Landscaping Cost Moreton Bay and Redcliffe QLD 2026 - Complete Pricing Guide

What Landscaping Costs in Moreton Bay and Redcliffe

A full backyard landscape across the Moreton Bay region runs $18,000 to $85,000 and a front yard makeover $6,500 to $28,000. That is an unusually wide band and it is not vagueness, it reflects how much the site itself drives the cost. A flat 200 square metre backyard at Mango Hill with paving, turf and beds sits near the bottom. The same area on a 1 in 6 slope at Clear Mountain needing two retaining walls, subsoil drainage and barrow access sits near the top. Design is the line most often skipped and it is usually the cheapest money in the project.

Documentation at $1,200 to $6,500 produces levels, a drainage strategy, a materials schedule and a staging plan, which is what lets three builders quote the same thing. Without it, three quotes describe three different projects and cannot be compared at all. On anything above about $25,000 the design pays for itself in comparable quotes alone. Garden design services in Queensland can be engaged separately from the build. Two regulatory lines matter more here than any design choice. The Queensland Building and Construction Commission requires a licence for building work valued above $3,300, and the Builder restricted to structural landscaping class covers retaining walls, paving and concrete for landscaping, landscaping irrigation, decks, pergolas, fences, ponds and sports courts.

Separately, a retaining wall more than one metre high requires building approval. A wall at or under a metre can still require it where a surcharge sits over the zone of influence, where it forms part of a pool barrier, or where a fence on top takes the combined height past two metres above natural ground surface. Both lines are worth knowing before quotes arrive rather than after. A landscaper proposing a 1.3 metre retaining wall with no mention of engineering or approval is either planning to build it unapproved or has not priced those items. Neither is a good position for the property owner, because an unapproved structural wall becomes the owner problem at sale. The approval and the engineering are also the two items most frequently missing from the cheapest quote in a set of three.

Landscaping Costs by Element

Landscaping is best understood as four separate budgets that happen to be built by one contractor. Structure holds the ground up, services move water and power, surfaces are what you walk on, and planting is what grows. Those four behave completely differently on price and only one of them is visible in a finished photograph. A quote that does not separate them is hiding the three that explain the cost. Structure is retaining and it is quoted on wall face area rather than length.

Timber sleeper runs $280 to $520 a square metre of face, concrete sleeper $380 to $680 and block $450 to $850. Engineering design and certification adds $1,400 to $4,200 where a wall exceeds a metre, and a building approval a further $700 to $2,200. Taken together on a sloping site, those four lines frequently exceed everything else combined. Services are drainage, irrigation and conduit, and they are cheap to install and expensive to retrofit.

Subsoil and stormwater drainage at $95 to $220 a lineal metre, irrigation at $18 to $42 a square metre and lighting at $180 to $450 a point all sit under finished surfaces. Putting them in during the first stage costs what the table says. Putting them in after the paving is laid means lifting the paving, which costs several times more. Irrigation and garden watering systems are the item most often deferred and most expensive to add later.

Surfaces and planting are where the visible money goes and they are the most predictable to price. Paving supplied and laid runs $110 to $240 a square metre, plain concrete $95 to $185, exposed aggregate $125 to $210, turf $14 to $28 and planted garden beds $85 to $180. These lines also scale cleanly with area, so they are the easiest place to adjust a budget without compromising the project. Reducing paved area by ten square metres saves $1,100 to $2,400 and changes nothing structural.

The $3,300 Licence Line

The single most useful thing to understand before collecting landscaping quotes in Queensland is where the licensing line sits. The Queensland Building and Construction Commission requires a licence for building work valued above $3,300. That threshold applies to the value of the building work rather than the total project, so a $12,000 garden containing a $4,500 retaining wall is licensed work for that element. The remainder of the garden is not licensed work at all. The relevant licence class is Builder restricted to structural landscaping, and its scope is worth reading because it is broader than most people expect. It covers preparing, fabricating and erecting carports, decks, fences, gates, gazebos, ornamental structures, pergolas, ponds and water features.

It also covers prefabricated sheds with a floor area up to 10 square metres including their concrete slabs, retaining walls and structures, artificial landforms requiring a fabricated internal structure, site preparation, excavation, paving or concrete for landscaping, landscaping irrigation, playground equipment and building, maintaining or repairing sports courts such as tennis courts. What falls outside licensing is the soft landscaping, and that distinction is clean. Planting, mulching, turf laying, garden bed preparation, weeding, pruning and ongoing maintenance need no licence whatever they cost. So a $9,000 project that is entirely planting, soil and turf is unlicensed work, while a $5,000 project that is a single retaining wall is licensed. The dollar figure alone does not tell you which side of the line a job sits on.

There are two practical consequences for a property owner. The licence number belongs on the quote and the class on it should match the work being offered, which takes a minute to check against the public register. The second is that unlicensed structural work becomes your problem rather than the builder problem, typically at sale when a building inspection finds an unapproved wall. Building inspection services in Queensland routinely pick these up.

Retaining Walls and How They Are Priced

Retaining is the element that decides a sloping site budget and the one most often misunderstood at quote stage. The critical point is that walls are priced on face area rather than run length. Face area is the exposed height multiplied by the length, so a 12 metre run averaging 1.2 metres of exposed height is 14.4 square metres. At $380 to $680 for concrete sleeper that is $5,470 to $9,790 for the wall alone. Height drives cost faster than proportionally and there are three reasons for it. Footings get deeper and wider, the drainage behind the wall becomes more critical, and above one metre engineering and a building approval are required.

Add $1,400 to $4,200 for engineer design and certification and $700 to $2,200 for the approval, and a 1.2 metre wall that looked like a $7,000 item becomes a $7,570 to $16,190 one. Doubling height much more than doubles the cost of building it. That arithmetic produces the most valuable design move available on a sloping Moreton Bay block. Two 600 millimetre walls stepped apart often cost substantially less than one 1.2 metre wall, because neither generally needs engineering or a building approval. The terraced result frequently looks better and creates usable planting space between the levels. If the site allows it, asking a designer to step the levels rather than hold a single height is worth raising specifically.

Material choice matters less than people expect once engineering is involved. Timber sleeper at $280 to $520 is cheapest and has the shortest life, concrete sleeper at $380 to $680 is the regional default and block at $450 to $850 suits taller walls and curves. For a wall under a metre the material is largely an appearance and longevity decision. Above a metre the engineer specification will often narrow the options before the owner gets a preference.

Approvals, Setbacks and Siting

The approval rules for retaining walls are more detailed than the one metre figure suggests, and several of the triggers catch low walls that owners assume are exempt. A wall more than one metre high requires building approval, which is the headline rule. Four situations can still bring a wall at or under one metre into approval territory, and any one of them is enough. Those four are worth knowing before a design is settled rather than after. The first of those four triggers is proximity to other structures. Any wall within 1.5 metres of a building or another retaining wall can require approval regardless of height, which commonly catches a low wall built close to a house or a second wall stepped near the first.

The second is surcharge loading, meaning a driveway, footing or structure sitting over the zone of influence, which is the wedge of ground behind the wall that the wall is holding up. A low wall with a driveway above it is carrying load the plain height figure does not describe. The third trigger arises where the wall forms a pool barrier. Where a wall forms part of a swimming pool barrier it requires compliance certification, which is a separate matter from the retaining approval itself. The fourth trigger is the combined height of a wall and a fence. Natural ground surface means the original ground level before any cut or fill.

A fence on top of a wall taking the total above two metres above it brings the structure into approval territory, which catches the common arrangement of a 900 millimetre wall with a 1.8 metre fence on it. Siting rules apply independently of approval and they are strict about boundaries. The whole structure including footings, sub-drainage and sump drainage must sit inside your property boundary. Where the wall, or wall plus fence, exceeds two metres above natural ground surface and sits within 1.5 metres of a side or rear boundary or within 6.0 metres of the road boundary, a Queensland Development Code MP1.2 siting variation is needed, lodged through the certifier. On a corner lot the height must not exceed one metre within the 6 metre by 6 metre truncation, which is the cut off corner at the intersection, unless approved.

Koala Habitat Clearing Provisions

South East Queensland carries koala habitat protections that apply to clearing, and the Moreton Bay region sits inside the mapped area. The mapping was first released in February 2020 to address inconsistencies across the 12 South East Queensland local government areas. It identifies four categories, being koala priority areas, core koala habitat areas, locally refined koala habitat areas and koala habitat restoration areas. Which category applies to a property determines what can be cleared. Koala priority areas are large connected areas with the highest potential to support koalas over the long term, and they include both habitat areas and areas suitable for restoration.

Core koala habitat areas are mature vegetation mapped under the state criteria. Clearing core koala habitat or locally refined habitat within a koala priority area is prohibited, subject to exemptions. Clearing core habitat outside priority areas is assessed by the Queensland Government against a state code, also subject to exemptions. The exemption that matters most for residential landscaping is a development footprint of up to 500 square metres, which is exempt. Clearing for firebreaks, maintenance and other activities considered reasonable for landholders to live on and manage their properties is also exempt. The full list sits in Schedule 24 of the Planning Regulation 2017.

For a typical suburban backyard project the 500 square metre footprint exemption generally settles the question, and for acreage on the western belt it frequently does not. A property mapped as a koala habitat restoration area carries no statutory requirement to accept restoration, which is worth knowing because the mapping category alarms owners unnecessarily. Restoration areas are identified as offering high conservation opportunity and low threat. For any project removing mature trees on acreage, checking the mapping before design is the cheaper order of operations. The Queensland Department of Environment publishes the mapping, and arborist services can advise on what a particular tree is before anybody quotes to remove it.

Fire Ant Controls on Soil, Mulch and Turf

Fire ant biosecurity affects landscaping more than any other garden trade, because landscaping moves material in volume. The National Fire Ant Eradication Program runs two biosecurity zones, and within either of them the law controls how soil, hay such as straw and sugarcane mulch, manure, mulch, turf, potted plants and mining or quarry materials are moved. A single backyard project can involve all seven of those categories. Topsoil, garden mix, mulch, turf, plants in pots, road base and sand under paving are a routine materials list. Zone boundaries move and that is the operational reality to plan around.

Monthly review tracks the Interstate Plant Quarantine zones, the national zones controlling movement of plant material, a suburb can be covered in part rather than whole, and touching a zone boundary at any point puts the entire property inside it. Localities in the west of the region have appeared in the Zone 2 lists, among them Samsonvale, Mount Samson, Clear Mountain, Closeburn, Cashmere, Kobble Creek and Cedar Creek. The reliable check is the address on the program tool on the day material moves rather than what applied last season. For material moving within a zone there are generally three compliance routes. The material can be shifted within a day of arriving, handled according to the published steps for its type, or delivered straight to a waste facility.

Where none of those can be met a biosecurity instrument permit, which is a written approval issued by the program, is required, and one is also needed to move material out of the zones or from Zone 2 into Zone 1. Penalties reach both individuals and companies, and the reporting line for non compliance is 13 22 68. The practical consequence on a landscaping job is scheduling rather than cost. A 24 hour movement window means a truck of soil cannot sit on the driveway for a week while the weather clears, which on a wet February project is a genuine constraint. Behind it all sits the general biosecurity obligation under the Biosecurity Act 2014, which applies to every business and landholder in Queensland. A landscaper who cannot say where their soil and mulch come from has not engaged with an obligation that also falls on you.

Soils Across the Region

The Moreton Bay region presents three broadly different soil situations and each one changes both cost and method. Getting this wrong is the most common cause of a landscape that looks right for a year and then declines. The bayside is sand, the northern corridor is frequently compacted builder fill, and the western belt runs to clay on sloping ground. None of the three is a problem, and all three need to be designed for. Peninsula sand from Woody Point through Scarborough and Newport drains almost immediately and holds very little nutrient. That makes drainage easy and planting hard, because water and fertiliser pass through faster than roots can use them.

The recurring cost here is organic matter and mulch rather than drainage infrastructure. Beds need compost and aged manure worked through at construction and topping up thereafter, which is why planted beds on sand sit toward the upper end of the $85 to $180 a square metre band. Corridor estate blocks through North Lakes, Griffin, Mango Hill and Narangba are frequently built on compacted fill, with the original topsoil stripped and replaced with whatever was available. That is why new estate plantings so often stall despite feeding and watering. The remedy here is mechanical rather than chemical in nature. Ripping or deep cultivation to break the compaction, then organic matter worked in, does more than any amount of fertiliser, and budgeting for it at construction costs a fraction of replacing failed plants twice.

The western belt through Samford, Clear Mountain, Closeburn and Dayboro runs to clay on slopes, which is the most demanding of the three. Clay holds water, moves as its moisture content changes, and transmits that movement into anything built on it. That makes subsoil drainage behind retaining walls critical rather than optional and it is why engineering on these sites specifies what it does. Weed control also matters more on clay, where disturbed ground colonises quickly. A wall on clay without drainage behind it will move, and the movement is a function of the soil rather than the workmanship.

Drainage and Why It Fails

Drainage is the element most often underquoted and the one that causes the most expensive failures, and the reason is simple. Drainage is entirely invisible once the job has been finished. Nobody looks at a completed garden and admires the ag line, so it is the easiest place for a cheap quote to go thin. Subsoil and stormwater drainage at $95 to $220 a lineal metre is real money that buys nothing anybody can see. Water held behind a retaining wall is the single most common cause of wall failure in this region.

Saturated soil behind a wall weighs far more than drained soil and pushes much harder, and on the clay soils of the western belt it also swells. Any wall built without adequate drainage will move regardless of how good the blocks, the footings or the workmanship were. The failure gets blamed on the wall and it was caused by the water. A competent drainage specification behind a wall has four parts and a quote should name all of them. An agricultural drainage line at the base of the wall, free draining aggregate backfill behind the face, a geotextile layer separating the aggregate from the soil, and an outlet that actually discharges somewhere legal. The outlet is the element most often missing from a quote.

An ag line that drains into a sump with nowhere to go holds water against the wall as effectively as no drainage at all. Surface drainage is the second half of the problem and it is cheaper to solve. Grading finished levels to fall away from the house and from retaining walls, and putting a strip drain across the low point of a paved area, prevents most of the water from ever reaching the subsoil system. On corridor estate blocks the rear boundary is frequently a graded bank down to a drainage reserve, which means site water has somewhere to go. On a flat clay block it often does not, and that constraint should be established before the design is drawn. Blocked drains and drain cleaning is what a poorly designed system eventually becomes.

Paving, Concrete and Hard Surfaces

Hard surfaces are the most predictable part of a landscaping budget and the easiest place to adjust it. Paving comes in at $110 to $240 a square metre supplied and laid, plain concrete at $95 to $185, exposed aggregate at $125 to $210 and a timber deck at $280 to $520. These lines scale cleanly with area, so reducing a paved area by ten square metres saves $1,100 to $2,400 and changes nothing structural. That makes hard surfaces the right lever when a project comes back over budget. What moves the paving rate within its band is the paver and the pattern rather than the labour. A standard rectangular paver laid in a stretcher bond is at the bottom, while a small format paver, a herringbone pattern or a curved edge with cuts is at the top.

Cutting is the hidden cost in paving and it scales with the number of edges rather than the area. A square courtyard and a curved one of identical area are not the same job, and the curved one can carry 30 per cent more labour. Base preparation under a hard surface is where quotes genuinely differ and it is worth reading closely. A paved area needs compacted road base at an adequate depth and a bedding sand layer, and the depth depends on what the surface will carry. A pedestrian path needs less than a driveway that will take a vehicle, and a quote that specifies the same base for both has not thought about it.

Concreting services in Queensland price base preparation as a separate line. Paving laid on inadequate base settles unevenly within two years and the fix is to lift it and start again. Concrete suits larger areas and driveways, and the finish choice is mostly aesthetic once the slab is right. Plain concrete at $95 to $185 is the baseline, exposed aggregate at $125 to $210 hides marking better and gives more grip. On a sloping site a concrete surface also does structural work by stabilising the ground it sits on. Concreting services in Queensland are sometimes engaged directly for driveways while a landscaper handles the softer elements.

Turf, Beds and Planting

Planting is the least expensive part of a landscape and the part most people budget first, which is usually the wrong order. Turf costs $14 to $28 a square metre supplied and laid, and planted garden beds $85 to $180. Across a $40,000 project the entire planting schedule might be $6,000, which means the design decisions that matter financially were made before any plant was chosen. Turf choice should follow position rather than preference and in this region there are four realistic options. Couch is a fine leaved runner grass that suits full sun and sandy soil and takes a low cut, while soft leaf buffalo is broader leaved and tolerates part shade and needs to be left longer. Zoysia grows more slowly and holds colour well at a higher material cost, while kikuyu is the fastest growing of the four and suits acreage where appearance matters less.

Laying buffalo in full sun on sand, or couch in shade, produces a lawn that struggles regardless of what is spent on it afterwards. Soil preparation under turf and beds is the line that decides whether planting succeeds and it is frequently thin in a cheap quote. Turf laid directly onto compacted builder fill will establish and then stall, and a bed planted into unimproved clay or sand will do the same. Ripping and deep cultivation at $12 to $32 a square metre, and compost incorporated at $18 to $45, are what make the planting work. They are also invisible, which is why they get cut. Plant size at purchase is a genuine budget lever and it works in the opposite direction to intuition.

Tube stock, meaning small young plants in seedling tubes, at $4 to $12 a plant establishes faster and more reliably than advanced stock at $45 to $180, because a small root system adapts to a new soil more readily. Advanced plants buy immediate effect and carry more risk and more watering. A mixed approach, using advanced stock only where instant screening matters and tube stock elsewhere, generally produces the better garden for less. Garden design is the stage at which that balance gets decided.

Three Sub-Regions and What They Cost

Landscaping costs in this region vary by sub-region more than by suburb, because the site conditions cluster geographically. The bayside is flat sand, the corridor is flat compacted fill on small lots, and the western belt is sloping clay on large lots. Those three produce quite different budgets for the same brief, and a quote that does not reflect the difference has been produced without visiting. Bayside projects are generally the least expensive for a given area, because the ground is flat, the soil excavates easily and retaining is rarely needed. A full backyard on the peninsula commonly lands at $18,000 to $38,000.

The offsetting costs are soil improvement, which is ongoing on sand, and salt tolerant plant selection, which narrows the palette. Access is often tight on older peninsula blocks with no side access at all. Corridor projects sit similarly on price but for different reasons, typically $20,000 to $45,000 for a full backyard. The ground is flat and retaining is usually minimal, but the compacted builder fill has to be dealt with and the 900 millimetre side gate turns machine work into barrow work. That access constraint is the single biggest cost multiplier in the corridor and it is fixed before anybody quotes. Where a bobcat can get in, excavation runs at machine rates, and where it cannot, the same volume costs two to three times as much.

Western belt projects are the most expensive and the most variable, running $35,000 to $85,000 and occasionally well beyond. Slope means retaining, clay means drainage, and both mean engineering. The upside is that machine access is usually good and the lots are large enough to stage the work across several years. Staging is far more practical on acreage than it is on a small corridor block where everything is interdependent.

Staging a Project to Spread the Cost

Staging a landscaping project is a sound way to manage cost and a poor way to manage it if the stages are chosen badly. The governing rule is that anything structural or buried belongs in the first stage. Retaining, drainage, irrigation lines, lighting conduit and base preparation all sit beneath finished surfaces, so deferring them means lifting finished work later to put them in. A well sequenced project does the invisible work first and the visible work last, which is the opposite of what most owners want.

Stage one is demolition, excavation, retaining, drainage, conduit and irrigation mains, and at the end of it the garden looks worse than when it started. Stage two is base preparation and hard surfaces, stage three is turf, beds and planting, and stage four is lighting, furniture and finishing. Each stage from two onward can be deferred for a year without wasting anything in the stages before it. The costly mistake is paving or turfing an area that will later need a service run through it. Lifting and relaying settled or disturbed paving runs $75 to $145 a square metre, which on a 40 square metre courtyard is $3,000 to $5,800 spent twice.

Running conduit and an irrigation line under a paved area during construction costs a few hundred dollars and takes an afternoon. It is the cheapest insurance available on a staged project. Design documentation matters more on a staged project than a single build, because the stages have to be coordinated across years and possibly across contractors. Documentation at $1,200 to $6,500 that sets levels, drainage and service routes lets stage three be built by somebody who was not there for stage one. Without it, a staged project becomes three unrelated jobs that do not quite meet. The levels are what fail first, because a surface built to an assumed level rarely matches the one that was actually constructed.

Contracts, Deposits and Payment

Landscaping sits at a size where contract terms matter and many owners treat it like a smaller purchase. A $40,000 project is a substantial commitment and the payment structure is where most of the risk sits. The principle worth holding to is that payment should follow work completed rather than lead it. Progress payments against finished stages keep both sides aligned and keep the contractor motivated to finish each stage properly. A deposit should cover initial materials and mobilisation rather than a large share of the contract.

A request for 40 or 50 per cent up front on a landscaping project is worth questioning directly, because the money is then gone before anything has been built. The ordinary pattern is a modest deposit, then payments at the completion of identifiable stages, with each stage inspected before its payment is released. Keeping a final payment until defects are made good is normal and reasonable. The written scope is what prevents most disputes and it needs to go beyond a list of elements. Levels, materials and finishes by name, the drainage specification, what happens to spoil, who connects the outlet, and which items are provisional allowances, meaning estimated figures for work of unknown extent, rather than fixed prices all belong in writing. Provisional allowances are worth particular attention, because a quote carrying several of them is not a fixed price quote at all.

An allowance for rock excavation on a western belt site is sensible, and an allowance covering half the project is a quote that has not been thought through. Consumer guarantees under Australian Consumer Law apply to landscaping services regardless of what a contract says, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission sets out what those guarantees cover. They sit alongside contract terms rather than being replaced by them. Where a dispute cannot be resolved directly, the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal is the forum for building disputes. Documentation, photographs at each stage and written variations are what make a claim straightforward rather than contested.

Red Flags in a Landscaping Quote

Landscaping quotes are harder to compare than almost any other trade, because three builders rarely price the same project unless somebody has documented it. That makes the structure of a quote more informative than its total. The signals worth watching are mostly about what is absent rather than what is present. A short quote on a complex site is a warning rather than a convenience. A structural wall quoted with no mention of engineering or approval is the clearest red flag available.

A wall above one metre requires building approval and engineer certification, which together add $2,100 to $6,400. A quote omitting both is either planning to build it unapproved or has simply not priced them, and in each case the figure is not comparable with a quote that includes them. An unapproved structural wall also lands on whoever owns the house when it sells. A thin or absent drainage line on a sloping site is the second. Drainage at $95 to $220 a lineal metre is invisible once finished, which makes it the easiest place for a quote to save money the owner cannot see.

Ask every quote on a sloping site to specify the ag line, the aggregate backfill, the geotextile and where the outlet discharges. Anybody who cannot describe all four has not designed the drainage. A large deposit, a quote full of provisional allowances, and no licence number on structural work are the commercial flags and they tend to appear together. A quote carrying all three is a quote to set aside regardless of how attractive the total is. The last one is subtler and specific to this region. A quote for a job importing soil, mulch and turf that makes no mention of fire ant zone compliance has not considered an obligation that binds both the contractor and you, and the scheduling consequences of a 24 hour movement window are real.

What to Look for in Landscaping Quotes

A landscaping quote worth comparing against another does four things. It separates structure, services, surfaces and planting into distinct figures, it names materials and finishes rather than describing them generically, it specifies the drainage, and it identifies which items are allowances rather than fixed prices. Anything short of that is a figure rather than a quote. Two such figures cannot be meaningfully compared because neither states what it includes. The most effective thing an owner can do is commission documentation before seeking quotes.

Design and documentation at $1,200 to $6,500 produces levels, a drainage strategy, a materials schedule and a staging plan. With that in hand, three builders price the same project and the quotes become directly comparable. Without it, three builders price three different projects and the cheapest is usually the one that understood the least. Ask every quote to state the licence number and the class where the work includes structure. The threshold is $3,300 of building work and the Builder restricted to structural landscaping class covers retaining, paving, concrete, irrigation, decks, pergolas, fences and ponds.

Ask separately whether the quote includes the building approval and the engineer certification for any wall over a metre. Those two items at $2,100 to $6,400 are the most common omission in a low quote. Ask what happens to the spoil, because excavation generates more material than owners expect and removal runs $85 to $160 a cubic metre. A 30 cubic metre excavation is $2,550 to $4,800 in disposal alone. Finally, ask for the drainage specification in writing and for photographs at each buried stage. The first tells you whether it has been designed and the second is the only evidence you will ever have that it was built as described.

Pricing Area by Area

Landscaping rates across the region track site conditions rather than postcode prestige, which means the pattern is different from most trades. The flat sandy bayside and the flat corridor sit together at the lower end for a given area. The sloping clay of the western belt sits well above, not because contractors charge more there but because the work genuinely involves more. Within the corridor the variable is access rather than geography. North Lakes, Mango Hill, Griffin and Murrumba Downs are newer estates where a 900 millimetre side gate is common and barrow work is the norm.

Older parts of Kallangur, Petrie, Lawnton and Strathpine frequently have genuine side access, which lets a bobcat in and cuts excavation and material handling costs substantially. That single difference can be worth several thousand dollars on the same project. The western belt spans the widest range of any part of the region. A gently sloping block at Warner with one low wall is a different project from a steep site at Mount Nebo needing two engineered walls, significant drainage and machine access cut in.

Projects in these suburbs genuinely run $35,000 to $85,000 and beyond, and the figure is set by slope, soil and access rather than by the brief. Anybody in these areas should expect a site inspection before any number is offered. Bribie Island carries a modest premium across the board for materials cartage and contractor travel over the causeway. The site conditions themselves are generally favourable, being flat and sandy. One region wide point about access applies to every suburb here. Where a machine can reach the work, excavation and material handling run at machine rates, and where it cannot the same volume costs two to three times as much, so the first question on any site is what can physically get in.