Keeping a 2 acre Pakenham block under control from about $560 a year

Lifestyle blocks at Pakenham Upper, Tynong, Nar Nar Goon, Maryknoll and the back roads off the Princes Highway are a different job from an estate lawn. The grass is paddock grass, it grows to waist height between October and December, and there is a legal date attached to it. This page sets out what the job honestly costs at three levels of service, where you can safely spend less, and the two or three places where spending less means paying twice.

What actually drives the price of a slash

Tractor and slasher work is charged at about $120 to $170 an hour with a one hour minimum, plus a float fee of $60 to $120 to get the machine to you if you are out past Tynong, Garfield or up toward Pakenham Upper. A 1.5 metre slasher on clean, flat, dry ground covers something like half an acre to an acre an hour. That is the good case. Grass that has lodged over, scattered timber, tree guards, dam batters, old star pickets and wet clay all cut that rate down, sometimes by half.

Ride on and zero turn work for house yards and smaller paddocks sits at $90 to $130 an hour and covers roughly 1,500 to 2,500 square metres an hour depending on how long the grass is. Hand trimming around sheds, fences, tanks and plantings is the slowest work on any block at $70 to $95 an hour, which is why it is the first thing to take off the quote if you are watching the money.

Where you can safely save money

• Time it once, properly. One slash in the first half of November, when the seed heads are up but before the grass dries and flattens, does more than two badly timed cuts. Cut too early and it all regrows before Christmas.
• Book off peak. Ring in August or September. The fortnight before the shire deadline is the busiest of the year, rates are firm and slots genuinely run out.
• Share the float with a neighbour. Two or three adjoining blocks done in the one visit removes a $60 to $120 float fee each and usually takes 15 to 25 per cent off the total.
• Do the trimming yourself. An hour or two with your own brushcutter around the shed, the tank stand and the fence line saves $70 to $95 an hour of our time, and it is the safest DIY on the block.
• Shrink the mown area. A 600 square metre house yard is a $70 visit. A 2,000 square metre one is a $110 visit, every fortnight, forever. Let the rest be paddock.
• Mark your hazards before we arrive. Star pickets, irrigation lines, dog bones, rocks, tree guards and ant hills. A hit costs you a stopped job and a repair bill; a witches hat costs nothing.
• Take a standing cycle, not call outs. A booked cycle is 15 to 25 per cent cheaper than ringing when it gets bad, because we plan the run around the district.

Where saving money gets paid for twice

Letting it get away. Paddock grass at 300mm is one pass. The same paddock at a metre, lodged and tangled after a windy week, is a knock down pass and then a second cut, at double the hours, and it puts more strain on the machine so the hourly rate is not negotiable. The difference between a $350 job and a $700 job is usually six weeks of procrastination.

Slashing instead of spraying weeds. Running a slasher through blackberry chops canes and spreads them. Blackberry, ragwort, serrated tussock and several thistles are declared under Victoria’s catchment and land protection legislation, and landholders have a duty to take reasonable steps to control the regionally controlled ones. Spray at the right time of year on scattered infestation and you are looking at $250 to $600 across a couple of acres. Wait until it is a thicket and you are hiring a mulcher and doing follow up for years, starting around $2,000.

Scalping the whole block in January. Cutting to bare dirt in the heat costs you the ground cover that keeps the soil from baking and washing, and on the slopes around Pakenham Upper it starts erosion that takes years to fix. It also creates its own fire risk: a slasher blade on a buried rock in dry grass is one of the more common paddock fire starts. Leave 75 to 100mm of stubble and cut in the cool of the morning.

Missing the notice date. If the work is not done by the date on your fire prevention notice, council can infringe you and can arrange the work itself and recover the cost. Contractor rates in that last week are the highest of the year and you have no say in who turns up. Our fire prevention notice page walks through what the notice asks for and how to read it.

What a suspiciously low slashing quote is leaving out

A number well under everyone else is not usually a bargain, it is a different job. The eight things that are normally missing are worth knowing by name.

• The float. Getting a tractor to Tynong on a truck costs money. A quote with no travel line often grows on the invoice.
• The hard 30 per cent. Around trees, dam batters, drains, fence lines and the septic mound is slow work. A quote priced on the open paddock only will stop at the easy bit.
• Cut height. Slashing at 300mm and calling it done leaves standing fuel. Ask what height they cut to.
• Public liability insurance. A slasher throws stones. That is a broken window, a windscreen or worse. Ask for a certificate of currency and check the date.
• An invoice with an ABN. No invoice means no warranty, no insurance claim and no proof for council that the work was done by the date.
• GST. A quote that is silent on GST can be 10 per cent light.
• Green waste. Slashed material is normally left to break down in place, which is fine, but heaped windrows and cut blackberry canes need removing and that is a separate cost.
• Follow up. Around here one cut in October means a second cut before Christmas. A single visit quote is not a season.

Programs and concessions in Victoria that change the maths

There is no rebate for slashing itself, but four things genuinely move the numbers for Cardinia Shire acreage owners. First, kerbside green waste: a serviced property gets a green waste bin as part of the rates, and additional bins can be added for a modest annual fee. That is not a paddock solution but it takes the pressure off small clean ups.

Second, the shire’s transfer station. Cardinia Shire residents get concessional or free green waste disposal entitlements at the transfer station, generally through a voucher system tied to your rates notice. Check what the current entitlement is before you pay commercial gate rates, because green waste tipping is one of the bigger line items in any clean up.

Third, if your block genuinely meets the definition of farm land, Cardinia Shire runs a separate farm rate in the dollar. It is worth a call to the rates department, because the annual difference can dwarf what you spend on slashing. There is also a state municipal rates concession for eligible pensioner concession card holders, capped at an amount set and indexed by the state, which is applied through the council.

Fourth, if your block has a creek, drain or waterway frontage, Melbourne Water and the local Landcare networks run land management and stream frontage programs that can fund fencing, weed control and revegetation along the waterway. On a block backing onto the Bunyip or Toomuc catchment this can cover work you would otherwise pay for yourself. None of these are advertised at you; you have to ask.

Honestly: when you should not be paying us at all

If your block is under about 1,500 square metres and you already own a ride on, you do not need a contractor. That is 2 to 3 hours of a Saturday and about $18 of fuel. If you own 2 acres and a serviceable ride on, you can do the flat, dry, open part yourself and pay us only for the rough edges, the steep bit and the pre summer cut, which usually halves the bill. We would rather quote that honestly than sell you a full service you do not need. Our DIY versus professional page runs the same comparison for suburban lawns.

There are also jobs we do not take. We do not fell mature trees or grind stumps. We do not put a tractor on slopes steep enough to be a rollover risk. We do not slash standing dry grass on a day of Total Fire Ban, and during the declared fire danger period there are real restrictions on machinery that we work around rather than ignore. And we will not run a slasher through an established blackberry thicket and pretend it is control, because it is not.

If your block is closer to a large suburban yard than a paddock, the numbers on our pricing page and the lawn mowing cost guide will fit you better. For what happens on the day itself, see what to expect on a clean up day, and if you are mulching the house garden while the tractor is out, the mulch calculator will size it. We cover Pakenham Upper, Tynong, Nar Nar Goon and the rest of the shire; the full list is on our service areas page.