Anakie
Tree removal in Anakie
Tree removal, pruning and stump grinding in Anakie, from gardens in the township to rural blocks around the Anakie Hills.
Tree work in Anakie
Fire risk, scoria cones and septic tanks
Greater Geelong's municipal planning strategy calls Anakie a small rural township, and notes that it is in a high risk area for bushfire. More than two decades ago, in January, Anakie was hit by a fire that encompassed 6,708 hectares and destroyed buildings including three houses and three woolsheds. Around a home here, that puts fuel first: dead trees and fallen limbs dealt with, and the cuttings chipped and carted off rather than left in heaps.
A report on Victoria's volcanic eruption points, written in the mid-nineties, describes the Anakies as three scoria cones and a small maar crater in a line, with Mount Anakie the highest. It notes that granitic rocks underlie the volcanoes and show at the surface as tors and slabs beside the cones. A stump on that ground can sit in loose scoria or against buried granite, so the grinder works down in shallow passes and the final depth depends on what it meets.
Greater Geelong's planning policy for Anakie keeps the town within its existing township zoning and sets a guideline minimum residential lot size of 1000 square metres, so sewage can be disposed of on each block. Before a stump is ground or a root is cut on a block like that, the septic tank and the effluent field are found, and machines are kept off them.
Sources: Settlement, Municipal Planning Strategy, Greater Geelong Planning Scheme (retrieved 15/10/2026); Past major bushfires in Geelong, City of Greater Geelong (retrieved 10/09/2026); Mount Anakie, Eruption Points of the Newer Volcanic Province, Victorian Resources Online (archived) (retrieved 15/10/2026); Settlement policy for Anakie, Greater Geelong Planning Scheme (retrieved 15/10/2026); Trees dataset, City of Greater Geelong (Geelong Data Exchange), Melbourne yellow gums (retrieved 15/10/2026); Trees dataset, City of Greater Geelong (Geelong Data Exchange), tall rural roadside trees (retrieved 15/10/2026); Schedule 5 to the Significant Landscape Overlay, Greater Geelong Planning Scheme (retrieved 15/10/2026)
Services in Anakie
Dead timber, heavy crowns and stony ground
Tree removal
Dead and leaning trees on township blocks and rural land taken down, in sections where there is no clear place to drop them.
Tree pruning
Low canopies lifted and limbs shortened where they reach over the roof, the gutters or the driveway.
Stump grinding
Stumps ground below the surface on township blocks, so a lawn or a garden bed can go back over the spot.
What it costs: tree removal cost, stump grinding cost
Compared: removal, lopping or pruning, stump grinding or stump removal, council tree rules compared
How it works
From the first call to a clear garden
Nothing happens without a written quote you have agreed to.
Tell us about the tree
Call or send the form with the tree and what is worrying you.
A contractor comes to see it
A local tree contractor looks at the tree, the access and whatever sits underneath it, because a quote off a photo misses the things that change the job.
A written quote
The quote sets out the scope, what happens to the timber and the stump, and the date. It is the contractor's quote, and nothing starts until you accept it.
The work and the clean up
On the day the tree is dealt with as quoted, the green waste leaves on the truck and the lawn is raked.
Anakie questions
Yellow gums, tall roadside trees and the hills overlay
Who looks after the Melbourne yellow gums?
The City, for the ones in its tree records. In the City of Greater Geelong's public tree dataset, Anakie holds 539 of the City's 1,152 Melbourne yellow gums, nearly half of them. A cracked limb or a leaning trunk on one of those is reported to the City, and work in a garden beside one keeps the chipper and the stump grinder clear of its root zone.
What about the tall roadside trees?
The same dataset counts 281 rural roadside trees recorded at 15 metres or taller in Anakie, more than ten times as many as any other suburb. A private tree that tall near the road comes down in sections, with room for the chipper and traffic control set up first, and both go into the quote.
Does a tree in the Anakie Hills need a permit?
It can. Significant Landscape Overlay Schedule 5, Edges of the Brisbane Ranges and Anakie, takes in the Anakie Hills, and where it covers the land, lopping, removing or destroying living vegetation needs a permit, with exemptions in the schedule for listed environmental weeds and for plants near a dwelling on a bigger lot. Where a permit is needed, the wait for it is built into the timing of the job.
