Land Clearing Services WA 2026 - Get Quotes

What Land Clearing Actually Covers

Land clearing is the removal of vegetation across an area, not from a building footprint, and it is a rural and semi rural job rather than a suburban one. Typical work includes opening up a paddock that has regrown, clearing a building envelope and access on an acreage block, forming and maintaining firebreaks, thinning regrowth to reduce fuel loads, and clearing fence lines so a boundary can be rebuilt. The scale is measured in hectares and the pricing follows the machine hours. The regulatory position is what shapes the job before any of that matters. Nothing about the machinery is complicated and everything about the approvals can be.

Every contractor should tell you what they need to see before they will start. The distinction between this and clearing a suburban lot is worth drawing plainly. A planted garden on a quarter acre block in Perth is not native vegetation and almost never engages the clearing framework, while remnant bush on a hills or rural property very likely is. The site clearing page covers the suburban version of this work. What applies to your property depends on what is growing there, not on how big the block is. Regrowth on a rural block is the category that most often surprises owners.

A neighbouring property having cleared does not establish what you may do. Purpose drives everything about how a clearing job is planned. Clearing for a building envelope is narrow and defined, clearing for agriculture is broad and generally needs a permit, clearing for fire management follows the local government's notice, and clearing for access follows the route. Each has a different scope, a different legal basis and a different price.

Telling the contractor the purpose in the first conversation shapes everything that follows. Have the purpose stated on the quote so the scope is on the record. Partial clearing is usually the better answer and it is under used. Retaining mature trees, keeping a screen along a boundary, leaving habitat trees standing and clearing only the understorey often achieves what the owner actually wants at lower cost and with far fewer regulatory problems. It also leaves a property that looks like somewhere people want to live. A contractor who asks what you are trying to achieve before quoting hectares is worth listening to.

Retained vegetation also holds soil, provides shade for stock and shelters a house from wind. Clearing everything and replanting later is far more expensive than keeping what is already there. Terrain shapes the method more on rural land than anywhere else. Flat Wheatbelt paddocks suit a Caterpillar or Komatsu dozer working at speed, steep hills blocks through the Darling Scarp need tracked machines working across the slope, and rocky ground chews through machinery and time. The excavation and earthmoving page covers the wider range of earthworks a rural property generates.

Slope also determines how much erosion control the job will need afterwards. Working across a slope instead of up and down it is standard practice on tracked machines. The aftermath needs planning at the same time as the clearing. Bare ground on a slope erodes, cleared country grows weeds before it grows anything else, and a property cleared and then left produces a worse problem than the one it started with.

Whatever is going in afterwards, whether pasture, an orchard, a building platform or managed regrowth, should be decided before the machine arrives. Clearing without a plan for what follows is the most common mistake in this category. Seed for a cover crop is cheap and it should be ordered before the machine arrives. The block clearing page covers neglected properties where the problem is rubbish and regrowth instead of a development.

Native Vegetation Clearing Permits

Clearing native vegetation in Western Australia is regulated at state level and the default position is that a permit is required. The framework sits in the state's environmental protection legislation, permits are administered by the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation, and applications are assessed against a set of clearing principles covering biodiversity, habitat, water, soil and conservation significance. Clearing that is at variance with those principles is unlikely to be approved without conditions. That assessment is the substance of the process, not a formality. Reading the clearing principles is worth the half hour they take.

They describe what an assessor is actually weighing, not what the applicant hopes. Native vegetation means indigenous vegetation. Anything green does not qualify. Remnant bush, regrowth of native species, native grasses and even scattered paddock trees can all fall within it, while planted gardens, orchards, crops and pasture generally do not. Regrowth is the category owners most often misjudge, because land that was cleared decades ago and has come back is frequently still native vegetation for these purposes. Assuming regrowth is fair game is a common and expensive error.

Scattered paddock trees in particular are protected in ways owners rarely expect. An application is a genuine piece of work, not a form to fill in. Depending on the scale it may require a vegetation survey, a flora and fauna assessment, mapping, a statement of the purpose and consideration of alternatives, and the department publishes applications for public comment. Assessment takes months and not weeks, and the outcome may be a refusal, an approval, or an approval with conditions such as offsets or retained areas.

Building that timeframe into your project is essential. Budget for the assessment period instead of assuming a quick answer. Applications lodged in isolation, without the surveys, are usually returned for more information. Environmentally sensitive areas change the position entirely. Certain areas are declared environmentally sensitive, and within them the usual exemptions do not apply at all, which means clearing that would be exempt elsewhere requires a permit there.

Owners frequently do not know their property contains such an area until they ask. This is one of the specific things to confirm with the regulator before doing anything. Find out specifically whether any part of your land sits within one. Local government sits alongside the state, not in place of it. Many councils have their own controls over vegetation and tree removal through a local planning scheme or a local law, and a clearing that is lawful under the state framework may still need council approval. Both need checking and the answers are independent of each other.

Council contact details are published through wa.gov.au. Where both apply, the more restrictive requirement is the one that governs. Council officers and departmental officers do speak to each other about the same property. Penalties for unlawful clearing are serious and the department does act on them. Reports come from neighbours, aerial imagery and routine compliance work, and the consequences can include substantial fines, a requirement to rehabilitate the area and a vegetation conservation notice preventing further work.

The vegetation itself cannot be put back within a lifetime. Nobody who has been through it describes the permit process as the expensive part. Aerial imagery from successive years is routinely used in compliance investigations. Ground disturbance also brings Aboriginal heritage obligations anywhere in the state.

Aboriginal sites are protected under Western Australian law whether or not they are recorded on a register, and due diligence before disturbing ground is the owner's responsibility, not the contractor's. Information on heritage obligations is published by the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage. On a large clearing job this belongs at the front of the program. Due diligence searches are straightforward and worth doing before machinery is booked. The obligation applies whether or not a site appears on any register.

Exemptions and What They Actually Allow

The exemption framework is the part most often misquoted and most often relied on incorrectly. Exemptions exist for a range of routine rural activities, commonly including clearing for a building and its immediate surrounds, for a fence line, for a firebreak, for vehicle access and for certain day to day agricultural operations, and each carries its own limits on width, area and circumstance. They are specific permissions, not general ones. Relying on a half remembered version of one is how people end up in trouble. Each exemption is written for a purpose and it does not extend beyond that purpose. Read the actual wording.

A summary of it is not the same thing. Every exemption has boundaries and exceeding them removes the exemption entirely. A firebreak exemption allows a break of the width your local government requires, not a paddock, and a fence line exemption allows a working width rather than a cleared strip either side. Clearing beyond what the exemption covers is unlawful clearing for the whole area, not just the excess. Getting the applicable width in writing before the machine starts is the practical protection.

The width allowed is set by the requirement, not by what looks tidy. Exemptions do not apply in environmentally sensitive areas and this is the trap that catches good faith owners. A property owner doing exactly what they believed was permitted, in an area declared environmentally sensitive, has cleared without a permit. Whether an area applies to your land is a question for the regulator, not the contractor.

The Department of Water and Environmental Regulation can confirm the position for a specific property. Confirming it in writing takes an email and settles it permanently. A written answer also survives a change of contractor midway through a project. Written confirmation is worth obtaining even where you are confident. An enquiry describing the property, the vegetation and the proposed clearing, answered in writing by the department, is a document worth having permanently. It protects you if the position is later questioned and it tells the contractor exactly what they may and may not do.

Verbal assurances from anyone, including a contractor with decades of experience, are not the same thing. Keep the response with the property records, not in a job folder. Contractors are not the authority on your permit position and the good ones say so. An experienced clearing operator knows the framework well and cannot confirm the status of your particular block, and any operator who tells you not to worry about permits is offering an opinion you will carry the consequences of. The liability for unlawful clearing sits with the landowner.

That asymmetry is worth remembering when someone is keen to start. An operator who suggests clearing a little extra while the machine is there is offering you their risk. That single sentence is the most useful thing on this page. Where a permit is needed, doing the exempt work first is often sensible.

Firebreaks, fence lines and building access can frequently proceed under exemption while a wider clearing application is assessed, which keeps a project moving. It also gives the contractor a reason to visit before the main job. Sequencing it that way is worth discussing at quoting stage. It also spreads the cost across two financial years where that helps.

Firebreaks and Fuel Management

Every Western Australian local government issues an annual firebreak notice and it is an enforceable requirement, not a suggestion. The notice sets out the breaks required around property boundaries and buildings, the width and the standard they must be cleared or maintained to, and the date by which the work must be complete and the period through which it must be maintained. Requirements differ between districts, so the notice that applies to your property is the one to read. Failure to comply attracts a penalty and the council can do the work and bill you. The notice is usually posted or emailed to ratepayers well before the season.

Councils publish it on their websites as well, so there is no excuse for not having read it. The standard is usually described in plain terms and it matters. Breaks are commonly required to be cleared to mineral earth or mown to a nominated height, at a nominated width, around boundaries and around buildings, with additional requirements on larger properties. Slashing achieves the mown standard while ploughing or grading achieves bare earth, and which one is required depends on the notice. Read the actual document instead of relying on what the neighbours did last year. A photograph of the completed break, dated, is useful if compliance is ever queried.

Fuel load reduction goes beyond the break itself on a bushfire prone property. Accumulated litter, dense understorey, dead material and vegetation carrying fire from the ground into the canopy all matter, and managing them is a different exercise from grading a firebreak. The Department of Fire and Emergency Services sets out what good fuel management looks like on a Western Australian property. A contractor who works the hills regularly will know what the local brigade and the council expect. Brigade volunteers will often give practical advice on a property if asked.

Clearing for fire management still sits within the clearing framework. There are exemptions covering fire management purposes and they have limits, so clearing a hectare because it feels safer is not covered by an exemption written for a firebreak of a specified width. The intention being genuine does not extend the exemption. Where a property needs more than the exemption allows, that becomes a permit conversation, not a judgement call. Genuine intention is not a defence to clearing beyond an exemption. Timing is the practical constraint every year.

Firebreak notices carry a deadline before the fire season, every contractor in the hills and the rural districts is booked out in the weeks before it, and the work cannot be done during a total fire ban or in conditions that risk starting one. Booking in late autumn or winter is easier, cheaper and safer. Anyone who has tried to get a slasher in October knows exactly how tight that window becomes. Total fire bans are declared at short notice and they stop work entirely.

A job booked for November may simply not proceed on the day. Access for emergency vehicles is part of the same thinking on a rural block. A driveway wide enough and clear enough for an appliance, with a turning area at the house and adequate overhead clearance, is a genuine safety matter, not a convenience. It frequently forms part of a bushfire management plan for a new dwelling. The driveway installation page covers building the access itself. Overhanging branches along a driveway matter as much as the width does.

Methods and Machinery

Forestry mulching has become the preferred method on a great many Western Australian properties and it is easy to see why. A mulching head from a maker such as FAE or Seppi, fitted to an excavator or a tracked carrier, grinds standing vegetation into mulch that stays on the ground, which means no windrows, no burning, no cartage and a layer of organic matter left behind that reduces erosion. It is slower per hectare in heavy timber and it leaves the root systems in the ground. For fuel reduction and understorey work it is often the right answer outright. It also leaves the ground covered, which matters on any slope.

A mulched surface also carries machinery better than bare sand does. Dozer work with a stick rake is the traditional broadscale method and it remains the fastest over open country. A dozer pushes vegetation into windrows with the roots attached, which clears the ground completely and suits land going into pasture or cropping. The trade off is topsoil disturbance and the erosion that follows on any slope.

It also produces a large volume of material that has to be dealt with. Windrows left standing become habitat for vermin as well as a fire load. Excavators with a grab or a thumb do the selective work. Where specific trees are being retained, where the ground is rocky, where the terrain is too steep for a dozer or where material is being sorted as it comes out, an excavator working tree by tree is the controlled option. It costs more per hectare and it gives a result you can direct. The tree removal page covers individual trees that need coming out with more care than a clearing job allows.

It is also the method of choice where specific trees must be retained under a permit condition. The tree lopping and arborist services page covers work on individual trees being retained. Stumps and root systems are a separate decision from the vegetation above them. Mulching leaves them in place, dozing pulls most of them out, and root raking after a dozer removes what is left, and the right answer depends on what the land is for afterwards. Pasture tolerates stumps that a cropping paddock or a building platform will not.

The stump grinding and removal page and the tree root removal page cover the follow up work. Pasture establishment is far easier where the roots have been removed. Slashing and mowing are maintenance and not clearing, and they suit regrowth and grass. A John Deere, Case IH or Kubota tractor with a slasher handles annual growth on firebreaks and open paddocks cheaply and quickly, and it does nothing about woody regrowth beyond a certain size. Most rural owners end up with a combination of an occasional clearing job and an annual slashing routine. Setting up the annual routine is what keeps the clearing job from being needed again.

An annual slashing routine costs a fraction of a second clearing job. A slasher behind a tractor is also far cheaper to run than any tracked machine. Machine access to the property decides more than owners expect. Low loaders delivering a dozer or a large excavator need a road they can get down, a gateway they can turn into and ground that will carry them, and float charges to a remote property can be a meaningful part of the quote.

Where several jobs are needed, doing them in one mobilisation is a genuine saving. Get the float cost named and establish whether it is included. A float is charged either one way or both, and that doubles a real number. A property with a tight gateway may need the machine walked in from the road. Terrain and soil determine what is achievable more than the machine does.

Steep slopes, rock at the surface, sand that a dozer sinks into and wet ground through winter all limit what can be done and when. A contractor who wants to walk the property before quoting is doing the right thing. The rock breaking page covers the situation where clearing turns into rock work. Wet ground through winter stops dozer work on many properties entirely.

Dieback, Weeds and Fauna

Phytophthora dieback is the most serious plant disease in the south west of Western Australia and clearing machinery is one of the main ways it moves. The pathogen lives in soil and infects the roots of jarrah, banksia and hundreds of other native species, killing them over months or years, and it is spread on tyres, tracks, boots and in moved soil and gravel. There is no cure once an area is infected, so containment is the entire strategy. Any contractor working in native vegetation in the south west should be able to discuss this without prompting. Infected areas are mapped in parts of the south west and worth checking against your property.

Once the pathogen is on a property there is no removing it. Hygiene practice is well established and it is not onerous. Machines are cleaned down of soil and plant material before entering a property and before moving between infected and uninfected areas, work is scheduled for dry soil conditions where possible because the pathogen moves in wet soil, and access is restricted to defined tracks. Operators who work in bushland settings frequently hold recognised hygiene training. Asking how they manage it tells you a great deal about the operator. Working from clean areas towards infected ones, and never the reverse, is basic practice.

Declared pests and weeds travel the same way. Seeds and plant fragments move on machinery and in soil, and Western Australia regulates declared pests under its biosecurity framework with obligations on landowners to control them. Bringing a machine straight from an infested property onto clean land can introduce a weed problem that outlasts the clearing by decades. Information on declared pests is published by the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development.

Cleaning down between properties takes an hour and prevents a decade of problems. In parts of the Perth metropolitan area the polyphagous shot hole borer adds a further constraint. Inside the quarantine area, host plant material and green waste cannot simply be carted wherever is convenient, and that shapes where cleared material from those suburbs may go. Contractors working inside the area have specific obligations. It applies to metropolitan properties and not remote rural ones, and it is worth confirming which side of the line your land sits on. Establish which side of the quarantine boundary your property sits on before material is moved.

Fauna obligations are real and large old trees are the flashpoint. Native fauna is protected in Western Australia, and the black cockatoo species of the south west are threatened, with large trees containing hollows recognised as breeding habitat that takes a century or more to form. Clearing that may significantly affect a threatened species can also engage federal environmental assessment on top of the state process. Where large hollow bearing trees are present, that needs professional advice before anything is felled. A hollow large enough for a black cockatoo takes well over a century to form.

Retaining those trees is usually both the lawful and the sensible outcome. Nesting season constrains timing on any clearing job with vegetation birds use. Active nests are protected, and clearing dense vegetation through spring will destroy them, which is both unlawful and avoidable by scheduling the work differently. Autumn and winter clearing avoids most of it.

A contractor who raises the seasonal question is one who has thought about more than machine availability. Autumn and winter clearing is easier to schedule as well as being kinder. Watercourses and wetlands attract their own protections and their own buffers. Clearing near a creek line, a soak or a wetland can require separate approval and can trigger conditions about buffer widths and erosion control, and the values that make those areas sensitive are exactly the ones the clearing principles protect.

The drainage page covers managing water on a property after clearing changes how it runs. Where a watercourse crosses the land, raise it at the first conversation. Buffer widths are set by the approval, not chosen by the operator. Erosion from a cleared slope reaching a watercourse is both a practical and a regulatory problem.

What Happens to the Material

Disposal is frequently the largest single component of a clearing job and it is decided by the method. Mulching leaves everything on site as a layer of chip, dozing produces windrows of timber and root balls, and selective clearing produces sorted material that can be handled differently. Each of those has a different cost and a different outcome for the land. The disposal decision should be made deliberately instead of discovered afterwards. The disposal method belongs on the quote by name, because an assumption is not a method. Mulch left in place does genuine work on Western Australian soils.

It holds moisture, moderates soil temperature, suppresses weed germination while it breaks down, and protects cleared ground from erosion through the first winter, which matters on any slope. The depth needs to suit what is going in afterwards, since a thick layer of coarse chip does not suit immediate pasture establishment. Get the finished depth stated and check that it suits your plans. Spreading mulch thinner over a wider area is usually better than heaping it.

Pasture has a depth that suits it, and any depth will not do. Windrowing and burning remains the cheapest way to deal with heavy material and it is tightly controlled. Burning requires a permit from the local government during the restricted period and is prohibited entirely during the prohibited period, with the dates set each year by district, and a burn escaping onto a neighbouring property is both a serious liability and a criminal matter. Windrows also need time to dry before they will burn cleanly. Planning a burn a season ahead of needing it is normal practice.

Permits are issued by the local government and the conditions are specific. A burn left unattended overnight is how most escapes begin. Firewood and millable timber can offset the cost where the species and the sizes suit. Jarrah, marri, wandoo and sheoak all have value, and a contractor who can sell or split the material may credit it against the job or take it in lieu of part of the cost. Where the owner wants the firewood, saying so early changes how the material is cut and stacked. It is worth checking instead of assuming it is all waste.

Split and stacked firewood has a genuine market through the cooler months. Cartage off site is the expensive option and sometimes the only one. Where burning is not permitted, mulching is unsuitable and the material cannot stay, it is loaded and carted to a green waste facility or a recycler at a per load cost, with the distance from a rural property doing most of the damage to the figure. The rubbish removal page and the skip bin hire page cover the smaller scale version of that work. A per load rate on its own tells you nothing until somebody estimates how many loads there will be.

Erosion control after clearing is the item most often left out entirely. Bare ground on a slope in the Darling Scarp or the South West will move in the first serious rain, carrying topsoil into watercourses and leaving rills that are difficult to repair. Retaining mulch, sowing a cover crop, contour ripping or leaving vegetated strips along contours all address it. Stabilisation belongs in the quote, not in the category of problems for later. Contour ripping is cheap while the machine is still on site. What follows the clearing should already be organised.

Pasture seed goes in at the right time of year, fencing follows the cleared boundary, a building platform needs levelling and compaction, and an orchard or a plantation needs its layout set out before planting. The fencing page covers rebuilding boundaries on a cleared line, and the landscaping page covers the establishment work around a house. Cleared land with nothing planned for it grows weeds. Fencing a cleared boundary is far easier immediately after the clearing than a year later. Sheds, water tanks and stock yards all follow a clearing job on a rural block.

Costs in Detail

Light scrub and grass clearing runs $1,800 to $5,500 a hectare depending on density, terrain and access. This is the band that covers regrowth, understorey and open country with scattered small vegetation, and it is where most fuel reduction work sits. Larger areas price better per hectare because mobilisation is spread further. Very small areas are usually quoted as machine hours instead of by area. A rate assumes the material either stays on site or leaves it, and the difference is substantial. Medium vegetation with small trees runs $5,000 to $14,000 a hectare, and heavy timbered country runs $12,000 to $35,000.

The spread within each band reflects timber size, stem density, slope, rock, and what happens to the material afterwards. Heavy timber with cartage off site sits at the top of the range and heavy timber mulched in place sits lower. The method decision moves the figure more than the vegetation alone does. A per hectare rate on variable country is usually a guess dressed as a price. Where the country is genuinely unknown, get both a rate and a cap.

Hourly rates are how a great deal of this work is actually quoted. A forestry mulcher runs $280 to $480 an hour including the carrier and operator, a dozer with a stick rake runs $220 to $420, and an excavator with a grab sits between them depending on size. Hourly quoting suits variable country where a per hectare rate would be guesswork. An estimated hour count alongside the rate makes two quotes comparable.

Get the assumptions about timber size and stem density out into the open. Firebreak formation runs $650 to $2,200 a kilometre depending on width, terrain and whether the break is being newly formed or maintained. Annual maintenance slashing on an established break is considerably cheaper than forming a new one through vegetation. Booking the maintenance as a standing arrangement usually prices better than calling each spring. It also means it actually gets done before the deadline. Maintenance is also far quicker where the break was formed properly in the first place.

Maintenance can often be booked as a standing annual arrangement, which is worth raising. The regulatory side carries its own cost and it is easy to overlook. Support with a clearing permit application, including the survey and assessment work a larger application needs, runs $2,500 to $15,000 depending on scale and complexity, with specialist flora and fauna surveys priced separately. Burning supervision runs $900 to $2,600 a day where a contractor manages the burn. Neither of these is machine time and both belong in the project budget.

Flora surveys in particular have seasonal windows when the plants can be identified. Travel is the line that defines regional pricing on this work. Floating a dozer or a mulcher to a remote property is a real cost and it is charged whether the machine works for one day or ten, which is why doing all the machine work in a single mobilisation matters so much. Contractors based in the Wheatbelt, the South West, the Great Southern and the Mid West service their own districts at sensible rates.

Bringing a metropolitan machine to a country job rarely makes economic sense. Where several neighbours book together, the float charge can often be shared. Neighbouring properties booking together is common practice in rural districts. One float in and out across three jobs is a real saving on every one of them.

What to Look Out For

Confirm the permit position in writing before anyone quotes machine hours. The liability for unlawful clearing sits with the landowner, the penalties are substantial, and the vegetation cannot be replaced. An enquiry to the regulator describing the property and the proposed clearing costs nothing and produces a document worth keeping permanently. This is the one step in the whole job that cannot be undone. The document is also useful evidence if a neighbour queries the clearing later.

Be sceptical of any contractor who tells you not to worry about permits. They may be extremely experienced and they are not the authority on your block, and the consequences of being wrong fall on you, not on them. A good operator will tell you to check and will wait while you do. Enthusiasm to start immediately is a warning, not a service. Their willingness to wait is itself a good sign about how they work. An operator who has been prosecuted before will be the most cautious person on site.

Do not assume regrowth is fair game. Land cleared decades ago that has come back is frequently still native vegetation for regulatory purposes, and this is the single most common misunderstanding in rural clearing. What it looked like in your grandfather's time is not the test. Confirm the status of the specific vegetation on your property. Put the question to the regulator about the regrowth specifically, not about the property in general.

Check whether an environmentally sensitive area applies to your land. Within one, the usual exemptions do not apply at all, so clearing that would be lawful elsewhere requires a permit there, and owners routinely do not know until they ask. It is a specific question with a specific answer. That question belongs with the regulator, not the contractor. The answer is property specific and it does not follow the suburb or the district. Two properties on the same road can have quite different positions.

Take the dieback question seriously anywhere in the south west. The pathogen is spread by machinery in soil, there is no cure once an area is infected, and a contractor arriving straight from another property without cleaning down is a genuine risk to your land and everyone else's. Find out how they manage hygiene and when the machine was last cleaned. An operator who has an answer ready is the one to engage.

Recognised hygiene training for working in bushland is worth confirming. One last thing, plan the erosion control and the aftermath before the clearing starts. Bare ground on a slope moves in the first heavy rain, cleared country grows weeds before it grows anything else, and a property cleared without a plan for what follows is a worse problem than it was before. Stabilisation and establishment belong in the same budget as the clearing.

Leaving them until later is how good land gets degraded. Sowing a cover crop immediately after clearing is the simplest protection there is. The garden bore installation and repairs page covers the water supply that establishment usually needs. Getting a cover established through the first summer is what decides whether the work holds.

How to Get Comparable Quotes

Establish the regulatory position before you seek quotes. What vegetation is on the property and whether it is native, whether a permit is required or an exemption applies, whether an environmentally sensitive area is involved, what the local government's position is, and what the firebreak notice requires. Contractors can then price the work instead of guessing at the constraints. It also means every quote is for the same lawful scope.

It also means the quotes arrive faster, since nobody has to guess at the constraints. Describe the land properly when you make contact. The area in hectares, the vegetation type and rough density, the largest timber present, the slope and the terrain, whether rock is at or near the surface, access for a low loader, what the land is for afterwards, and your timeframe. Photographs from several points and, where you have one, an aerial image with the area marked, help enormously. Contractors quoting from that price the actual property. Mark the boundaries of the proposed clearing on the image instead of describing them.

Note any areas you want left untouched on the same image. Put the same written questions to each contractor. The method proposed and why, the machine and the estimated hours or the rate per hectare, what happens to the material, whether stumps and roots are removed, erosion control and stabilisation, dieback and weed hygiene practice, float and travel charges, insurance, and whether burning is included and who holds the permit. Written answers turn three numbers into a comparison. Where the work runs over several visits, get the estimate broken down by stage.

What each contractor would leave standing tells you how they read the country. The answers differ considerably and they tell you how the operator thinks, since one who proposes retaining habitat trees, a boundary screen and vegetation along a contour is offering a better outcome than one quoting to clear everything. It may also be cheaper. A clearing plan marked on an aerial image is worth asking for on any substantial job. A marked up plan is also the document a regulator will want to see if questions arise. Book outside the firebreak rush and outside the wet.

Demand peaks in the weeks before the annual deadline, when availability disappears and nobody is negotiating, and winter ground conditions limit what machines can do on many properties. Late autumn and early winter suit mulching and slashing, while drier months suit dozer work and burning preparation. Planning a year ahead is normal on rural land and it produces better prices. Rural contractors book their season well in advance and the good ones fill early.