The Fate

Our fate has been decided by the council and we are glad to be able to say that our problem has been solved with little worry other than we have been told that under no circumstances are we to touch another tree on our block unless having been given prior permission by council. They pin pointed a tree that must remain and unfortunately, that tree is also in the cut and fill area.

To solve this problem, we have decided to move our fill area back within the building envelope (which is exactly what the builder should have done in the first place) and save the life of the tree. It suits us fine anyway as we had no intention of removing that tree and now that council have said we can't we can make sure the builder do not remove it on our behalf.

In other news, we went for a drive to the block today to see the progression of our neighbour's house. What perfect timing we had, as our other neighbour turned up at her block not long after we got there..... to watch some men remove the majority of the trees on her block. All of the big ones anywhere near the house pad have gone. We let her know what council had told us about tree removal and she told the guys they'd better stop. Some people are funny though. The guy who was doing the job just did NOT understand that where we are building has strict rules about the environment not only from the developer, but from council who have been advised by the EPA. He kept saying "you can take anything that looks dangerous". After the week I've had and the conversations I've had my conclusion is that you can't take anything unless it is a) in the direct line of your garage from the footpath to your house where you are planning to put a driveway; b) along the fence line within 3 metres; c) within a ten metre boundary from your house to protect it from bushfire; or d) possibly if the RFB write you a bushfire management plan entailing that you are to remove trees that are deemed to be of risk. And even then, you still have to ASK!!!!

I spoke to lots of people on Thursday regarding this matter and everyone of them came back with the same answer: you are allowed to remove trees on your building envelope and nowhere else without council approval. It's in the DA, it's in the covenent, it's in our contract for goodness sake! It is very, very clear.

At the end of the day, we took a risk and were extremely lucky. Somehow, I don't think some of our neighbours will be as lucky.