the splitter or the chipper.

Local conditions: creek flats, clay and the Whipstick edge

Eaglehawk Creek runs through Canterbury Park, and the low ground around Lake Neangar and Lake Tom Thumb holds water well into spring, so trees on those flats have shallow, wet root plates and are the first to go over in a strong north-westerly. Up on the rises the ground is thin clay over quartz and mullock, where gums stress and shed limbs in summer. On the northern edge the box-ironbark of the Greater Bendigo National Park runs straight up to house blocks, and remnant trees in those yards are the ones most likely to carry overlays and to matter for bushfire clearance.

TB'S Trees also handles stump grinding in Eaglehawk after a removal, and tree pruning in Eaglehawk where a tree can be kept. The same crew does tree removal in California Gully, removals in Epsom and Bendigo tree removal closer to the city. The main tree removal service page covers how we quote and work everywhere, and the Eaglehawk suburb page lists everything we do in the old borough.

Questions Eaglehawk owners ask before a removal