Outback Arborists

A Mountain Ash reaching 60 to 65 metres with a house underneath it is the job other companies knock back. Tyler Wills has taken those on. Outback Arborists is his business, working out of Montrose in Melbourne's east, and on a tree like that the difference is between an arborist who climbs and one who does not. He gets up into the canopy, reads what is going on inside it, and decides in real time where each section is going.

Tyler grew up near Gembrook and played footy for clubs at Gembrook and South Belgrave, so the hills are not somewhere he drives out to for work. He covers Montrose, Belgrave, Berwick, Gembrook and the wider eastern suburbs and Dandenong Ranges, where a steep block with tight access and a tall eucalypt leaning over the roof is the standard problem rather than the unusual one.

He did not take the short way here. After finishing his Certificate III in Arboriculture in Australia he went to see how the rest of the world does it, and spent two of his eight years working across Canada, the United States and South America. That took in the West Coast of British Columbia, on and off islands, most of them completely off grid, driving trucks, running machinery, clearing power lines and climbing. In northern Terrace he did hazard tree removal around roads and power lines, roping dangerous trees down before they could come down on their own. Then Kelowna, then Wisconsin. He came back with a different idea of what tree work looks like at the top end, and has since led crews on a government storm recovery contract in the Dandenong Ranges.

The everyday work is tree removal, and Tyler takes the awkward ones: large trees, tight spaces, difficult access, and the jobs other outfits have already looked at and passed on. Tree pruning improves the structure of a tree, reduces the risk it carries and adds years to how long it lasts. Afterwards, stump grinding takes the stump down below surface level and the chips are cleaned up before anyone leaves. On-site firewood processing and bushfire management and hazard reduction are on the list as well, and the second of those is why a lot of hills properties ring in the first place.

Storm damage does not wait, so emergency tree removal runs 24 hours a day and Tyler can usually be on site within hours. He is an SES Storm Crew member with the Gembrook and Emerald crews, so a bad night is familiar ground. The business carries 10 million dollars of public liability cover, which is the number that matters when the work is happening directly above your roof. Ring 0438 275 721 and it goes in four steps from there: tell us about the tree, we come out and inspect it and check the access and the risks, you get an upfront quote with a clear breakdown and nothing owing on it, and then the job gets done and the property left tidy.